Imagine the sound of the school bell ringing, freedom, time to go home, it is a Friday after all, you get to go home and relax; but then you remember the new rule, all students must be signed up for an extra curricular activity. There goes another hour of my free time you mutter as you slowly walk towards your robotics club. Kids should not be forced to participate in an extracurricular activity. Most kids have other priorities whether it is limited time, or not wanting to be in a club, to even the stress of being forced into a social environment.

There is only one thing that is limited for every single person on the planet and that is time. Many kids feel that they dont have enough time already and if forced to join a club that only meets once a week for an hour that just cuts an hour off their free time that they could be doing other things. Many kids participate in a sports that are very time consuming. Most combative sports have multiple practices and games a week, along with practicing on your own. Another very time consuming part of every child's life is family, spending time with grand parents or even just having fun with your parents or siblings. Your family is the most important thing in your life and any time you can spend with them should be spent with them, not at school in leadership council. Finally your friends, every kid has a friend group and friends are a very important of every kids life. Your friends are who you go to for advice and who you learn many life lessons from.

A huge part of middle school life is stress. It is impossible to never experience it about something. Homework is very stressful, having math, Spanish, science, English, and civics homework that is all due on one day is crazy, especially if you have less time than you usually would. Most kids have an hour and a half of homework each night with some nights being more. Imagine not getting home until 4:30 then having another hour and a half of homework, that means if you are focused and you can get your work done you don't have any free time until 6:00. Pets are another thing that stress many kids out. Knowing that you have to hurry home to let your dog out is stressful, and it is made much worse when you have to wait another hour before you can leave school. Another reason that kids shouldn't be forced to participate in clubs is the amount of kids with social anxiety. Many kids freak out at hearing that they are going to have to go out into public once, much less every week. If kids want to be in clubs they can but it isn't fair to make that a requirement.

To close, most kids who want to be in a club are in a club. Most of the kids who aren't in a club dont want to be and there is no reason to force those who would rather be at home with their family or having fun with their friends to be somewhere they don't want to be. Simply people have better things to do then be in a room with a ton of other people doing something that they aren't interested in. Clubs are great for kids that are interested in them and for kids who do want to be there, but when you add in a ton of students who would rather be elsewhere doing their own thing it just makes everything worse. Also there isn't enough space for everybody to be in their preferred club so there would be angry kids and parents demanding that they signed up for a different club then the one they are in.

Kids shouldnt be required to be in an extra curricular activity if they don't want to be. Students have more important things to do with their time, they have many different things causing them stress and most importantly they don't want to be in a club. There is no need to overcrowd clubs with grumpy kids that ruin everything for the kids who signed up to be there.