Today is the first day of summer. The summer solstice. A day much awaited by kids, teachers, and other school personnel, as, unless there is a large number of snow days, school is usually out of session by now. Summer vacation has begun. Woo Hoo!

When I was a kid, summer vacation meant a few months to chill, relax from the daily demands of homework and school sports and activities. It meant sleeping in. Staying up late to watch the stars come out. Cookouts. Exploring the woods. Hanging out with the gang drinking Kool-Aid and eating lunch outside. A time for unadulterated fun.

We had no responsibilities, except household chores that took up a little bit of the precious free time we had. It was a time to enjoy some down time. Maybe go fishing at Beaver Pond with the neighborhood kids in the morning. A pick up baseball game at the Millers’ house with all ages invited and encouraged to play. Swimming at the town pool in the late afternoon. Blueberry picking with Dad on weekends. And, my personal favorite, reading one of the 12 books I brought home from the library each week, as I sat on the front porch in the shade of a pair of cedar trees that framed the steps.

Oh, how I loved summer vacation as a kid.

But, while listening to the morning news the other morning, my ear caught the story of how someone, somewhere, in their “infinite wisdom” has decided that summer vacation should no longer be a time of freedom and play and dreaming. Someone thinks it’s a good idea to keep the pressure on kids to make sure they don’t lose any of the knowledge and information they learned during the previous school year. Someone thinks it’s a good idea to make the kids continue some type of rigorous schedule of learning so they don’t “fall behind” in September. I thought, “Did I hear that correctly?” So I rewound the news and listened again and sure enough, someone wants to take summer vacation away from the kids.

Now, in my 12 years of regular school, not once did I ever go back to school in September, feeling like I’d lost what I’d learned the year before. Not once did I miss the structure and pressures of learning. And maybe that’s because I was learning other, just-as-important things. Like, how to deal with a messy, scarey situation…you know, putting a worm on a hook and then taking a fish off the hook? Valuable lesson in the nitty gritty of what life can throw at you. Or how about, playing on a baseball team with all ages and abilites? Lesson there is acceptance, teamwork, patience, and humility. (Ever have your little brother out-hit or out-run you? Yah, humility) Or how about lying on your back in the grass, looking up at the sky and trying to figure out what the puffy white clouds look like? Lesson learned? Using your imagination without any inhibitions. And, as I noted before, reading for hours on the front porch. Lesson there is learning how to relax, leave the world behind, and let your mind find a way to stay in the moment of the book you are reading.

I can’t understand why someone would want to take all of that away from our children. If my kids were still school age, I would start some kind of revolution. I would make them go fishing. I would make them read. I would take them to the canal to watch the sunset. I’d pack all the kids in my truck and take them for ice cream after supper. I’d encourage them to have fun and learn all there is to learn outside of the classroom. On a hot summer’s day. In July. In August. They are only kids once. Let them have summer vacation. Soon enough, they will be adults and all of this will be lost. Happy Summer all. Thanks for letting me rant.