Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Those were the days, my friend

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Mike Peterson Published: June 28, 2010 1 minute 1 comment

 Lincoln Peirce's "Big Nate" is about life in the sixth grade, but school is out and apparently this is a world in which kids are not overscheduled into back-to-back-to-back camps, activities and sports.

This isn't a particularly new joke: An Irish friend used it once as a demonstration of the difference between the old Ireland and the new, as, of course, an example of the old times. And I'd say it's worth repeating for the sake of the kids, some of whom, I hope, still have some kind of vacation in the summer and still have it as vacation, not simply a change of venue in a hectic life.

There are those who want to do away with summer, in the interests of having kids learn more. Most of the calls for year 'round school are based on the same logic as the old Total commercials, that showed a tottering stack of cereal bowls you would have to consume to get all your vitamins, ignoring the fact that you don't have to get them all at breakfast, or through cereal. "More of the same" isn't necessarily the answer.

On the other hand, we don't need the kids in the fields very many places, and it's likely the 10- or 12-week summer break will disappear in favor of the same number of days arranged differently. A friend who taught in LA said she liked year 'round school because the kids remained more engaged in a world in which they had frequent one- and two-week breaks instead of a couple of huge vacations.

She said it was harder on her, however, because there never seemed to be a time when she wasn't either grading papers from the last stint or preparing lessons for the next. Given that teaching is pretty much a matter of 15-hour days five days a week and another 12 spread over the weekend, I'm not sure the kids need that break so much as the teachers do. Anyone who grouses about teachers "working half the year" has never seen what the job actually consists of.

Meanwhile, Big Nate is an interesting example of a comic strip aimed at kids that has hit the target. Check out this recent interview of Peirce by the Washington Post's Michael Cavna.