[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

My kids are out of school again today. This is becoming a regular thing. There have been holidays, teacher workdays, snow days, bad weather forecast days, and one power outage. It’s gotten out of hand. They’re off Monday too.

Part of this can be put down to the extended school year. Back in my day, school ended on Memorial Day and didn’t pick up again until Labor Day. Elementary school kids knew a freedom more expansive than their concept of time passage. Middle schoolers re-invented themselves, returning in the fall with a deeper voice and a few Led Zeppelin t-shirts. High school kids got jobs, went to science camp, or rehab. There was time to know an unshared existence.

The Germans may have lost the war, but they also lost the next war. After beating them twice, the rest of the Western world carried on their loser Prussian school system as if nothing had happened. Fredrick gave the Generallandschulreglement, and we still march on. Der Realschule is never satisfied. It wants year-round classes.