The Importance of Extracurricular Activities Essay Sample

A recent census showed that forty-two percent of school-aged children were involved in sports, 30 percent were involved in afterschool lessons, and 28 percent of students were involved in clubs, nine percent of children participated in all three extracurricular activities. While these extracurricular activities are enriching to educational experiences many join to many and have little time for anything else leaving many schools to question if they should step in and control student involvement or leave it to the families. Schools already control a large percentage of a student’s life as they attend for at least 23 years and attend 40 hours of school related activities, giving students the choice in what they participate in give them great planning skills, responsibility, and experiences they need for the future.

Giving students a choice with what club and how many clubs they participate in gives them great planning skills that are necessary for the future. According to an online survey most students join three to four in school clubs and then participate in at least one club that has no school sponsorship. With students having an average of eight classes they have homework, tests, and quizzes piling up higher and higher everyday this already gives them all the planning skills that they need, but then they join clubs and activities, they stay after for classes and study sessions and those skills only seem to increase. The students should be able to learn how much of a work load they can handle and plan as it is different for each person, so if the number of clubs becomes standardized by schools, they may not be able to learn their individual ways of planning to the fullest.

Responsibility is a lesson students learn from a very young age. Students are responsible to pass their classes, they are responsible to pass tests, they are responsible to do their homework, and the list goes on. However as fun as extracurricular activities are they also teach lessons on responsibility as a unknown writer said “Extracurricular Activities are an enriching and exciting opportunity for students; however, with opportunity comes responsibility.” Students learn this lesson in responsibility through having to find their way to and from activities, they learn this lesson when they must be an active member in their club while maintaining their grades. They also learn responsibility when the student must organize things for the extracurricular. However, some students need more activities than others to learn these lessons so if schools standardize how many clubs a student can participate in those who need more actives to learn will be unable to fully understand responsibility.