Five days a week, 36 weeks a year, for 12 years, children from ages 5 to 18 attend school. Some go voluntarily; others go because the law requires it. But either way, children are spending a large portion of their childhood in a school building, or at home completing the homework they were assigned.

These days, school isn’t necessarily about learning the material. Instead, it’s about getting an A on the test or being in the top 10% of your class. Students study strictly for the test, and then discard the information they learned immediately after the exam.

This learning process can be very stressful. Students are constantly struggling to finish homework the night before it’s due and study for tests, in fear that they will fail school.

The only real break that children get is during vacations: fall break, winter break, spring break and summer break.

But do they really get these breaks?

Teachers have taken to assigning homework over these breaks, to keep students’ minds from becoming inactive. And while this is a good idea, the exorbitant amount of stress that results from extra homework can have a very negative impact on students.

Vacations used to be times when students were able to rest, relax and enjoy life. Nowadays, this is not the case. There simply is no break anymore, no rest. The 12 years that used to be an educational, growing experience are now stressful and rigorous.

After attending school for 12 years and often a college or university, children become adults and enter the real world, where they must now work in order to support themselves and, one day, maybe a family.

Before people take on this burden and commit to working for the majority of their lives, they should be able to enjoy their childhood while it lasts. But with a never-ending stream of homework, tests and the stress that accompanies these things, children are losing the opportunity to be young and carefree.

In order to decrease stress on students, schools should not assign homework over breaks, because as soon as they do, the vacation times turn into an extension of school. Education is definitely important, but not at the expense of relaxation and rest.