President Barack Obama recently proposed to shorten summer vacation and increase the number of school days to ensure that American pupils don’t fall behind their international peers in education. However, this would not benefit Palo Alto students.

Palo Alto students deviate from the rest of the nation’s academic norm. Students here often use summer vacation as an opportunity to broaden their horizons and pursue their interests. While Obama’s intentions may be good for the general American student population, shortening Palo Alto students’ summer break would not only eliminate valuable free time, but it would also hinder their future success.

Over summer vacation, students at Gunn have time to intern at places like Lockheed Martin and NASA. Some take accelerated college classes, while others travel the world on humanitarian missions. Though school is important for developing social skills and building an academic foundation, Obama needs to recognize that summer gives students the chance to explore careers and develop their personal interests. By cutting back on summer vacation, students who could be expanding their intellectual horizons would be trapped in a conventional learning environment.

Creativity is a trait closely associated with success–and for good reason. Though school helps students academically, textbook problems and annotations cannot always be deemed good preparations for the real world. Fresh ideas get people ahead, and the creativity that is needed to spawn those ideas is not usually found in a school environment. Creativity comes from students’ life experiences and these usually occur during summer vacation. Shortening this time of growth is like cutting a plant that hasn’t yet budded.

Additionally, students learn crucial lessons from summer experiences. By learning how to tackle challenges, students are prepared for real-life decisions. They could learn how to overcome challenges that may come up in their future careers. Thus, it would make more sense for the government to lengthen summer vacation rather than shorten it.

It’s no secret that many Palo Alto students are constantly under stress with workloads that are relatively larger than those of other American students. By shortening summer vacation, students will have even less time to simply be kids. Students are not robots; they need time to catch up on sleep and socialize.

School is not all there is to life. The nation wants people who can propel their communities and the world forward. Increasing the number of school days would not increase the number of successful, educated individuals. Rather, it would ensure the opposite.

—Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the staff (assenting: 28; dissenting: 3).