How would you feel if everyday after eight hours of sitting at a table, righting down notes, listening to someone talk to you about something you may or may not like, getting up for five minutes just for it to happen again, and then when the bell rings instead of going home you go into another classroom to do an activity you dont like and didnt choose? Because that is what it would be like for students if they had mandatory extracurricular activities. Every student having to go to a after school has been a very debated issue for a long time. Mandatory extracurricular activities have their benefits, but their cons out weigh them. The principal of Generic_School middle school has decided that this is false, and that every person going to a after school is a great idea. I disagree with this, and here's why. Students should not have to attend extracurricular programs because of their freedom of choice, not all after schools are equal, and because of the funds needed for them.

First Students should have the ability to choose which after school program they would like to go to. One reason they should be able to do this is they can spend more time with their family which is very important in this stage of their life. Another is that they could choose to do homework instead which I think is something many of them would rather do. Finishing homework gives a senses of relief that it is over and you have nothing to be concerned about. My last reason to support this is letting students make their own decisions makes them more independent as well as learn life lessons you cant get in school. For example they could decided that "I want to put in one and a half hours into my homework, thirty minutes to study, one hour to have dinner, and four hours of free time."

Secondly not all of the extracurricular activities the school provides are equal. This is shown in how much time some activities require. Specifically a student may have to go to basketball practice very day while a person in the art club only goes once a week. The next way they are unequal is in how much effort is put into the after school. An example of this is a teen in the book club would need to put in far less effort than someone on the debate team.

The third way extracurricular programs are not equal is in how much is costs to run them. For instance In the art club they use lots of very expensive materials like paints, canvases, and clay. This would cost much more that the soccer team that only needs to replace soccer balls and goals. This leads me to my next reason why Generic_School should not have mandatory after schools

The last reason as to why we should not have mandatory extracurricular programs is the amount of money needed to support all of the activities. Having enough after schools so that all of the kids will be able to go to them will put a lot of strain on the schools finances. This will result in the school not being able to adequately educate their students during the actual school day. If the burden of whos to pay for the extracurricular activities does not fall on the school it will fall on others in one of two ways. The first way is they will charged the parents of the kids directly. Many family's cant pay the cost of the after schools even if they wanted to making the the school still suffer a loss. The second way is to raise taxes which will give parents a lesser financial burden than charging them directly, but will make taxes high for others who don't have kids and will surely not go down well.

In conclusion being able to choose which extracurricular activity you desire, the after school programs being unequal, and the cost to run them are all very good reasons why Generic_School should not have mandatory after schools. If you agree with this than wright a letter to your or our school board telling them your own reasons as to why schools should not have mandatory extracurricular activities. By righting this I hope to prevent the horrible experience that I described to you and let you go home after exactly eight hours.