By Brian Hughes ’15

In Sherwood’s AP Psychology course, learning is defined as “a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience.” But, those who took the class last year have probably forgotten that by now, thanks to how they spent their summer break.

This is what’s known by many people as the “summer slide,” the phenomenon that students lose about a month of knowledge on material they learned in school due to a lack of academically enriching activities during the ten week break.

Combating this concerning issue could be as easy as establishing publicly funded programs during the summer for kids to sustain their knowledge, or approving reformers’ proposals for education calendar changes, but new exciting ideas have come about that take advantage of the unforeseen benefits associated with the “summer slide.”

Take, for example, Montgomery County’s fixation on closing the achievement gap between privileged and less-fortunate students. A handful of empirical studies have already proven that, while students at all income levels suffer some type of learning loss, it is more prevalent with low-income students, as most do not have the same easy access to summer enrichment programs because of high costs. Thanks to new found education models offered by the groundbreaking summer program UnLernt^®, the achievement gap is slowly closing. The new program’s mission statement is “to harness the already-evident causes of summer learning loss and bolster them in a distracted and ineffectual environment.”

While this is ridiculous on the surface, the underlying logic is there. Instead of more efforts to raise achievement in low-income students, simply dampen achievement in high-income students. Program founder Geoffrey Martin asserts that his new ideology is doing education a service, and he is quick to point out that he has most parents’ support as program registration spots fill up.

“The Board [of Education] wants the achievement gap to narrow, but they’re looking at it with just one perspective,” Martin said. “If you see no results in one direction, try the opposite. The county hasn’t realized that yet.”

Teachers are now slowly coming around as well, as some have begun to see other serious advantages in this new stance on education. English teachers have been especially grateful as more students enter the new school year with no recollection of writing skills. English teacher Beth Dibler describes it as “a blessing in disguise.”

“It really makes my job easier when students forget the writing style they learned last year. That way I don’t have to un-teach them before I introduce new writing techniques,” she explained.

So, as summer vacation approaches, parents should begin to consider how all the lounging around their kids do during the break may actually be beneficial for their education.