[mindcrime]

Meh, I don't think a longer school year is the solution to the "summer slide." It would be better to find a way to ensure that kids are motivated to learn on their own, even over the summer, and to encourage them to engage in beneficial activities... and, of course, we need to find ways to promote the creation of more summer activities for kids that are both fun and educational, and to make sure kids have access to books, Internet, etc. over the summer.

Now that I think about it, I just realized that - for those cities with hackerspaces - this is a role hackerspaces could help with substantially. Timing some fun, educational opportunities to correspond with "summer break" could give kids a chance to do something like a "learn to solder" session, "electronics kit building", maybe some "intro to computer programming" thing, etc., etc.

Note to self: talk to the other SplatSpace'ers and see if we can cook something up for next summer...