The six week holidays – nearly over!
I have yet to fully understand the significance of why, in 2019, we still adhere to an academic school calendar that appears to be structured around the exploitation of child labour within the agricultural industry.
Six weeks summer holidays so that the children of farmers can help with the harvest. A harvest that doesn’t even take place at the start of the summer holidays but nearing the end of September. This seems an urban myth (or rural myth) that has circulated since the turn of the century to mask the real reason why we have six weeks summer holidays.
We don’t have six weeks off in summer to allow children to recharge their intellectual batteries. Nor do we have six weeks off in summer to allow teachers to reflect upon the year’s practice and plan for the coming year ahead. Furthermore, we do not have six weeks summer holidays so the parents can enjoy quality time with their children.
We have six weeks summer holidays so that industries such as the tourist trade, hotels, airlines and Wacky Warehouses can hike up their prices and in what is tantamount to daylight robbery; blatantly fleece parents, carers and grandparents with over inflated prices based solely upon the fact that we are prisoners within our own home surrounded by our now feral children.
This summer has cost me an arm and a leg and haven’t even left the UK. Zoos, beer gardens, funfairs, indoor soft play areas, and anything quite frankly that magnetically attracts children to them, have robbed me blind.
I finally put my foot down last week. The bottomless pit that has become my purse closed. Only to be blindsided by phase 2 of the daylight robbery – the ‘back-to-school spend’ which sees every single aspect of stationery, school uniform, school apparel suddenly increased threefold in price just as I am about to have to buy them.
I am not willing the first week in September to come quick enough based upon the fact I’m sick of the sight of my children I am willing it to come quickly before I end up in the debtor’s prison.
Soon they will be back at school and the pressure will lift, albeit momentarily, it will lift and the end is in sight. Soon we back to normal!
Sharon Cawley is the Principal Director of Conexus Tuition