Asharq The upcoming summer vacation for schools and other public and private educational institutions will be the longest in a decade with 120 days or 2,880 hours. According to the Education Ministry, summer vacation will begin from Ramadan 4 and end on Dhul Hijjah 17, 1437H. Consequently school teachers and administrators will enjoy a vacation of 100 days and students 120 days. During the past 10 years, teachers and students were enjoying summer vacation for varying duration. Last year it was 60 days for teachers and administrators and 80 for students. Students and their families are earnestly waiting to enjoy the long vacation. Students and parents in advanced countries make good preparations to make use of the vacation constructively. Our schools have witnessed suspension of classes many times this year for simple and weird reasons. Apart from that the long vacation of 120 days or 2,880 hours means the education process will stop for a whole semester period and this is an important issue to be discussed by education officials and experts. The question is what will do our children during this four-month vacation? In other words how we can invest this long vacation fruitfully as often asked by administrative experts. Is there any clear vision for our families to make use of this vacation for the benefit and progress of their children including recreation and knowledge development? This is a good opportunity for our children to develop their skills and enhance their knowledge in various sciences if we plan properly for the vacation, without leaving the matter to coincidences. We should not follow the same pattern of the past without making any change or improvement. Some people think vacation is just for enjoyment and we should not use it for personality development courses. Such people spend their whole vacation in games and enjoyments. They won't sleep throughout the night and remain lazy and sleepy in the day time. Young men and women waste their time in useless activities and we should answer to Allah Almighty for wasting our valuable time. Many families travel to foreign tourist destinations to spend the vacation. There are some reasons for that and we will discuss it in another article. The vacation begins with Ramadan, the month of blissfulness and spirituality. There should be a clear cut plan for all families to make optimum use of this vacation in order to realize personal, family and community goals. If our children get long vacation without any chance to use it constructively, it would push them to engage in various negative activities that are harmful to families and the society. There have been calls to improve summer programs being conducted social and cultural clubs by organizing attractive edutainment programs. Many parents expect from social and educational organizations to hold programs that would enhance the scientific capabilities of their children and teach them practical aspects of science and mathematics. They also seek language courses to improve capabilities of children in Arabic and English. Children should attend special programs for personality and communication development including those of the Toastmasters Club as well as English language courses in the Kingdom or abroad. I wish if we had conducted some novel edutainment programs like other countries providing our young men and women enough time for enjoyment while attending skill and capacity development programs.
