Summer Reading Advantages

Across the nation, it is very common for students to be assigned a summer reading assignment. Many educators believe that this is an important part of their education and helps students retain their knowledge and reading skills. However, this is not the case. It is very unfair to give students an assignment over their break after they just completed an entire year of stress and work. Summer reading also prevents students from finding their own personal, more meaningful enrichment because they are forced to read a book already chosen for them. Although it makes sense to have children continue their studies over the ten week period, it is just inconsiderate.

Many educators argue that by reading over the summer students gain continued reading skills and grow intellectually. They believe summer reading will prevent a ‘summer slump’ and will prepare them for the following school year. However high

school students have been reading and completing assignments their entire lives; they obviously will not lose any of their skills in the too-short period of ten weeks. Many students will agree that there is no such thing as a ‘summer slump’. There is no point in assigning work (that most kids do not even complete anyway) when students do not need to practice skills that they learned years ago.
Others claim that summer reading promotes learning and discovery of new perspectives and ideas and helps students become global thinkers.

This, also, may be somewhat true, but it is much more enriching for students, and humans in general, to read material that they find interesting and important to them. People gain more enrichment from doing things they love than things they do not care about. Kids should be able to learn and read about things that actually matter to them, unlike the boring books that are assigned by schools.

There are many reasons why summer reading is not worth students’ (nor teachers’) time. One big reason is because students have faced an extremely stressful previous year and schoolwork is the absolute last thing on their mind. After completing nine months of an unbearable workload, why make it worse? Why add more work to a time where kids are trying to relax? In addition to this, summer reading limits students from reading items of their own choosing and finding enrichment on their own terms. There are many detrimental factors to summer

assignments.
Across the United States many students are assigned a summer reading assignment. Countless educators believe that summer reading is an important part of education and helps students retain their knowledge and reading skills. But this is not the case. It is very unfair to give students an assignment over their break and it also prevents students from finding their own meaningful enrichment. Although it makes sense to have children continue their studies over the ten week period, it is just inconsiderate and pointless.