Starting in 1973, the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon changed the academic calendar from the previous January-December to the present September-June duration with a two-month long vacation capping the school year. For past four decades, school children truly rested and enjoyed the long vacation, especially as families that can afford foreign trips took their children overseas for summer vacation. The long vacation was deliberately made to last for eight to nine weeks.

However, from 2000 onwards the demon of Nigerian factor began to creep in, to deny children their well-deserved vacation as private schools introduced holiday coaching for school children, which was a way for them to raise additional income to pay their staff during the period when school fees would not be paid.

The essence of school vacation is to have a break from the rigorous academic programme, which school go through during the session. Even hard working machines are necessarily shut down, to carry out maintenance and overhaul, to prolong the economic life of the asset or equipment. Without question, children, just like adults need to cool off, relax, unwind and refresh their mental faculties. It is for this reason that the government included long vacations into the school year. The long vacation, consistent with the practice overseas, is a period which children can use to learn new things that are really related to core academic work. Or simply rest and engage in clean fun activities.

There is, therefore, a compelling need for parents and guardians to allow the children to be spared a continuation of the punishment of being driven around town in a school bus and then taken back to classrooms to face teachers again, be loaded with homework, all in the name of holiday coaching. This is clearly against the purpose of the long vacation, which children are to enjoy to the fullest, escaping from the pressure cooker educational practice of the present time. After a well spent holiday, the children come back to school fresh, focused and more prepared to face the challenges that come with the resumption of serious academic work.

Remarkably, it appears the reason for long holiday is gradually fading away because of wrong interpretations given to it by emerging realities as well as parents, guardians and childcare givers, who think that academic endeavour is the only route to life accomplishments. Attending lessons during the holiday became very popular among the elite and later spread out like oil poured on water, to the other segments of society.

For many parents and school administrators, the holiday period is seen as the fourth term when academic work should continue – perhaps with a slightly lighter load. Private school authorities use the extra income generated from the holiday coaching to supplement the cost paying their staff during the vacation. pay their their staff from income generated from the holiday programme.

Some private schools make it compulsory for the children to attend the lessons instead of playing, travelling and interacting with other children.

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Commenting on this, a counselling psychologist in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Science, Imo State University, Dr. Ann Ukachi Madukwe  said: “Prior to the modern time, various psychological theories have been put forward to explain development in childhood. Development refers to physical, emotional, social and cognitive changes in the progression of the human child. Of all these aspects, cognitive development is the one mostly considered in schooling. Despite the importance of the rest, to positive educational outcome in children, it is the seeming neglect of the other areas of child development and adult caregivers’ interest and pursuit of various means of livelihood that have been emancipated into ‘Over-schooling’ as the only childhood activity. Over schooling can be understood as over-burdening, over-tasking and over-tutoring of school children. Therefore, it is important that we understand the ongoing ‘over-schooling phenomenon’ in which a child becomes enrolled into a creche as early as three months of age, stays away from the parents and the home for most of the day (7am-4pm) and part of the evenings (4pm-6pm) in some cases. This new phenomenon or syndrome is not due to any scientifically proven educational need of the child nor is it of any known or accepted benefit to the child. Instead, it reflects societal adjustments to socio-economic status engagements by parents and adults.

Manukwe adds: “The present Nigerian society is one in which both children and adults have no time to relax, let alone play. The question then is, how would this over-schooling affect the growing child? While science has not provided a definite answer to the above question, theorists like Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Urie Bronfenbrenner, whose works have influenced the educational system as well as explained the importance of various environments to healthy human development, have at different times shown that what contributes most effectively to child development is an adequately enriched stimulating environment and healthy social attachments. “Over stimulation, over indulgent environment and poor social attachments are proven to cause problems like low self-esteem, anxiety and at times more serious psychopathologies. Meanwhile, adequately stimulating learning environment for children connotes provision of interactive activities like (art materials, puzzles, table games, building blocks, books, musical instruments, measuring tools, dressing up clothing, educational videos, play grounds) that are age-appropriate and responsive to individual differences. Many of these activities can be provided or gotten outside school, and these are very good ways of promoting, enhancing and learning than by verbal teaching of uready-made knowledge, which is common in most of our schools.”

Now, parents who key into ‘going to lesson’ use it to fan the embers of their personal dealings might not be  correct outright after listening to a psychologist. Some use the opportunity to send the children away so as to rest their body-systems. It also becomes very pertinent to ask from which syllabuses are these lesson teachers teaching or do they revise the ones already learnt? Whichever way, a great school of thought sums such academic exercise without an appropriate calendar as stress and waste of time.

The most interesting fourth term during the holiday should be classes where extra curriculum activities and skills acquisitions are taught. I encountered a female lawyer Mrs. Tejuosho who also operates a complete kitchen. Her idea of summer coaching is to open her kitchen for the children, both boys and girls, to come in during the holidays and learn how to bake and cook both local and continental dishes. She said: “Every holiday coaching should take the children outside the routine classroom work and expose them to other learning processes. When they come to us during summer, I teach simple kitchen rules like how to work in the kitchen without spilling water on the floor, how to handle knifes, hot fry pan with oil etc. We start off like that and by their seventh week, the children who are aged 8-12 would be able to present a well prepared jollof rice on a set table for at least four people. Mrs. Tejuosho said one of her students took interest and made it a regular habit during all her secondary school holiday. When she gained admission into the university, she baked cakes and made pastries to sell in school. What she learnt during the holiday empowered and supported her financially during her tertiary education.

Tejuosho is not alone in skill acquisition. My young sister in-law whose family resides in Lagos opened up to say that she speaks her native language fluently because it was during the long vacation that her father would send them to spend time with their grandmother in the village. Other avenues that could be explored include photography, make-up and tying scarf,  art/painting, tie-and-dye, sports activities, drama/dancing, tailoring and hairdressing etc. Teenagers also learn how to drive during the holiday. For families with kids below seven yeard, it is an opportunity to play outside under the careful watch of an eagled-eyed mother or adult because the days are evil. Holiday should not be spent in the church alone; it is a time to travel, rest, read novels and other interesting books at will, eat, exercise and be happy. It is not a time of parading oneself from one compound to another, or a careless visit from house to house. The holiday is also a time for families to bond, where meals could be eaten together, moonlight tales are shared and domestic chores handled together. Equally, it is not a wrong move for parents who are into business to take their children to their offices and shops for the young ones to understudy them, learn inventory, accounting, buying, selling and making profit as well.   

Madukwe therefore suggests that parents and the society need to recognize the disservice being done to children and the overburdening of the school system during the holidays,  especially as it affects teachers. A child denied play time at home with parents and siblings, time for extracurricular activities in the neighbourhoods and at church may lead to the development of adults with even less patriotic mindset. It can raise people without sense of social contract or social responsibility. Therefore, it is imperative that proper child development orientation in which all the socialization agents (family, parents, school, church, media, community) are allowed to play their roles in child upbringing, thereby allowing the development of the whole person while reducing stress due to ‘over schooling and its negative impact on the child.