Is Summer Homework Really Necessary?
By Robert Rojas
Sometimes we take summer break for granted; 69 days are just over two months, which is only so many days. That is two months in which you have time for family, sleeping, hobbies, and procrastinating that book you need to read for school, which still sits unopened from the day you bought it on Amazon.
No matter what grade you are in, at many schools, if not all schools in Miami-Dade County, you will have to read a book or do summer math assignments.
Middle-schoolers might have to do iReady for math or reading. High schoolers might have to read chapter books, and depending on what classes they are taking, they may even have to read two or three books at a time. Math packets, with hundreds of questions, are used to prepare for classes that students are taking in the next school year— and all of these are part of a student’s summer.
Still, this amount of work shouldn’t be considered normal. Being forced to complete too many assignments makes time management or having a social life feel incredibly unrealistic. The time that students have over the summer shouldn’t be restricted completely to school.
It isn’t called a break because it rolls off the tongue; it’s called a break because it’s necessary so as not to feel overwhelmed from all the responsibilities students occupy during the school year.
Personally, I was instructed to read “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, a 293-page book with rich, highly descriptive, and metaphorical writing. If I split the book’s total page count over all 69 days of summer, I would have to read 4 and ½ pages a day to complete it, without taking any days or weekends off. It may be manageable, but other students have it way worse.
One example is a rising sophomore attending Barbara Goleman Senior High; her name is Rocio Ramirez. As she is going to be taking AP English Language class next year, she was assigned “1984” by George Orwell and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.
With these two books combined, Ramirez needs to read 561 pages with tiny text. She describes this summer with one word: “stressful.”
On the other hand, Brisa Baez, a student at MLEC, states that although reading “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens isn’t her favorite thing in the world, she still acknowledges that “…[she needs] to do it in order to keep [her] reading and writing skills sharp.” Funnily enough, she would also describe her summer as “stressful.”
Now, while it is true that summer reading helps students maintain their skills, it’s also very clear that it adds unnecessary stress during a time that’s meant to be for resting. If students are calling summer “stressful” even when they know and understand the purpose of the work, maybe the workload is the real problem.
There are other ways to stay sharp in your skills that don’t involve hundreds of pages of thick, assigned reading. Things like independent reading, creative writing, or even watching educational content like a documentary.
The goal shouldn’t be to overwhelm students just to prepare them. I believe it should be to give them space to recharge while keeping their minds active in lighter, more flexible ways.
It isn’t about avoiding any work altogether, but instead about keeping summer as what it’s meant to be: a break.
