As I am writing this, it’s almost the last day of school for me and for some of you, school may already be over! You may be getting ready for hanging out with your friends, going to the pool, reading so many great books, trips with your family and more summer activities. I’m almost absolutely sure that you will be having fun for the most part soaking up the sun or enjoying the fresh air! But have you ever asked yourself why we have summer vacation? By the end of this month, most of us will be enjoying the fact that summer vacation is stretched out lazily in front of us, like a long country road. No tests, no assignments, no homework and no school. We can look forward to crystalline pools, cold drinks, sticky ice cream and neighbourhood street parties! Summer is something we can count on, it will always be here and for all we know, it always has! But how? Why
Let’s rewind back to the early 19th century and become students from waaaaay back then shall we? From what I found interestingly, at first it was thought that we have summer break because in the 19th century students were off from school during the months of June and July because they had to help their parents with the harvest but that is not 100% true. If you think about it, when does the harvest come in? Fall and spring right? Not the summer, so that means that the earlier myth is just that, a myth. So if the students needed to help their parents during the harvest season, that means that they needed to be off for fall and spring, not summer. So what most likely happened was that the students had breaks in the fall and spring between the periods of and around September and November (fall) and March and May (spring). Now that that mystery is solved you may be asking yourself: If students back then had breaks in the fall and spring, why do we have it in the summer? Not that I would mind two breaks a year or anything… Anyways as I was just saying…
That is a great question and one I asked myself. Here is an answer I hope satisfies you. What are the students who had breaks to harvest? Farm students! When I was in grade three I visited a one room schoolhouse with my classmates. We dressed up in old-timey clothes and brought old-timey lunches! We were farm students! Our schoolhouse “teacher” told us a little bit about school life back then and about what farm students were! Farm students are students who have parents who own or work on a farm and those are the students who need to help their parents with farm work! Now contrary to popular belief, there weren’t all farm children in the early 19th century. There were in fact urban students and those students were the ones who most of the time took breaks in the summer. Afterwards when education was regulated, the school year was stabilized and the summer vacation was adapted!
Well not to take so much of your time, I hope that you have learned something new and most of all, I wish all of you a safe and happy summer!!
Serena Wambura.