Longer School Year

I for one do not support the longer school year. I enjoy my two months of summer, when most days I can wake up whenever I want, do anything I want, and not be stressed to the point of grey hairs with extracurricular activities, sports, and the burgeoning burdens of my academic career. Two months seems to me like a fair amount of time for summer vacation. What I really detest is doing any sort of school-related work over the summer. The summer is my time to chill out and relax and instead I'm stuck inside writing a four-page paper. This is usually why all my summer projects are done in the first week of September. But now there are going to be more days of school? That hardly seems fair. I for one read enough over the summer, and write, and I find that the extra reading and writing for school is a drag. I think that the first one or two days of actual class should be a quick recap on the subject, and I think that would solve most problems. While China, Japan, and South Korea may be out-performing American children in standardized tests, they actually go to school for fewer total hours a year than Americans, even though they have a longer school year. What Americans lack as a whole is enthusiasm. Most of these Asian children have been raised from a young age to believe that school is their future, they must succeed, et cetera, et cetera. They study for hours on end and throw themselves into their schoolwork. When this behavior is seen in America, we call it "Asian Syndrome" or "Asianitis" and call its "sufferers" nerds. How this enthusiasm will come about in America I have no idea. But this is how the global power shifts; in ten years when our generation enters the workplace, we'll be out-competed by the "Asian Syndrome Nerds" and some other Asian nation will become the dominant world power. If you ask me, I think it's already too late.