Meaningful and Productive School Holidays

Muawad Mustafa Rashid

As we all know the summer holidays have already started in most towns along with Sudan.

Educationally school holidays are a must as a break from studying overstraining.

By the end of the school year, students are tired and get stressed out, gasping for a break from long school days, usually starting in the mornings.

We are mindful that during the school holidays the student needs to rest.

During the school holidays, students need less structured activities, allowing them time simply to wind down at their own pace and play/read, etc.,  but tend to spend their time doing what interests them.

However, the reality is that the holidays can seem to stretch out indefinitely, and after the first week of enjoying the novelty of freedom, boredom inevitably sets in.

There are several ideas which make the student benefit from during their enjoying their school holidays.

We can enumerate some of those applicable ideas, and of course, there are more.

As an example, students can effectively benefit from these long school holidays by learning new skills in innovative thinking, self-confidence, planning, leading, time management,  first aid, cooking, communication, etc.

Watching useful content and avoiding, as much as possible, the entertainment programs on the TV channels to upgrade your knowledge e.g. documentary films.

The English proverb says “Early is On Time, On Time is Last, and Late is Unacceptable”, so the student – during his school holidays, can apply for any vacancy that suits his study at the university (even if it is without salary) to be well prepared for your future career.

Students can also evaluate their performance during the school year to know the subjects in which they got low scores, hence start revising and answering the exercises in the textbooks.

If the student’s handwriting is bad, he can spare one hour daily for practicing writing to improve his handwriting during the holidays.

There are a lot of voluntary and charity organizations which have ready plans to be implemented if there are volunteers, so students to contact those organizations to join its activities such as helping those with special needs, orphans, elderly persons, and vulnerable families as voluntary work will show you the difference which you can make in the lives of others a matter which will have its positive physiological impact on the student.

The student can put his room in order after the long school year during which the whole place was a mess due to not finding enough time to put things in order.

The above are some ideas and as we said there are a lot of useful activities which the students can do during the school holidays.

It is high time for the government to work out a plan to benefit the students during the summer holidays; otherwise, they will be vulnerable to delinquency or malpractices and deviation into immorality.

We urge the government to invest the energies of the students through allocating resources to those interested or motivated to do national work or duties such as environmental sanitation.

Or at least an additional financial package should be allocated for environmental sanitation and preparing for the rainy season or any purposeful projects in agriculture and small-scale industries.

There are already funds allocated for confronting the rainy season potential disasters, so why doesn’t the government circulate a memorandum to the popular committees in all districts announcing temporary recruitment for students to work during the summer holidays in the planned projects against certain incentives to cover their expenses on one hand and to do useful work to their country on the other hand, let alone helping their families from their savings.

By doing this we can help the students and their families as well.

Such practice will inculcate and feed a sense of patriotism in the pupils and loyalty to the nation — most importantly– will equip them for work, dedication, and production.

Investing in the summer holidays should not be considered by officials in the government as a luxurious issue, but rather as the state priority to protect the society and those kids from the risks of the vacuum resulting from the holidays.

There are several activities to upgrade cultural, social, and sporting skills that could involve students for common benefit.