Some creatures understand how to complete a task without the instruction of a mentor; for example, birds know how to construct a nest without being taught how to make one. On the contrary, birds must flap their wings for hours to days under the guidance of their parent in order to fly. The completion of such tasks draws a stark contrast between instinct and the acquisition of skills. Following this train of logic, students should not be designing their own summer projects because they lack the required intuition and experience, which would hinder their educational development.

The phenomena of instinctive behavior allows people to complete tasks without being taught, but this does not provide the student with the tools necessary to grasp what they do not understand. An exquisite example of instinct is seen with the development of verbal communication among toddlers: They are able to understand and speak their first language though only their observations. Why can this logic not be applied to students as well, or rather, why should they not be able allowed to create their own summer projects? Because they are trying to learn something foreign to them within the span of a few summer months, their learning process needs to be accelerated for them to keep up with the curriculum. Understanding the laws that hold the universe together, physics, would take a student years to fully grasp on their own. Therefore, in order to expedite this process, a parent figure with more knowledge and experience, a teacher, should design these summer projects.

Teachers were once students, but students were never teachers. First of all, students do not have the years of experience behind them that teachers had undertaken in order to qualify themselves to teach. Furthermore, these teachers have shared the same struggles that students experience, as they too were once students, so they know how to provide the necessary equipment needed for students to learn. Even if students were to create their own summer projects, they may not understand that each student absorbs information differently, which would imply the consequence that some students may get caught in the undertow of curriculum. The purpose of a teacher is to guide students through the initial continuum of learning, so let them do their job.

Teachers should design summer projects for students because they have the intuition and experience that students lack, and therefore, are able to expedite the educational development of students through the ebb and flow of curriculum. Let the teachers give the students flight so that they themselves may be able to teach another when it is their time to part their knowledge onto the next generation.