July 23, 2007
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Soc's latest: Are vacations necessary?
When I was in school studying the trivium and quadrivium, I fell to pondering the question of why kids got summers off from school. A little research revealed that this idea went back at least as far as classical times, and no, it wasn't so the students could help out with the summer farm work.
The classical scholar and educator Quintilian declared that students should be given summers off because they needed time to play and would return to their studies recharged and more alert. He also claimed that was true of teachers.
Here in America, we seem to provide ourselves with the least amount of vacation time of any industrialized nation - certainly much less than Europeans get - ask anyone whose been to Paris in August.
The last figures I saw said that Americans took less than two weeks a year on average, and that's not enough.
I've been vacationing steadily for the past twenty-two years and I can assure you that free time is a Good Thing.
Comments (4)
It's a question of values isn't it? What do you want more, your McMansion or free time?
I've often thought that employers in the States should force their employees to take at least two weeks of vacation each year. More would be nice, but I'm not so sure that the European tendency to take six weeks off is a good idea.
Some banks and financial institutions used to force their employees to take vacations - not being there to cover cut way down on the embezzlement
What's the matter with six week vacations? You can vacation without all the rush.
I didn't work for much of my married life - only went to work after the death of my husband. We were given a week a year, but since I worked for a school, I also got Christmas break and spring break off. Even so, I sometimes took advantage of sick days simply because there were times when I NEEDED a day off. I think employers should allow employees to have "health" days when they can have a day off without having to lie about why they aren't there. Nobody seems to think that is a good idea but me. I'm retired now but I still think it's a good idea. That should be in addition to vacation time, which is usually when people rush off to have a "good time" and come home needing a vacation from their vacation. My father-in-law worked for his company long enough to earn a six-week vacation but was so busy that he couldn't be away from his job for that long at a time. I think that's sad. And my brother, who also worked for the same company long enough for an equal amount of time was told that if he took that much time at once, the company didn't need him. What a world.
Peace & Blessings.