During earlier days, ‘Sene Selassa’ or normally July 7 of every year all schools close officially and students, teachers, admin and support staff begin their long vacation season. It is the beginning of the long rainy season and students who come from far off areas take their property and join the families they have missed during the entire academic year. Traditionally people do not move a lot as rivers overflow and flash floods can be dangerous. What is more, in the rainy season, as the surface is muddy and slippery, people remain in their surroundings until September comes and a New Year dawns.
When New Year dawns and ‘Enqutatash’ Ethiopian New Year, and ‘Maskal’ /The Finding of the True Cross/ are celebrated on September 11 and September 27 respectively, everything gets back to its usual business. Rivers run dry and do not hamper peoples’ movements. Schools also resume classes the day after Meskel is celebrated.
However, these days things have changed. Transport has improved a lot and even the academic year’s schedule has changed a lot because the schools close much earlier and reopens as soon as the New Year begins, September 12. Some schools, particularly the private ones, the community schools begin even earlier in August as they close earlier. Schools nowadays also have several programmes such as summer courses concurrent to administrative activities such as registration and preparation of the textbooks, students’ uniforms and certain schools even repair their classes and compounds in a manner to fulfilling what may be lacking.
And if the education bureau or some other government body has advised them to improve certain things in the schools, they may have the opportunity to do that during the yearly recess.
What we would like to dwell on in this piece is however how do we manage our kids during the rainy season.
Following the closure of schools with the rainy season, families with children who go to school are presented with a new challenge that they may not be very familiar about specially if it is the first time, and that is: How to engage their kids fruitfully and responsibly during the ten weeks or so when the schools remain closed.
As stated earlier, all regular schools shut down for the summer recess and children find themselves unoccupied. They are told that the school closes and they will not be seeing their friends, their teachers, their compound, and they will not also play the games they were accustomed to playing. Their routine changes completely; they are practically left both physically as well as psychologically idle, something that they themselves do not like too much unless they find some alternative that fills the gaps.
Scholars may say that children are advised to take prolonged rest as do their teachers. But we have often seen that in many instances teachers themselves become students in their turn and are made to undergo upgrading or refreshing courses during these vacations. Some are engaged with various programmes of the schools where they teach such as in administrative stuff or attend meetings and conferences on how to improve the teaching learning process, what to do to improve the_ quality of education or the curriculum and other related things, which is worthwhile. In other words, they are not left completely ‘idle’ and in private schools they may be assigned to do other things as the school requires them to do.
The most common activity is however the engagement in academic ventures. I know for instance my cousin who is a teacher and who completed her degree courses by getting fully engaged during the summer recesses. I also know a teacher who has completed his Master’s Degree Programme through summer courses.
But what should students do, particularly the younger ones during these prolonged weeks? There are several theories regarding how much rest or leisure kids must have during an academic year and whether it is proper to keep them unengaged for so much time in the first place.
In some cases, young students even reach the extent of forgetting the subject matters that they just learned as they remain inactive for several weeks as they had never been before. Things that have not been well absorbed by these children tend to easily fade from their memory boxes and when the new academic year begins, they all become almost novelties to many issues, subject matters or ideas.
Hence questions arise: Is it proper and advisable to disengage children completely for so much time leaving them to get involved in anything but school related material?
Is it proper or wise to leave schools closed for three full months during one solar year of twelve months giving it the name ‘academic year’ and end up creating a vacuum that has the potential of being counterproductive or even hurting the kids? We should not forget that there are other vacations during the winter season also for instance at the end of the quarterlies or semesters and the like without of course counting all the week ends.
I know that in many countries (and I guess it is beginning to be implemented here as well) there is one extra semester for higher learning institutions during the summer break and there is no way that one can take leave of all academic engagements and afford the luxury of passing ten to twelve weeks of absolute idleness or leisure, as it were.
The idea behind the long vacation is that children must have the opportunity to take real rest and avoid any forms of stressful engagements after a long semester of studies and exams. It is as if the batteries are discharged during the long and tiring spell of the academic year and they need to, so to say, dis-intoxicate from the fatigue or even boredom of ‘forced adulthood’ and recharge them well. In the case of those who sit for national exams the season may have been more stressful but the vacations are even longer with the exams ending in May.
The idea of the long vacation sounds fine because it contributes to re-establish the equilibrium that may have been out of balance or order and the mind of the children gets some leisure, some refreshments. So that they can really engage themselves in some sort of extracurricular activities that could be of their true inclination or preference. Several activities could be thought of.
It could be going to another locality from where they normally dwell and visit, or frequent new family members such as_ grandparents, uncles and aunts or some grown up sister or brother or cousin, nephew, and nieces etc. and pass some leisure. They may have the opportunity to expose themselves to new environment, emotions, experience visits to new places, new faces, new adventures, new challenges; all these are constructive for the mind and body of the child or the youth.
My personal experience was that in the early days I and my siblings were regularly enrolled by our parents into the famous traditional religious schools or priest schools where one has the opportunity to distinguish the alphabet and go through all the stages of ‘abc’ (‘ha, hu, hi’, in Amharic, and then get promoted to ‘abugida’ (another level in the alphabetical ladder and then to reading more difficult texts such as ‘melikte Yohanne’s (the messages of John) and the more robust books called ‘Dawit’ or the Book of Psalms. All these have something to do with the literacy efforts because during our infancy there was nothing called ‘kindergarten’ or KG where we could slowly familiarize ourselves with the alphabet, particularly the Geez alphabet, in easy leisure with songs, chants and drawings and other group activities.
In recent years, with the emergence of the concept of ‘zero class’ in public schools or nursery, pre-KG, KG, Lower KG, and Upper KG before joining the Grades one to twelve in the private schools, kids have made a big leap in the methodology of being educated or in their preparation for receiving formal and serious education.
They have good opportunities thanks to the scientific revolution that has introduced and spread the world over by video technology, internet, you tube, PCs and whatnot, fruits of the modern day. So in many respects this is a lucky generation as compared to those of some decades ago.
Most educators argue that practically everything we learn during our early childhood days will have substantial impact on our subsequent lives. It prepares us for the higher classes when we actually learn new things properly, but many say, that it is a growing process for kids so that they get better prepared for their subsequent years and train their mind how to get engaged in thinking or conceptualizing things so that they have a good grasp of life, and enable them to face certain challenges in life and be up to the task of resolving them.
The real education begins in college, they say, because there, students really have the means and techniques of deeply studying things including engaging in researches. Hence, the entire school years are meant to prepare for this tertiary stage of education. But we have often observed that if kids do not have the proper basic preparation, they are bound to be negatively influenced by easily failing in the subsequent academic endeavours.
The kind of preparation during the very early days constitutes the basis for subsequent years and if a student gets the right background, particularly in terms of developing self-confidence, language and reasoning skills, he or she is bound to succeed in the years to come. That is why the gaps that are bound to be formed during the early years, particularly during the ‘idle vacations’ need to be taken care of properly.
One option could be enroling in some light summer course that has little of academic and routine subjects but very attractive and interesting to the kids. It could be that the kids get some sort of different lessons of language or reading skills in a very interesting manner or art or gymnastic and the like in which they have the opportunity to explore and find out their true inclinations and interests.
In any case, since ‘the mind of the idle becomes the workshop of the devil’ as the saying goes, children who are completely free for eight weeks and more need to find some sort of ‘engagement’ that keeps their mind active, engaged and entertained, avoiding _academic routine and stress. They deserve the rest but they also deserve to have a meaningful rest. For instance, if they are to play with their peers, they need to frequent kids that do not have bad habits or do not indulge in bad behaviour.
For instance, they should not be exposed to bigger kids who have certain outrageous vices such as smoking or chewing chat or getting engaged in viewing obscene movies with obscene language etc.
These are episodes or stories that watchful parents should prevent their children from getting involved in. This is particularly dangerous where the kids are in the adolescent age group and they kind of feel the adventure of trying to engage in risky business, in adventure. The entire problems boil down to the question who is the friend that your kid wants to pass most of the time with, and how much time is he or she ready to pass with them?
One fundamental point that is acknowledged by any responsible person is that parents must know that they have the duty to know where their kids pass their time if they are not going to school. They need to know where they are at any moment during any day so that they will not confronted with a tragic surprise or come to know about the habits of their kids when it is already too late as the kids have been deeply immersed in some vice.
One fundamental point that is acknowledged by any responsible person is that parents must know that they have the duty to know where their kids pass their time if they are not going to school. They need to know where they are at any moment during any day so that they will not confront with a tragic surprise or come to know about the habits of their kids when it is already too late as the kids have been deeply immersed in some vice.
If they are ‘lazy’ or careless and let things in the hands of the kid who is not yet 18 years old and if they take things for granted, they will find out some day that he or she are in a situation from where they may find it very difficult to disentangle.