Although summer is traditionally a time go on a hiatus from school, it only makes sense that work is assigned to be due by the beginning of the next school year. It is inefficient to allow students to completely forget everything they'd spent nine months and a half learning come August or September. Now, here lies the argument: should said work be teacher-designed or student-designed? In my opinion, teacher-designed work is the better of the two options because it guarantees that a higher percent of students will complete the assignment, and that those students will be adequately prepared for the school year to come.

Student-designed summer projects sound liberating and ingenious, but once it comes time to generate how one's project will work, there are logistics to work through. It is more time-consuming than sitting down and crunching out an assignment pre-created by a teacher. Although being notably more time-consuming is not a negative aspect of doing the work, it bears the question: "How many kids would be willing to do the extra work on top of the guidelines they're given?" Not as many as the ones who want to get the project over with; that is for certain. The more time assignments take, the more that the majority of students procrastinate on it, which is an unfortunate universal truth. A large number of students would push the project to the last minute or simply choose not to do it, generating stress that has no place in the summertime.

Another reason why teacher-designed summer projects are superior to student-designed projects is that they better ready the students for the material they will face in class once school starts again. Teachers know the curriculum and are the judges of what is most important for their pupils to know. Therefore, they are certainly the best people to design summer assignments for their classes, since they will be the ones grading it and would give the students a more rigid outline of what their class will consist of. When a student designs their project, there is an abstract aspect to it that could make them so far off from what they're supposed to learn that they do not get their proper start in class; in other words, it is too open to interperatation to be successful. When teachers create projects, it is tailored to their own class and they can include whatever they find necessary for students to know.

In conclusion, student-designed summer projects are inferior to teacher-designed ones and should never be implemented. The reasons for this are that fewer students would end up actually doing the assignment due to the heavy amount of stress that the extra time would create, and they would be less prepared for their classes the next school year. Contrary to what they say, sometimes it is better to work harder than to work smarter.