Saturday Open

The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council deserves to be congratulated for asking all educational institutions in the state affiliated with it to treat every Saturday of the month as a full working day. The Council said on Friday that there will be no holidays on the second and fourth Saturdays in a month. As reported by this newspaper in its Saturday edition, the Council’s instruction became necessary following some confusion about observing the second and fourth Saturdays of a month as holidays. This confusion in fact had its roots in a portion of the holiday list for the months of 2024, where it was specifically mentioned about treating all second and fourth Saturdays of the month as holidays. It is not a very healthy trend to develop the habit among young people to look at the weekend as a ‘weak end’ where there would be no work or study. In a country like ours, and particularly in a state like Assam, where lethargy has been a part of life, young people must be trained to be hard workers. Assam requires shaping the young generation as an enthusiastic lot who will work hard in order to compete with their counterparts from other parts of the country. More holidays at the school level means helping young people develop the habit of looking forward to no-work days. Even otherwise, the number of holidays, be it for educational institutions or for government offices, is higher in Assam when compared to most other states of the country. Several states in the Northeast, too, have fewer holidays in comparison to Assam. Growing up in an environment where there are too many holidays has already developed a tendency among a major section of young people in Assam to keep away from jobs in the private sector or in the central government sector, like the railways. It is only through a habit of fewer holidays that the younger generation will raise their level of employability.