Friday, August 12, 2011

"Holiday tasks are a mistake. Home-work is a mistake."

...I think the educational arrangement about holidays has long been a ludicrous mistake. Holiday tasks are a mistake. Home-work is a mistake. Give the boy or girl less holidays if you think they need less. But be sufficiently businesslike to get the best out of the boy or girl for whatever concession you make to them. If you can excuse anyone from work, you can excuse him from worry. Leisure is a food, like sleep; liberty is a food, like sleep. Leisure is a matter of quality rather than quantity. Five minutes lasts longer when one cannot be disturbed than five hours when one may be disturbed. Restrict the liberty in point of time; restrict it in point of space; but do not restrict it in point of quality. If you give somebody only three seconds' holiday - then, by all the remains of your ruined sense of honour, leave him alone for three seconds.

-May 21, 1914, New Witness, "On Holidays"

Found in The Spice of Life and Other Essays, collection of essays first published in 1964

4 comments:

  1. Yes!! Glory be!! Good heavens, why has no one else said this?

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  2. LOL. Well, GK said it, so there we go. :-)

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  3. Yes! ;_; I can't stand holiday homework; it defeats the whole purpose of taking time off... >_>

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