PBS (9/8, de Melker) reports that “while there may be a kernel of truth” to the roots of summer vacation having its roots in an agrarian past, “its mostly wrong.” Kids were traditionally needed on the farm for planting in the spring and harvesting in the Fall, meaning a school on the agrarian calendar would hold classes during summer and fall terms. However, city schools began closing in the summer months as wealthy and upper-middle-class families would take vacations from the sweltering concrete buildings of an urban environment. As school reformers pushed for a standardized calendar, “summer was the logical time to take off.”