SCHOOL HOLIDAYS
By DR. J. H. SHACKLETON BAILEY' In the elementary schools, although the pupils are younger, their holidays are less. The reason for this is, no doubt, that the children for whom they cater in big centres of population would benefit very little by holidays, since their parents cannot supervise them, especially when the former are working all day outside their own homes. Rural areas are more happily situated in this respect since in them the children can either ramble in the lanes without coming to much harm, or pick up a good deal of knowledge about farmwork which may be quite as useful to many of them in after life as most of what they learn at school.
A fresh start is now being made with education consequent on the passing of the new Act, with which the name of Mr. Butler will always be associated. It will take some years before several of its provisions can be implement al. This, therefore, is a peculiarly suitable time for a reconsideration of this matter of school holidays. Two reforms which would be extremely valuable are a shortening of the present over-liberal allowance of school holidays and pro- vision for so organising them that every scholar should derive from them a benefit which has not been possible hitherto in a very large number of cases of children living in big cities.
In the case of the Universities, the increased expense to under- graduates, and particularly to that large number of them who are only too conscious of res angusta domi, might well make it impossible to shorten the vacations. But in the case of the numerous day schools where tuition fees have now been abolished such financial considerations would not arise if the summer holiday were limited to the month of August, and the pupils given three weeks only at
Christmas and a fortnight at Easter. No doubt, at the outset, such a curtailment of holidays would be resented by teachers and pupils alike ; on the other hand, there are hosts of parents who would hail it with approval. As regards the teachers, surely it might be hoped that increased salaries and pensions, such as they have now received under the revised Burnham Scale, would reconcile them to somewhat shorter holidays, seeing that the length of these has always been presumed to be for the benefit of the pupils rather than for that of their preceptors. This, at least, was the answer generally given by members of the teaching profession when professional or business
* Late Headmaster of Lancaster Royal Grammar SchooL
men working longer hours every day of the week than they do, and with nothing like the same amount of holidays in the course of a year, contrasted their lot in these respects with that of the school- master.
But if holidays should be shortened so that the State as well as the parents and scholars might get better value for the vast sums now expended on education. it is equally important that the summer holiday, especially, should be utilised for health-giving recreation and change of air and scene to a much greater extent than has ever yet been the case in this country. Since the di,ys when subscribers to " Fresh Air Funds " enabled children from the towns to spend a fortnight's holiday in August in county homes, a very great deal has been done in the way of camps of one kind or another, either at the seaside or in the heart of the country, to give children a real and beneficial holiday to which they come to look forward with eagerness and which passes only too quickly. There is no reason why the Ministry of Education should not take an active interest in all this, which, sub rosa, it probably does. It should, however, be made clear that teachers should not be expected to supervise children during holidays, no matter in what capacity, unless they volunteered spontaneously, as many of them would do and have done for the sheer love of the task. Most of them, when a school has broken up, are naturally seeking for some place where few boys are to be found.
It is not being suggested that the freedom of parents should be restricted in deciding what the holiday arrangements of their children should be, or that any compulsion should be applied to them in this matter. The aim should be to provide increased facilities of which they could take advantage for their children if they so desired. All that would be necessary in the way of legislation could be achieved by making it illegal for any urban employer to pay wages to a boy or girl still at school for working for him in any capacity during the month of August each year. In the country districts children could still be employed gainfully in healthy open-air work as heretofore. Thus the desired results would quickly follow with- out parents being directly affected in any way which they could resent.
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