Working Week

Dear Rea,

Congratulations on completing your first week back at school! I bet you’re looking forward to the weekend. But did you know that the idea of a 5-day school week followed by a 2-day weekend on Saturday and Sunday isn’t universal? In many Muslim countries and Israel, for example, the weekend falls on Friday and Saturday.

Today, I want to share an interesting story about an experiment that took place in the Soviet Union. But first, let me explain what the Soviet Union was. You know about Russia, right? Well, the Soviet Union was a much larger country that existed from 1922 to 1991, and Russia was the biggest part of it. The Soviet Union included Russia and many other nearby countries, all under one government.

Back in 1929, the Soviet government had an unusual idea. They wondered if they could make people more productive by changing how the work week was organized. They launched a system called “nepreryvka,” or “continuous working week.”

Here’s how it worked: People were divided into five groups. Each person worked seven hours a day for four days in a row, then had one day off. But here’s the twist - these free days were scattered throughout the week. This meant that on any given day, most people were working while some were at home.

Can you imagine what that would be like? Your day off might be on a Tuesday, while your best friend’s day off could be on a Thursday!

This experiment lasted for 11 years, but it didn’t work out as well as they hoped. In 1940, they decided to stop it. One of the main reasons was that weekends work best when everyone has them at the same time. People wrote letters to Pravda, the official newspaper, complaining that having days off at different times wasn’t much fun. One person wrote, “What is there for us to do at home if our wives are in the factory, our children at school and nobody can visit us? It is no holiday if you have to have it alone.”

So, the Soviets didn’t succeed in changing our schedule. But it makes me wonder - if you could experiment with our calendar, what would you try? Do you think it would be better to have 3 days of school and 1 day off? Or maybe something completely different?

I’d love to hear your ideas!

Love, Abba