Editorial: Death of the snow day

Imagine you’re 10 years old again. You wake up on a frigid Wednesday morning in February and look out your window to find the ground outside has been transformed overnight. Dried brown grass and fallen twigs have disappeared beneath six inches of fresh snow.

Upon seeing this winter wonderland, you rush downstairs to confirm with your parents what you already knew: the roads are icy, the plows are behind schedule and school is canceled.

That moment, when you realize your day is now free, brings some of the greatest joy a child could possibly feel. You could build a snowman, go back to bed for a few hours, watch your favorite cartoon or spend the entire day playing video games.

At that age, you had zero responsibilities outside of your daily schoolwork. A snow day meant freedom, and it created nostalgia for your future college-aged self who could really use a day off.

We worry the current and future generations of students might not have the same opportunity to create these core memories.

One of the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on education is the explosion of online learning. Zoom classes and other forms of asynchronous teaching were an essential part of the world’s collective adaptation to the virus.

While these supplemental options were first used at the height of the pandemic in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to prevent students from missing out on a year of learning, they have become many schools’ go-to solution to barriers presented by inclement weather or sickness.

But is the poor-quality education of Zoom classes really worth depriving students of the jubilation a snow day brings?

One benefit of online learning replacing snow days is that students will not have to make up lost days at the end of the school year, delaying the start of summer vacation. 

While having a set schedule from the beginning of the academic year will make life easier for parents and teachers, there is still learning being lost with this model.

Eliminating snow days effectively trades full in-person school days in June with generally sub-par online learning days in February — and even with excellent teaching strategies, the pedagogical experience is simply not the same.

Many grade school students are also just not able to sit in front of a computer and absorb information on their own. Parents or guardians would need to sit with them to ensure they are paying attention, which is not a luxury many families have because of their own work.

A logical solution to this problem may be to change the way snow days are handled based on grade level, where elementary students take the day off while older middle and high school students participate in online learning.

However, we aren’t really interested in logic on this topic.

Snow days are a universal childhood memory — one that may make it worth forgetting about new technologies and sticking with what worked for us in our youths.

“Wait!” managing editor Sam Barney-Gibbs, ‘24, interjected, as editorial pages editor Brendan Rego, ‘24, laid down his master plan for the “Death of the snow day” editorial. “I’m from California, and we didn’t have any snow days when I was growing up.”

“Ah, crap, there goes the story,” Rego responds.

“Not necessarily. We had days off because of the weather, too, but they were fire days, not snow days,” Barney-Gibbs said, remembering days off associated with fear instead of nostalgia. 

While we hope this doesn’t discount the argument we’ve built thus far, Barney-Gibbs’ experience shows us something that most of the Editorial Board didn’t consider when coming up with the idea for this piece.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Lehigh’s students come from the Northeast, not all of us have that same memory of snow days and hot chocolate by the fire. Some of us might not have even seen snow before coming to Lehigh.

Ultimately, this does not change how we feel about online learning as a substitute for the classroom. Let students have their fire days or snow days off. Relying on technology that does not fully replace in-person teaching hurts the learning experience and deprives students of an unexpected day of rest.

We just may need to come up with a new title for this editorial.