English Speech Essay

Extracurricular activities, especially athletic ones, have always been important to almost every school around the world. We can see this happening primarily in the western societies, where a football or basketball game is a huge commotion for the school. Other schools, such as SMIC, prefer to focus more on academic achievements and will take away the privilege of participating in these activities if you are failing your subject courses. I, however, believe that students failing academic courses should be allowed to participate in extracurricular events, as not only does the rule not serve its intended purpose, but also may cause the student to become hostile toward the school. The most controversial point of this rule is the fact that extracurricular activities have almost nothing to do with academic grades. Just because somebody has undesirable grades does not mean that we can assume it was caused by participation in extracurricular activities. It would be like saying that you could not participate anymore in Math class because you are failing in English class. It doesn't make any sense. We should also take into account the fact that this rule may have a negative effect on students who highly value the said activities. Say for example, there is a student named Joe. Now Joe is a very competitive basketball player and is one of the best players in the school team. Joe, however, has a little problem: his grades are "unpleasant" to say the least. So just a few days before a semi-final game, Joe received his report card, and lo and behold, he failed science, removing his chance to lead his team to victory. The school thinks that denying him the opportunity to do what he likes will encourage him to focus more on schoolwork; on the contrary, Joe might actually view the school and homework as "evil" and stop trying to do well in school, because in his eyes, the school has robbed him of the opportunity to be with his team. We can see that the rule which has been put in place is not only very controversial, but also fails to serve its intended purpose. Instead, what we can do is give the student a month or two to improve their grades while still allowing them to participate in extracurricular activities. After the time is up, the student's grades are checked again and if they are still failing, they will have their privileges removed. Using this method, the school cannot be put at fault when the student has their privileges removed, as they have already had a suitable amount of time to improve their grades and no sudden actions were taken. Every single school in the world dreams that their students excel in both academic and extracurricular activities, and with a few changes to this rule, I believe that dream may become a reality.