Americans like to think of themselves as martyrs   to work. At this time of the year they admire the laziness of their European cousins, particularly the French. Studies show that the average American gets only four weeks of paid leave a year compared with seven for the French and eight for the German. In Paris many shops close down for August; in Washington, where the weather is really hot, they remain open, some for 24 hours a day. But when it comes to the young, the situation is just opposite. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy European children. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit   means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equal to an entire year. Americans also divide up their school time strangely. They cram   the school day into the morning and early afternoon, and close their schools for three months in the summer. The long summer vacation acts like a mental eraser, with the average child reportedly forgetting about a month's worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics. American academics have invented a term for this phenomenon, "summer learning loss". It is leaving American children ill-equipped to compete. They usually perform poorly in international educational tests, coming behind Asian countries that spend less on education but work their children harder. California's state universities have to send over a third of their classes to take some extra courses in English and math. During the long summer vacation, American children   _  .
will make up for their lost lessons spend most of the time learning probably don't care about studies will suffer some memory problems