Mikaela Garber
Managing Editor
While there are many arguments in favor of having summer assignments, they are ultimately more detrimental than beneficial. Summer is supposed to be a time to relax and recharge. Even for those who do not work, travel, or attend camp, they should be using summertime to hang out with friends and family, enjoy activities that they don’t have time for over the summer, and complete projects and goals unrelated to school. Having the stress of completing homework removes much of the benefit of summer. While the homework may not take very long to complete, it still has the ability to hang over a student’s head throughout the summer. In this way, the summer work removes the student from the relaxation, taking away the possibility of coming to school more relaxed than when they left.
From traveling to camp, many people are extremely busy over the summer. They don’t have time to complete thick packets of math homework or long books for History and English. Even if kids had the desire to do work while at camp, most days are packed with activities, with little time for individual tasks. With the little personal time that campers have, they should be focusing on recharging their social battery and writing letters home. Additionally, many camps don’t allow technology, and as such, writing essays is virtually impossible at camp. As a result of all of this, students who go to summer camp often opt to do their homework at the beginning or end of summer, when they are not in camp. In these instances, the argument of continued learning in order to remember information does not apply; most of their summer is spent without doing any work at all with the homework being done close to schooltime.
Albeit the fact that Barrack has summer work, most classes spend the first few periods of the school year reviewing. Clearly, summer homework does not fully keep students from forgetting the information, as a review is necessary. Because classes spend time reviewing anyway, why bother having summer work?
Even though summer homework has some potential benefits, many of the advantages are subdued because of the nature of summer. Subsequently, students must complete unnecessary work, taking them out of a summer mindset, potentially without much actual gain.
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