Archaic societal norms that need to change

[Autiebibliophile]

For me it's the 6 week holidays. It worked well in a time where the majority of families were one income families. Where village communities were much more present. Grandparents typically lived close by and could help with childcare. When we had typical seasons before global warming kicked in.

I grew up in the eighties, summers were playing out all day. If my mum needed to go somewhere I went to my grandparents or a friends house. It was simple. Now it's just 6 weeks of childcare hell. Spending a fortune on childcare, expensive holidays, activities. It costs a fortune and I'm not convinced children get much out of the break anymore.

I think it needs cutting down to three weeks, And give parents two weeks they can use at their choosing (at certain time periods in the year)

What societal norms do you think are outdated?

Yabu. If that happens holiday prices for the holidays will shoot up making it only accessible for super wealthy.
You'd also have more people taking their children out in term time to afford a holiday.
School staff absolutely need the holidays to recharge.
There's a recruitment crisis in teaching.
Your idea would make that worse.

Women working full time or nearly full time but still doing everything to do with their children which involves thinking ahead and remembering, eg school comms, buying new clothing and shoes, vaccinations, buying gifts and cards for friends’ birthday parties, organising everything for and whatsapping thank you messages after their own kids’ birthday parties, haircuts, meal planning for multiple preferences, homework organisation, play dates, extracurricular, PE kit washing and replacing lost items, etc. etc.

It amounts to days (even weeks) of unpaid labour a year and it makes people utterly miserable.

YABVU.

Your changes to the school holidays might make it easier for some parents, but you'd be making it much harder for all teachers and support staff.

It's not outdated just because you happen not to like it.

The reality is that we all know how school terms/holiday 'work' before we have children, and schools are not simply childcare facilities to allow us to work.

I do think more countrywide investment is needed regarding supporting actual childcare (childminders, nurseries, wraparound care etc).

And how do you think it would work if all the teaching staff were not off at the same time? Or if the support staff were on holiday at a different time to the teaching staff?

• mum we only did geography and science today because our maths teacher is in Spain and our French teacher is decorating her house. In geography I only coloured in because my one to one is off this week so I couldn't understand the work.

Or shall we just take the holidays off them?

Yes, you have a point there.
Do you think it's possible to opt out of any of this/lessoen the load in any way?
Everyone seems to get bogged down by all of this but many folk are reluctant to be the one who opts out, e.g. not having a big birthday party every year, not doing every sports/club there is etc.
It's not easy, that's for sure!

Re pricing how is that different to now? Lots of stressful jobs - police, social work etc no one else gets 6 consecutive weeks to recharge.

Yabu. Why only parents get 2 weeks. What about other people who might need a chunk of time off?

It would increase the number of students absent from school because parents would take them on holiday during their 'block leave'.

It would cause chaos in schools with staffing because, as @Cosyblankets said, support staff would be stretched even more than they already are, pupils would suffer from not having their regular teacher. Supply budgets would need to increase because those lessons would need a teacher to cover, on top of sick and other planned absences.

I do feel the summer break is too long, and would prefer a 4 week summer break with the extra days added to feb and oct half terms instead. But as parents we had babies knowing school wasn't childcare. People need to stop thinking the world owes them everything just because they were lucky enough to have kids.

Agree with this completely. When women fought for equality and the right to work in the same roles as men, I doubt they anticipated any of this.

As in parents can choose upto two weeks of the year to take children out (excluding exam times) They would use their own annual leave as they do now.

@Autiebibliophile different to no because three weeks of holidays available as opposed to six weeks of holidays available. Less supply and more demand.
Everyone with kids scrabbling to be off within those three weeks.

I think the way schools work and the exam system is archaic. Having 30 plus children sitting in a classroom being quiet and compliant ,expected to just absorb information in a uniform way does not fit with the way we rear children generally. Many schools are enormous now. Why are we cramming children with random, often useless information for them to regurgitate when information is now at the finger tips of everyone and we need skills to research, analyse and for critical thinking. Which we could test by students having access to information under exam conditions not asking them to remember all this stuff that they'll later forget. I am sure I'm being simplistic but schools are still run along victorian lines.

You think there's any teachers out there who take the full 6 weeks 'off'? Most come into work and/or work from home preparing! It's rarely a 6 week break. It's the same with the shorter holidays, they don't often take the full week/fortnight.

Yeah so not know who's going to be off in any two weeks would be great for planning lessons.
Loads of children with massive gaps.
Sorry y9 we can't move on to trig as we need to spend a couple lessons catching those three up who were off last week.
🤔

I agree. Cut it down

I'd say to 4 weeks and then add a week to Easter and the other week either to Christmas or split and tagged onto half terms

I dont think your actual plan will work for the reasons everyone is saying.

I like the length of the school holidays but think they should start two or three weeks earlier in England, like when Wimbledon starts, last week of June, then they go back in August instead, as that's usually the best bit of summer.

You’re missing the bigger picture OP.

Childcare should be free and it should also be entirely possible for one earning parent to support the family.

They're just continuing to tighten the screw.

@Doingmybest12 I agree about exams - it's almost just a memory competition in many cases. I feel like ongoing assessment can work much better, assessing individual units at different times and also looking at general trends to see if a student's knowledge/ability/skill in the overall subject area is developing as the year progresses.

Yes, I think the Scottish holiday timings are better....finish end June/very early July and back mid to end August.

And when do you suppose these kids would catch up the work they've missed in this two week holiday?
Let's say in a class of 30, 5 of the kids are off in the first week, 3 of those 5 are still off in the second week, the teaching assistant is off so the little group that he euros with are stuck and then another 6 are off in the same week for the first of their two weeks but this time the teacher is off for a week.

You really haven't thought this through. It's such a naive way of looking at it.

The way parliament is run, all the boo ha ha. All the need to pledge allegiance to the monarchy . I hoped when Westminster needed work not long ago they would abandon it and create a new setting where it could be less adversarial.

Absolutely I have a Sen child. It's so frustrating how much he is expected to do to 'fit in' and how little the school will do to adapt.

I came to say exactly this.

School is so outdated. It hasn’t changed its model (whxh was designed during the Victorian era) to keep up with modern life.

As well as what you say about it just training children to regurgitate useless information for tests, it does not teach critical thinking skills or useful life skills.

It’s also a really unhealthy form of forced socialisation. Nowhere else in real life would you be forced to be with 30 other people the exact same age as you every day of every week.

All true

Yes I agree. Schools and class sizes half the size they are now would make mainstream school accessible to more children than the 20% who are struggling with it now. And I suspect, make teaching a more appealing profession.

One answer is to simplify your life; do we really need to do so much stuff if it is causing so much stress?
Take Halloween; as a child in the 60’s no one I know did anything at all. When my children were young in the 90’s we bought a pumpkin in the supermarket and a few bags of sweets and went trick or treating locally.
My niece has young children now and they decorate the whole house, go to pumpkin farm, carve pumpkins, have Halloween costumes and pajamas and go to a Halloween party for which they cook special food.
No wonder people are exhausted.