Although millions of students look forward to the ten-week long break from school every year, in reality, this long of a break has proven to be more detrimental than beneficial.
      Not only do students forget a great amount of what they learned the previous school year, are given more opportunities to get into trouble, and generally spend their free-time doing absolutely nothing productive, but most students soon begin to complain of boredom by the third or fourth week.
      It is baffling that our summers have remained so long despite even the students’ belief that it is, in fact, prolonged.
      Additionally, the summer time has also become a time dreaded by single parents, who are put through even more stress to care for their children another six hours everyday.  Now they must not only work daily, but also find a way to care for their children while they are working, which, if they are unable to do so, can lead to very uninvolved parenting styles and a disconnection between parents who work all the time and students during the summer who have nothing to do.
      Nevertheless, although this is true, the heart of the problem of summer is that it promotes many students’ belief that education is not important. When given such a long break, students begin to desire the idleness and the care-free nature that they experience during summer, and therefore do not learn essential skills for once they graduate from high school.
      They simply await the time when they don’t have so many responsibilities anymore. And it is because of this, I believe, that our education rate, as a country, falls below that of 17 other countries.
      By endorsing summer, we are in effect endorsing periods of excessive laziness, and thus diminishing our collective intelligence.