Why Summer Learning Is Stupid

Every year, educators and policymakers push the idea that “summer learning” is necessary to combat the so-called “summer slide.” They claim students lose knowledge during the summer, fall behind academically, and need structured programming to stay on track. Let’s be blunt: summer learning is stupid. Here’s why.

1. Kids Need a Break—Period. The school year is long, intense, and increasingly overwhelming. Students spend 180+ days cramming, testing, complying, and conforming. After ten straight months of being scheduled to death, the last thing they need is more worksheets, Zoom calls, or enrichment camps dressed up as fun. You want to prevent burnout? Let them rest. Let them be bored. Let them rediscover the world without a rubric.

2. Summer Learning Is a Band-Aid for a Broken System. If our schools did a better job during the actual school year—differentiating instruction, engaging students, and focusing on mastery rather than test prep—then we wouldn’t be panicking over a few months off. Summer learning is often just damage control for an ineffective system that’s more focused on scores than on genuine learning.

3. It Reinforces Inequity - Let’s be honest: summer learning programs aren’t truly equal-access. Wealthier families have the means to send their kids to “enrichment experiences,” while low-income students get remedial programs that look a lot like school, just hotter and with worse lunches. If we truly cared about equity, we’d focus on year-round supports—healthcare, community centers, food access—not six-week crash courses pretending to fix years of underfunding.

4. Play Is Learning - Read that again. Summer should be about play, exploration, and freedom. Those aren’t just “nice extras.” They’re essential. Kids develop social skills, creativity, independence, and emotional intelligence through unstructured time. That’s real learning—and it doesn’t come with a Google Slides deck or a diagnostic test.

5. Families Deserve Autonomy - Parents know their kids better than any program director. If families want to travel, visit relatives, send their kids to camp, or—gasp—do nothing at all, that’s their call. Not every moment needs to be “educational.” We’ve reached a point where even a summer walk in the woods has to be turned into a science lesson. Why?

So What Should We Do Instead?

• Invest in year-round community resources

• Support schools during the actual school year

• Let summer be summer

  
  

If we stopped pretending that piling on more hours of schooling would solve our educational crisis, we might actually get somewhere. Until then, let's call it what it is: a well-intentioned but misguided effort that misses the bigger picture. Let kids be kids. And let summer breathe.