If a kid needs to go to school to learn, that's an unfortunate position for the kid. In my opinion, school as a learning environment ranks below almost anything else imaginable. Even now that I'm halfway to an EE degree, if I have to learn a course in school, that means I screwed up over summer and the semester is now a punishment and possibly a waste of time.

You could learn new material in a high stress, high pressure environment with sleep deprivation, under surveillance and judgement, with the distraction of classmates, while having to move constantly from classroom to classroom. Or you could do it in an environment where you have near absolute control. Clearly, there's something wrong with someone who needs a classroom to learn. They must lack discipline and so must be under the control of someone else in order to do good with their time. Or there is something going on at home.

Being able to set yourself up to make your time useful is a skill, but it's a personal one and not one that school teaches. It's something that you learn when you're not in school--like over summer. That's when you start projects you care about, finish them, feel proud of yourself, then realize how you could have done it better. At least that's my experience of summer. It's where discipline comes from--knowing what it's like to finish things you care about.

Summer is not long enough. If knowledge is leaking out of kids' skulls over summer, those kids are in trouble. The default, when you're left alone, should not be to get more stupid. If it is, more school isn't going to fix the problem. In fact, I really think school is from a time long passed, not summer break. School is from a time when books and teachers were the only way to get knowledge. Now that knowledge is practically free, what we really need is self-discipline and a lot of free-time to figure out what to do with all of this knowledge and technology we have.