The document discusses the origins of summer vacation for students in the United States. It explains that while farm children originally stayed home during the summer to help with planting and harvesting, city children attended school year-round. However, as cities became hotter due to urbanization, wealthy families began moving to cooler countryside areas for the summer. With declining summer attendance, schools started closing for the summer. Over time, summer vacation was adopted by rural schools as well and became a large summer business industry.

1. AdRaya ESL
WHY DO STUDENTS GET SUMMERS OFF?
It’s commonly believed that school ________ started taking summers off in the 19th century so they’d have time to work on the ________. Nice as that story is, it isn’t true. Summer vacation has little to do with tilling fields and more to do with sweaty, rich city kids playing hooky and their sweaty, rich parents.
Before the Civil War, farm kids never had summers off. They went to school during the hottest and coldest months and stayed home during the ________ and fall, when crops needed to be planted and harvested. Meanwhile, city kids hit the books all year long—summers included. In 1842, Detroit’s academic year lasted 260 days!
But as cities got denser, they got hotter. Endless lanes of brick and concrete transformed urban blocks into ovens, thanks to the “urban heat island effect.” That’s when America’s growing middle and upper class families started moving to the cooler ________. And that caused a problem. School attendance wasn’t mandatory back then, and ________ were being left half-empty each summer. Something had to change.
Legislators, in one of those if-you-can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em moments, started arguing that kids should get summers off anyway. It helped that, culturally, leisure time was becoming more important. With the emergence of labour unions and the eight-hour workday, working adults were getting more time to themselves than ever before. Advocates for vacation time also argued (incorrectly) that the ________ was a muscle, and like any muscle, it could suffer injuries if overused. From there, they argued that students shouldn’t go to school year-round because it could strain their brains. To top it off, air conditioning was decades away, and city schools during summertime were miserable, half-empty ovens.
So by the beginning of the century, urban districts had managed to cut about 60 schooldays from the most sweltering part of the year. Rural schools soon adopted the same pattern so they wouldn’t fall behind. Business folks obviously saw an opportunity here. The summer vacation biz soon ballooned into what is now one of the country’s largest billion-dollar industries.
www.mentalfloss.com
May 27, 2014 - 9:30am

2. AdRaya ESL
Vocabulary
1. Fill in the gaps with the words that correspond to these definitions:
 Synonym (more colloquial) of children: K _ _ _
 An area of land used for growing crops and breed animals: F _ _ _
 Season after winter and before summer: S _ _ _ _ _
 Land and scenery of a rural area: C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 A room in a school in which lessons are taught: C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 An organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull: B _ _ _ _
2. Find the words or expressions in the text that match the following:
Paragraph 1:
 Prepare and cultivate lands for crops:
 Kids skipping / not going to school:
Paragraph 2:
 They didn’t leave school during the summer:
 Autumn:
 Attended class:
Paragraph 3:
 Cities became hotter:
 Obligatory:
Paragraph 4:
 Free time:
 Fatigue (v):
Paragraph 5:
 System:
 People:
 Business:
3. Use a red pen to circle all the words that are related to heat.
4. What does the expression “If you can’t beat them, join them” mean?
Speaking / Comprehension
 So, why do students get summers off?
 Differences between rural / city kids.
 This text refers to summer holidays in the USA. Do you think the reasons for getting summers off are similar in your country? When do you think the process took place?
 What are your opinions about school year planning?