Teachers find breaks problematic as it requires reteaching material from the previous semester rather than progressing forward. On average, the summer break requires a month of review to bring pupils back up to speed. Christmas break used to require a week or two but now it requires more time, closer to a month. It is a waste.
We do not teach them wrong. What we do wrong is give our children to the government. As I said, government school teachers are not interested in teaching, they are interested in inculcating and socializing.
Think about it, from K-12 they have the pupils for more than 14,000 hours (180 day school year times 6 hr days times 13 years). The result is pitiful. According to Malcom Gladwell, it takes about 10,000 hours to become a rather competent professional in any subject. If you dedicated yourself to truly studying any subject 2 hours a day 275 days a year for 13 years you would be very fluent in that subject. I have tried it and I have done it with my home schooler. Her proficiency is very high. This tells me that the majority of what they do in government run schools is nonsense. They do not know how to educate, they do not care to educate. They lack any true pedagogical sense at all. They would rather discuss Johnny’s new identity and which bathroom he should use and which sports team he should ruin. Taking a two month break in the middle of that silliness doesn’t matter. But, if you mean the idea that you can touch on a subject and never use it again and retain it is false, I would agree. Two years of algebra does not prepare you for anything. The pupil has some exposure to it, sets it aside for breaks, forgets about it until college, and then struggles. You need to do it everyday. Anything you seek to become proficient in you must do repeatedly for very long periods.
We are allowed to attend a local college’s jazz class. The over riding theme is it takes a lot of practice. Most of these musicians are playing 8-14 hours a day (playing, transcribing, practicing, studying music). Ramsey Lewis said he still dies for practice time to improve and he is 81 and has been doing this since he was a child. School does not stress the extreme dedication it takes to be very good at something.