A day of sledding, snowmen, and sleeping in offers more benefits than drawbacks.
A day of sledding, snowmen, and sleeping in offers more benefits than drawbacks.
A glimmer of hope as the evening flurry begins, the morning rush to check closure listings, the euphoria at the announcement, and the exhaustion after hours spent outside in snowball fights, fort construction, and races down a hill — these are the delights of a snow day, or at least they should be.
Unfortunately, after Covid-era closures normalized e-learning, many district officials have witnessed such delight, cancelled snow days, and in their Scroogiest voices bellowed, “What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?”
Most notably, New York City first cancelled snow days in 2022 and maintained that policy through last year. Piling on, New York State law has now required that districts at least have plans for remote learning days, whether or not they choose to use them.
At peak anti-fun, 70 percent of school and district administrators reported either considering or implementing remote learning days. Thankfully, there has been a backlash to this trend, and more districts are implementing good old-fashioned snow days.
Even so, that backlash is only partial. Already this year, when a snowstorm hit Minnesota, many districts opted for e-learning days instead of outright closures, and it’s unclear if New York will repent of its fun-hating policy.
I’ve had the displeasure of “teaching” on remote learning days. Instead of playing with my own young children, I tapped away at my keys, assigned low-quality work (what else can you do remotely?), and tried to teach the 50 percent or so of students who bothered to log in. Trying to secure meaningful learning online is akin to cooking a three-course meal in an Easy-Bake Oven — possible in theory but futile in practice.
For those few who “attended” class, it was a poor replacement for actual instruction; for the rest, if anything, it fostered resentment and normalized, however slightly, a rebellious stance toward the institution. No benefits, many tradeoffs.
The opposition to snow days comes from a technocratic preoccupation with efficiency over and above all else. “Work — work — work! / In the dull December light,” chants the call of productivity. A few extra hours of online worksheets could eke out another 0.015 standard deviations of an increase in standardized reading scores! So tap — tap — tap, while the snow continues to fall!
But there’s more to childhood than literacy outcomes. I recall my own memories of hot chocolate, gloves drying on the vents, tackling my brothers, and trudging through deep snow to get to the nearest hill. These are core memories, goods in themselves, just as education is.
And even for the technocrats, there’s much to be learned and gained on a snow day. Children benefit from both unstructured and risky play. The former teaches them to manage both themselves and interpersonal conflicts that might arise from their friends. The latter — going a little too fast down a hill or catching a snowball in the face — builds resilience and anti-fragile temperaments as almost natural cognitive-behavioral therapy. And none of that touches on the bonding it builds among friends, family, and neighbors.
Jonathan Haidt has chronicled in extensive detail both the benefits of free play and the fact that free play is presently in decline. A return of snow days won’t reverse a society-wide trend, but it will give kids a few hours back every year. Moreover, as screens consume our children’s lives, why would we replace snowmen with devices?
In the opening scenes of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge scoffs at a request for alms, but after his visions, he gives an exorbitant sum. Surely, district officials can repent of their curmudgeonliness and show an equal munificence to the children under their care. Set aside the screens for one day and let the children play.