Traditional calendar is NOT a "farm calendar"

In an article about school calendars in the January 31 Tennessean, reporter Diane Long repeated a myth that we have often heard from the foes of the traditional school calendar.

The change [to a balanced calendar] would drop the traditional long stretch of summer vacation, a throwback to the days when children helped their families on the farm.

The Tennessean made the same error on December 17 and December 29. Anyone who has lived or worked on a farm, and I include myself in that group, knows that spring planting and fall harvest are the busiest times on a farm. The agrarian calendars of the past gave children long breaks in the spring and fall so they could help out on the farm. The "balanced" calendar more closely approximates the agrarian school calendars of the past. See here.

After 1950, as the manufacturing and service industries became more important to the U.S. economy than agriculture, the agrarian school calendar was abandoned in favor of the modern traditional calendar. If there is a "throwback" to the agrarian past, it is the balanced calendar.

We have discussed this issue before:

• Metro Nashville and Williamson County
• Tennessean repeats calendar myths
• The agrarian school calendar

The Citizens Calendar Committee's director, Bryce Inman, has written the Tennessean and explained why the traditional calendar is not an agrarian calendar.

Why does the Tennessean persist in getting it wrong? An editorial in the December 29 Tennessean endorsed the balanced calendar. Is the Tennessean so strongly biased in favor of the balanced calendar that it is willing to print incorrect information on page one, section A? Or are the reporters unwilling to do their homework and learn about the calendar?

We at the Citizens Calendar Committee prefer to discuss the issue based on hard facts. Let's hope that the Tennessean writers will do their homework next time.