One of the strangest conversations I have with parents takes place every summer. It usually begins with a degree of anxiety.
“What should my child be doing over the holidays?”
The question is perfectly understandable. Parents are bombarded with messages about the dangers of lost learning and the importance of maintaining academic momentum. The implication is often that six weeks spent doing anything other than educationally enriching activities represents an existential threat to their children’s development.
I understand the concern. Last week, I explored the evidence that long summer holidays can contribute to widening educational inequalities and the research in this area is difficult to ignore. Children do forget things over the summer and those from more affluent backgrounds often have access to experiences that continue to support learning long after schools have closed their doors. A knowledge of this can convince some families that it is their duty to be providing a plethora of enriching and exciting activities throughout the summer, in a desperate bid to avoid disadvantaging their children.
Yet there is a danger in taking this argument too far. If we are not careful, we can end up viewing every moment of childhood through the lens of educational productivity. The logical conclusion is absurd: a summer spent quietly reading, daydreaming, wandering around the garden and yes, complaining of boredom, becomes infinitely less valuable than one packed with endless organised activities and carefully curated experiences. In fact, the reality of learning and progress is a great deal more complicated than that.
One of the most persistent misconceptions about education is the idea that learning and development only takes place when somebody is active. Schools reinforce this impression because they are places where learning is expected to be visible. Exercise books are continuously filled with what we laughably like to call “evidence of progress” and the regular book checks I faced as a teacher, in which Senior Management went hunting for said “progress” is one of my least favourite memories from my time at the chalk-face.
Here’s the truth. The human brain is doing a remarkable amount of work when it appears to be doing very little. Neuroscientists have long known that memories continue to develop after initial learning has taken place and learning is not a single event but a dynamic process. Information is encountered, encoded, reorganised and gradually integrated into existing knowledge. Sleep plays an essential role in this process, but extended periods of reduced cognitive demand appear to matter as well. Far from switching off when formal education pauses, the brain continues to sort, organise and strengthen what it has already encountered.
Students frequently assume that more study automatically leads to more learning. In practice, there comes a point at which additional effort produces diminishing returns. The brain needs opportunities to process information rather than simply receive it. The brain is not a machine that performs best when operating continuously, rather it requires periods of activity and periods of recovery. Schools are designed to provide the former. Summer holidays, at their best, provide the latter. Anyone who has ever solved a problem while taking a walk will recognise the phenomenon. Many of our best ideas arrive not when we are concentrating intensely but when our minds are allowed to wander. Writers experience it, as do scientists, mathematicians and artists. We have all, I think, had the peculiar experience of abandoning a difficult problem only to discover that a solution presents itself hours later whilst we are doing something entirely unrelated.
Researchers have become increasingly interested in what is known as the brain’s “default mode network”, a collection of interconnected regions that becomes active when we are not focused on a specific external task. Although there is still much that we do not understand, this network appears to play a role in reflection, imagination, planning and the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. In other words, some of the brain’s most important work, the cognitive capability that defines us as a species, takes place when the brain appears to be doing nothing at all.
Boredom has a terrible reputation. Understandably, parents dread hearing the words “I’m bored” and children often speak of boredom as though it were a form of mild torture. Yet, boredom may be considerably more useful than we give it credit for. Psychologists increasingly view boredom not as a defect but as a signal. It tells us that our current situation is no longer sufficiently stimulating and encourages us to seek something more engaging. Without boredom, there would be little motivation for humans to explore, create or discover.
None of this should be taken as an argument against educational enrichment. Reading remains valuable. Museums remain valuable. Family outings remain valuable. Summer programmes and holiday clubs can be transformative, particularly for children who might otherwise lack access to such opportunities. What we should resist, however, is the temptation to view childhood as a continuous optimisation project. Not every hour needs to be productive. Not every activity needs to be educational. Not every moment of apparent idleness represents a missed opportunity.
Thinking back to my own childhood, I can remember long stretches of summer holidays that felt endless. There were no smartphones and no streaming services and entertainment was not available at the touch of a button. We had three television channels and they were not available 24 hours a day. If there was nothing worth watching, there was nothing worth watching; there was no infinite scroll waiting to rescue us from our own thoughts. Many of the activities I remember most vividly emerged directly from boredom. An improvised fashion show in which a group of us demonstrated the new and interesting ways that we could wear our PE kits (knee socks became evening gloves). Designing and building a showjumping arena in my back garden with a next-door neighbour. Collecting worms into an improvised wormery, courtesy of some grass clippings and a shoe box. (Don’t worry, my father made me release them). This is not empty nostalgia. Boredom acts as the bridge between passive consumption and active engagement. Faced with enough boredom, children begin to create their own solutions.
The challenge, of course, is that not all boredom is equal. There is a world of difference between a child who is bored in a secure environment filled with books, opportunities and supportive adults and a child who is bored because there is simply nothing available to engage them. This is one reason why discussions about the summer holiday can become so complicated. The same period of unstructured time that encourages creativity and independence in one child will reinforce disadvantage in another: during lockdown, we saw this in extremis and the educational gap between the haves and the have-nots is even wider as a direct result of that time.
The solution is not to eliminate boredom altogether, nor is it to ensure that every moment of the summer holiday is carefully programmed. Instead, the challenge is to create environments in which boredom can become productive pressure rather than a frustrating, inescapable trap. Perhaps this is where modern childhood has become particularly complicated. Many adults, myself included, worry that children spend too much time on screens, and their attraction is precisely because digital devices are extraordinarily effective boredom-elimination machines. In the modern world, the moment boredom begins to appear, it can be instantly suppressed with videos, games or social media. While there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities, one cannot help wondering how many opportunities for creativity and self-directed exploration disappear along with the boredom we so fear.
