Harvest Home: Tales of Mice and a Man Buried Twice
Why do schools generally start back a week later, after the summer break, in Britain, compared with Europe and the USA?
English: Corn dolly corn maiden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This has to do the grain and hop harvest in Britain which isn’t finished until the end of the first week in September. When compulsory elementary education was introduced to the age of thirteen or fourteen just before the First World War, harvesting the new grain was still very labour-intensive. Although threshing had been mechanised in the 1830s, the crops were still mainly cut by hand well into the twentieth century, so ’all hands’, including those of children of all ages, were required to cut the corn and gather it in quickly, especially if the weather was changeable and showery. Even after Britain became a largely urbanised country…
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