Where did all these people come from?

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

Add in a few road trips over the three-day weekends, and we keep a pretty decent vacation schedule.

That's the key, though - scheduling it. Or, for some families that get things done without a schedule (which is not mine), prioritizing it, whether that means making sure you get it done while school's out or being willing to take your kids out of school to go. We've only begun serious vacationing since discovering how much we like TSing, but we've scheduled mini-vacations for years, and the beach we like best is only 45 minutes away, but if we don't make the effort, the whole summer can slip away like that! When the kids were little, we hit the beach for the first time that year in September more times than I like to confess...

BTW - Vacations can be learning experiences also.

Agreed. Most vacations are inherently educational, but you can also prep for them before hand by reading books together that are set in that location or discuss historical events or whatever, or watch movies together that apply, etc.

And if you join a local organization, you can also get reciprocal perks through ASTC, ACM, Time Traveler's, ANCA, etc., meaning you can hit museums or zoos or nature centers or whatever interests you on the vacation (or on the way to your destination if you drive) either for free or at discounted prices. We belonged to the local historical society for years, and had visited any number of zoos on our zoo card and children's museums on our CM card for free before it occurred to me to find out whether the historical society was reciprocal anywhere.

I'm all for taking kids out of school if they can keep up with the work. Some children really struggle in school and I'm afraid that parents sometimes give the wrong message if they imply that it doesn't matter if vacation negatively affects learning.

If we were tied to the school schedule, I'd try to vacation as close to school opening as possible. A lot of popular family vacation places that're packed in June and July are pretty reasonable the second and third weeks of August. And the first weeks of September are gorgeous a lot of places, not to mention empty of crowds (check Dad's September calendar for Disney World: September Disney World crowds

I've been out of school in the middle of the year for illness and started school a few weeks late because we'd just moved, and even though I'd technically missed more time, it was much easier to catch up when starting late than when missing days in the middle of the year.

[longtimer Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close longtimer]

I've been out of school in the middle of the year for illness and started school a few weeks late because we'd just moved, and even though I'd technically missed more time, it was much easier to catch up when starting late than when missing days in the middle of the year.

Good thought. That makes sense because so much of what's taught in the first few weeks is a review of last year's material.

[PigsDad Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PigsDad]

Good thought. That makes sense because so much of what's taught in the first few weeks is a review of last year's material.

But you do have to be careful. In our school district, the elementary kids are often tested the first couple of weeks for placement in the various math and reading groups for the year. That can cause problems if they get put in the wrong ability group.

Kurt

[PigsDad Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PigsDad]

If we were tied to the school schedule, I'd try to vacation as close to school opening as possible. A lot of popular family vacation places that're packed in June and July are pretty reasonable the second and third weeks of August.

That's because a lot of schools around the country start in mid-August. Next year, our school starts August 16th. Not every school waits until September or after Labor Day to start.

On the flip side, we have vacationed the first week of June (when our school is out), and have had uncrowded places as well.

Kurt

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

Good point about it being more important with some schools to make the first weeks of school.

On the flip side, we have vacationed the first week of June (when our school is out), and have had uncrowded places as well.

Good to hear, since that's when we're planning a vacation next year. Even if you homeschool, some resorts only offer all the bells and whistles between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so if you want the lazy river (or whatever), that's when you gotta go.

[Theo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Theo]

Meanwhile, in Japan...

What amazes me is that whatever month we go to Disney the park is crowded with children. This trip must be a priority for most families with school taking a back seat.

....no extended vacations, education year round --- and calculus in the school curriculum by the equivalent of our sixth grade.

In the U.S., it's one school vacation after another, entire summers off, and a significant percentage of high school "graduates" leave functionally illiterate.

Then again, American kids know lots about television vampires, Hannah Montana and assorted Disney characters -- all of which should prove very useful in the competitive global economy of tomorrow.

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

Wow! They were converted back in the late 70's and early 80's. My first visits to FMB were also pre-timeshare.

What were we talking about?

Okay, okay so I'm showing my age but honestly I was only 6 or 7 years old when we started going to Ft. Myers beach so that would put it just about right at 1971 for our first beach visit with Dad. He died in 1976 so we only had 5 years of visits with him but we did stay in Island Towers and LaHaina which were his favorite places to visit and revisit and revisit.

I remember being picked up from school mid-day on Fridays when Dad got off work early and heading over there for the weekends year round. (Not sure what he told the school) He was a Yankee afterall (NYC born and raised) and didn't mind swimming in the freezing sea. Neither did my brother and I in those days but now my blood has thawed and I just can't do it like I could as a child. So you see Jim, I was like you once but now I've whimped out and can only go in the summers except for today, I'm heading over there with out of town family today because they want to see the Edison museum and hit the beach. I'll be watching from the shore, thank you very much.
Sanibel just doesn't have the appeal in winter as it does in summer. Besides we are staying in my cousins house so no heated pool there.

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

....no extended vacations, education year round --- and calculus in the school curriculum by the equivalent of our sixth grade.

In the U.S., it's one school vacation after another, entire summers off, and a significant percentage of high school "graduates" leave functionally illiterate.

Then again, American kids know lots about television vampires, Hannah Montana and assorted Disney characters -- all of which should prove very useful in the competitive global economy of tomorrow.

All good except they can't get the accelerator thingy right.

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

....no extended vacations, education year round --- and calculus in the school curriculum by the equivalent of our sixth grade.

'Course, in Japan, if a teacher disapproves of something the student does outside of school, they can have the student beaten so badly the kid ends up in the hospital. The schools are intellectually rigorous, true, but they're also strongly conformist, and kids get "channeled" so young that kids who have aspergers or otherwise develop differently have no chance of achieving their full potential. I'm not a huge fan of the American school system, but I'd rather send my kids to public school in the States than school in Japan (or to some of the Japanese-influenced private schools here, for that matter.)

I don't know if it's still true, but I do know American engineers were what you wanted if you were looking for creativity in the late 1990's, because the Japanese engineers, while great at applying what they knew, had been taught not to think out of the box. There were plenty of people screaming about public schools back then, but apparently the public schools were getting that part right.

Then again, American kids know lots about television vampires, Hannah Montana and assorted Disney characters --

We don't have cable TV, and don't watch a lot of discs, either, so I've been putting my daughter through a crash course on Disney in preparation for our trip to the Magic Kingdom. Some of the "Silly Symphonies" were positively brilliant!

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

lots[/U] about television vampires, Hannah Montana and assorted Disney characters -- all of which should prove very useful in the competitive global economy of tomorrow.

And what is wrong with Disney. You can make alot of money with the mouse. Just check out the DIS boards. I'd say the Mouse definetely has his place in the global economy of tomorrow and today for that matter. If I could figure out a way to make money off my love of Disney, I'd do it. As a matter of fact I just got an idea.

[Theo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Theo]

Not my words, not my point...

And what is wrong with Disney.

I made no disparaging reference of any kind toward Disney; I harbor no ill will toward the Mouse.

My intended point was simply that our woefully under-educated U.S. children spend far too much time out of school and far too little time learning, which is not helping them to become suitably prepared for an ever changing and increasingly competitive and complex world and global economy. Roaming around Orlando shaking Mickey's hand instead of learning something useful is unlikley to correct that.

Just my personal opinion...

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

I made no disparaging reference of any kind toward Disney; I harbor no ill will toward the Mouse.

My intended point was simply that our woefully under-educated U.S. children spend far too much time out of school and far too little time learning, which is not helping them to become suitably prepared for an ever changing and increasingly competitive and complex world and global economy. Roaming around Orlando shaking Mickey's hand instead of learning something useful is unlikley to correct that.

Just my personal opinion...

You know, I've gotten most of my ideas on making money outside the classroom. I've gotten them on vacations, roaming thru stores, attending conferences in faraway places. To me the world is a huge classroom. We Americans sometimes put too much emphasis IMO on the "formal" education process which afterall is just one HUGE business disguised otherwise. No offense intended to the many dedicated educators out there which I have huge respect for BTW.

Many of my home school friends get the business of schooling done in 2 to 3 hours a day which was equivalent to 8 hours in the traditional school system because they don't have the discipline problems the big schools have.
They even make the kids do their school work for 2 hours before venturing out to the parks or any other "fun" activities. I know my Mom used to do this with us on Saturday mornings. She always made us do extra math work on Saturday morning for an hour or two before we could go out and play and this was before home schooling was all the rage it is today. We were in public and private schools but Mom still did this for us which of course helped us never fall behind in math which she thought was an important subject.

I'm no parent unfortunately but all this taking the kids from here to there doing all sorts of extracurricular school endorsed activities doesn't seem to be any better than just taking them to Disney for a little togetherness fun as a family. I'm just sayin'............................

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

We Americans sometimes put too much emphasis IMO on the "formal" education process which afterall is just one HUGE business disguised otherwise. No offense intended to the many dedicated educators out there which I have huge respect for BTW.

The idea of public schools was originally sold to the public on the grounds that it would prepare people for working for others - teach them to show up on time and to otherwise be shaped to fit into the new industrial system. There are a lot of teachers who love learning and work within the system to encourage it, but school really isn't about learning so much as about the system. I was outraged when I switched schools the middle of 10th grade to discover that the guys at the new school wanted me to repeat a class - not because I'd done poorly in it, but because I'd taken it the wrong year! I threw a hissy fit and eventually the rules were changed so I could take a more advanced course in the same subject for that credit.

My first year in college, the prof teaching my business course advised that anyone who wanted to make real money drop out of school and create their own business. He said you got a business degree to work for someone else; entrepreneurs preferred the real world, because they were not interested in fitting in with some big corporation but rather in succeeding on their own terms.

All of which to say, totally agree that American's can put too much emphasis on formal education. I'd happily take college classes to my dying day, but that's because I love learning and am always researching whether I'm in college or not. But in terms of success, I think it's more about the ability and willingness to work hard and the smarts to get the knowledge you need to accomplish whatever than about doing the graduating high school and going to college routine.

I suspect the studies tying educational attainment to success are reflecting the fact that people who know how to work hard generally do well in school as much as anything. I know a lot of people with college degrees who are not doing nearly as well as people who never graduated college but are certified in computing or plumbing or whatever. The college degreed did well at school because it came easy to them; work does not come easy to them so they're not doing it, because they never really learned how to work.

OTOH, I volunteer with kids who're doing poorly at school - most of them just need someone to sit with them to make sure they do their homework, but some clearly are playing a game that only works in school-type environments. They're born managers (or manipulators, depending on how you look at it ), and have developed all these techniques that work beautifully so long as they're surrounded by people who're either stuck there or want to help them or have the responsibility to teach them. But when they have to deal with the real world they will have learned nothing they can use.

In the real world, most people will respond to them the way I do - they'll just walk away. What they don't get is that, even if you want to help someone, outside of school it's a more productive use of your time to help those who want to be helped; the acting up that gets you so much of the teacher's time and people's attention in school totally backfires elsewhere. The Japanese approach to school might minimize kids like that, but then they've got the whole "lost boys" phenomenon going. Best I can tell, nobody's found the ideal public school system yet.

/rant

That went on a little long. Gotta quit posting in between doing ten other things, I swear. Keep thinking of more aspects while I'm running kids to class or whatever.

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

I gotta agree Our system doesn't accept the fact that some people just are not college material and sets them up for failure in life.

My Mom insisted that when my brother was failing everything in Junior high except shop class that he be allowed to enter the vocational/technical schools that were more geared to the underprivileged and not openly available to the suburban children mostly just to the inner city kids.
I think it was a very wise move on her part.
She knew that her son wasn't college material.
Something we as a nation are in denial over even thinking that it is a possibility that our golden child could even go any other route than the much hyped college route.

My brother and I both followed different paths. He went to vo-tech school and became an aircraft mechanic, something that he is extremely well suited for and thrives at. Me I followed the more education is better path and got my bachelors degree in Nursing. Guess who makes more money? Actually we make about the same money. He never did one single day in college.

He did the vo-tech program while in high school and started working at 18. He worked for Pan Am and we both got hooked on travelling from then on. I did the keep going til your totally in debt plan and started working at 21, 3 years after my brother did yet much more in debt to make the same income.

Don't get me wrong I love medicine but I should have done the vo-tech route and moved up the ranks of employer paid tuition. Anyway, it's water under the bridge now but when I get the chance to talk to parents who insist that their children must be X and go X route, I tell them to slow down and don't be surprised if they don't want college and choose the Y path and that it's okay. There are so many other paths down life's road. Many of them so off the beaten path that they may lead to the place God designed for us if we'd just get off the noisy expensive highway.

[chriskre Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close chriskre]

With all that said.
I'm off to Orlando again for another waste of my time with the mouse.
Oh I'm gonna attend a seminar while there too.
Gotta get some edumacation in my new career when I get laid off from my current career in 2 months.
It seems all the people with Masters and PhD's have run my hospital's finances into the ground and now I'm stuck finding my way in the big bad world of unemployment. Apparently Billing patients and filling out forms is not part of the higher education education.
Want to see what I mean:
Video Library - cbs4.com
put JMH in the search box to see what I mean.