Why We Shouldn T Encourage Students To Have Extracurricular Activities

A wise man once said, "In life you can't force people to do something they don't want to do, or be someone they're not. You have to let people be who they are." In this quote, they are explaining how people should be able to live the life they want to that fits their standards and goals. Not living or doing something because others may believe can help you, because only you know what is best for you. This is one of the main reasons why I think it shouldn't be required of students to participate in an extracurricular activity. Furthermore, because it can create multiple financial burdens, rebellion in the school community, and it will cause more hurt than intended help.

Clearly in our world, money does not grow on trees and nothing is free.

Especially not something as big as having about 1,000 students taking an extra, non-educational class. One of the things that the schools would have to fund would be the supplies needed to complete those activities.

If it is a sport, then they would have to pay for more uniforms and sports equipment. It may even affect the parents if the course is requiring you to have certain supplies. Although the school may bring home some nice trophies, the county rules for a team maximum still remain and that will cause lots of feelings to be hurt. The schools will also have to pay for the coaches and staff that will be giving up their valuable time to tend to these students. There are not too many good teachers and coaches out there that like doing their job so much that they will teach hundreds of them, in their little free time that they do have, for free. That is just an extra unnecessary amount of money lost. The biggest thing that the school and parents will have to deal with is transportation. If the school is requiring the students to stay after and

do this activity, then they are required to provide transportation. Which means that for them to only have to make on trip everyone would have to end at the same time, and that would highly impact activities like sports that would need a longer time space. Additionally, if they all end around five o'clock, then they will have to pay for a whole new set of bus transportation because it will interfere with the elementary school bus routes. Also since most people get off around that time, traffic will be seriously out of control. Especially, if you add about 20 more buses in the mix. All of this could be avoided if everyone just took the transportation route they usually do.

Another reason why this new rule shouldn't be enforced is because it will cause lots of extra negativity and rebellion throughout the school community.

And when I say the school community, I mean the parents as well. There are many parents that stay on top of every change and issue that occurs in the school building. Making a change basically to the school hours would take a lot of parental convincing. A big thing that would cause parents to want to confront the principal about this would be their kids being upset. If their kid comes home upset and telling them how they feel forced to be doing this, then most likely the parent will be at the school the next day. Something else that might boost them to want to talk to the administration would be that these activities could be interfering with their family time. Or if the parent had something planned for the child to do after like volunteer work, church events, appointments, etc. So rather than the administration being so focused on the kids happiness, they would have to be dealing with a vast amount of phone calls, conferences, and emails on a daily basis. Causing them to also lose focus from their actual teaching or administering job. Furthermore on the kids feelings, if certain kids feel forced or like they don't want to do it then surely they will not do it. Which means they won't be showing up to any of the courses or not be participating while they're there. Therefore, a discipline system would have to be made for

those students, which will take up a lot of useful learning and teaching time. Overall, this will just cause a great disturbance in the school community that could easily be bypassed.

One more reason why this shouldn't be put into action is because it was cause more hurt to the students than intended help. Many of the students in the school are already involved in one or more extracurricular activities and this will greatly effect their time usage and also their stress level. If the students extracurricular activity happens to be somewhere away from the school, then in some situations they will end up being forced to quit the one that they enjoy. They will end up getting very stressed out while trying to decide which one they want to go with and the one that they have to. Another thing that will cause stress is that adding another activity is very time consuming, and the amount of homework given on a daily basis takes up a lot of time. Plus, lots of students have things to go to such as church events, family events, etc. and that is an extra two hours that they could be using to do their homework before going out with their family. Lastly, with all of this extra time and money put into these activities, they might not even be affective to the students lives in the long run. So by the time over half of the students have dropped out of the whole program through their parents, it will be too late and the school could have potentially lost around $100,000, maybe even more.

When you get to middle school, it's basically like the previews of many different movies and you don't really know which one you want to choose. Then you get to high school and you pretty much have your preview and know which movie you are ready to watch, or basically the life you are going to live. But if you are forced to watch only a certain amount or a specific type of previews in middle school, then that will only allow you to chose from very little movies after high school. In summary, if students are being forced to have to do a little variety of extracurricular activities then they will most likely not be encouraged to try any more new things since middle school proved that "new things are boring and a waste of time". If the school system really wants students to be happy then they shouldn't make them do something extra like that, but just support and encourage their decisions so that in the end they will be living the life that the want to live, and not the one their middle school principal wanted them to.