Proposals for extending the United States school year to bring it more in line with its European and Japanese counterparts are often met with the objection that curtailing the schools' three-month summer vacation would violate an established United States tradition dating from the nineteenth century  However, this objection misses its mark  True, in the nineteenth century the majority of schools closed for three months every summer, but only because they were in rural areas where successful harvests depended on children' s labor
If any policy could be justified by those appeals to tradition, it would be the policy of determining the length of the school year according to the needs of the economy
The actual tradition embodied in a given practice can be accurately identified only by reference to the reasons that originally prompted that practice.