In days of yore, school stayed in session until mid-June and didn’t resume until after Labor Day. In fact, my college was on the quarter system, and classes didn’t resume until late September.
Does anyone know why, in most of the country, school now ends in early May and resumes in August, sometimes early August? It doesn’t make sense to me because (1) there’s still cool, rainy weather in May, (2) there’s still a lot of summer left after school resumes.
There are explanations for this idiocy (e.g., here), but I find them circular, unpersuasive, and rather like explanations of how the tail wags the dog. The only one that seems plausible is the avoidance of semester-ending exams after Christmas break. That’s easily avoided by doing why my college did: break the school year into quarters instead of semester.
But “educators” are herd-like in their behavior. Denying kids a real summer is just another “thing” that has become de rigeur, like indoctrinating kids in Marxism and gender-fluidity.