American society's schedule is largely influenced by the schedule of the School System.

American schools run on a schedule based around Summer Break.  

Summer Break is stupid.  

Therefore American Society is stupid.

Ok, so that's an inflammatory and completely unfair logical progression.  Just bear with me here, and please don't read that last sentence and start some sort of hyper-reactive proto-patriot rant before you get to my larger point.  I'm going somewhere here.

Like so much in our education system, 'The American School Year' is obsolete.  Time to chuck it in the bin and start with something that makes sense. Our schools have been carrying on age-old traditions and conventions for hundreds of years, and thankfully we are just now starting to realize that the "we-do-it-this-way-because-we've-always-done-it-this-way" mentality just doesn't cut it anymore.  Give us many-decades-long research studies, based on scientific study and hard facts about how children develop; give us creative approaches that take advantage of the social nature of school, rather than squelching it at every turn; give us highly-trained, respected, passionate people running the show, not just some burned-out tenure slave, punching a time clock while kids in their classroom grow sullen and resentful.

Why don't we start with the School Year?

We're running a system that is based on an agricultural society, and designed to allow for time off that virtually no one needs any more.  Well guess what!  Nobody I know is taking the summer off to help Pa run the combine so this year's harvest will bring in enough at the market!  The modern farm is a guy in Iowa driving a tractor the size of Rhode Island over fields of petroleum-byproduct-fertilized crops.  That farmer has more in common with executives from BP than a family farmer 100 years ago who actually needed his 12 sons to quit their "book learnin'" for three months so they can get the crops in on the back 40.  It made sense for young people back then to have the Summer months off.  But we've moved on, and continuing to format our schools the way we do makes about as much sense as trying to hook up an old-fashioned Royal typewriter to a telegraph line and call it the Internet.

We start the school year in August, but we start the regular year in January.  How confusing is that?  Doing it this way means that every bloody calendar that every school makes has to have two years awkwardly crammed onto the top of it, and it just trickles on down into every piece of paperwork everyone sees, like confusing, irritating rain.  This year is something like "2011-12" or perhaps "2011-2012."  Imagine how pleasing to the eye and the brain if all we had on there was "2011."  Four little digits - clear, concise, unhyphenated: beautiful.  But that's just a little, tiny fringe benefit.  Imagine the big stuff.

Let's say we chuck the school calendar in the bin, and decide to start new grades as of the start of 2012.  The current system runs roughly August - May, yes?  About 9 months.  Fine.  Let's aim to keep that.  But let's shift the start of the year waaaaay over to get a little closer to the calendar year.  So how about January?  No way.  January is screwed up for the first few days by New Years, and the remnants of all that December holiday crap.  Nobody's in school then anyway, and January is fraught with things like delays, closings, snow, and maybe 2 hours of daylight tops.  Screw January.  And while we're at it, screw February too.  So leave everyone to stay home, make hot chocolate and snowmen, and sleep through the lousy Winter months.  So let's say we start in March.  Sweet. By March things are starting to thaw out, everyone's restless to get started, and Spring is on the way.  Perfect time to start new things! 

Nine months out from March takes us straight through to November.  Nice!  We skate through a whole school year without major interruption, we have a few long weekends with the summer holidays, and let's say that maybe we have a longer break sometime in the middle, maybe around the 4th of July.  God Bless America.  Then we rock right on through to the Fall holidays, which are lightweight, don't require massive time off, and we finish up with a big school party right before Thanksgiving.  Fantastic.  Then guess what??  WE'RE DONE!!

Everyone gets the Winter months off, which we wind up doing already for the non-stop barrage of Holidays from Thanksgiving to New Years.  We're able to spend some much-deserved down time resting, sled-riding, and sleeping good, solid Winter-hibernation-type sleep.  And school work doesn't suffer due to being off for a whole month over Christmas break anyway, and closings and delays due to snow and Winter weather are kept to a minimum.

And just imagine the calendars:  One year, 4 little digits, proudly displayed at the top of the calendar: '2012'

More later.  I haven't talked about that other ridiculous institution - Summer Camp.  Stay tuned.