By Zane Franklin
Staff Writer
Summer can be a relaxing break from the stress of school work. It’s fun, until the time comes to complete a summer reading assignment. These assignments should be shortened or removed, because summer vacation should give students a rest from school work.
Without a break from assignments, students become overloaded with work, and come to school incapable of learning at full capacity. Students complain about how much they had to read over the vacation. Summer should be an escape from school so students can have time to refresh their minds without worrying about petty assignments.
If summer assignments must be given, they should at least be less tedious than those currently given over summer. Some of the books required include extensive reading and analysis, which should not be necessary during a vacation. There is no need to put extra pressure on students during the time when they should be relaxing.
Also, some students may not be able to understand and analyze challenging literature without a teacher’s assistance. Some novels are hard to understand without help from a teacher, so students could read the assigned novels and misinterpret them without realizing it. When a teacher guides a student, the student gets a better understanding of the message the novel conveys, improving the student’s education.
Some students use their summer vacation as a way to visit their family for long periods of time. They may not get to visit their relatives during the school year and a large reading assignment distracts them from the already-limited time students get to spend with their families. Not only do assignments distract students from family time, but their families disrupt reading time so that students get less out of the book than they would have if they could read in a more focused environment.
Some may argue that summer reading keeps the students active in schoolwork, so that they do not begin the year without preparation for reading and writing, but the way a student’s vacation is spent should be the student’s choice. It should be the student’s decision whether or not to spend the summer reading novels and preparing to write essays. The school should recommend that students read certain texts to prepare for the year without actually requiring it.
Others might say that students should be required to read texts over the summer vacation in order to become better readers and writers. However, if students do not understand or know how to analyze the novel without assistance from a teacher, they will not get the learning experience that is present in a classroom during the school year. This problem could be solved without removing summer reading altogether by reviewing the novels in class so the students can clearly understand what they were reading and how to interpret it.
Required reading assignments are given to students over summer vacation, which is supposed to be a break from school and the hard work and stress that comes with it. As if the work from the previous school work is not enough, more reading is assigned in order to prepare for the next year. Instead of having a relaxing summer vacation away from school, students should not have to spend their time doing work for school.
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