Many school, including the one I attend, have numerous extracurricular activities. These activities range from sports to chess club. There is a diverse amount of things you could do as an extracurricular that could cater to everyone. Enforcing a rule that students must participate in at least one extracurricular may seem hostile and violating to students, but if we focus on it precisely, it actually has a few positives to it. This doesn't mean that there are downsides to this decision but exceptions could always be made if needed. I agree with the decision to make participation in at least one extracurricular mandatory because it is important to branch out and be apart of something, it gives students more to learn and more to do for themselves, but it does come at the price that some students are not able to do extracurricular activities for certain reasons.

Being social is something important that we should all be able to do. It helps us throughout our teenage and adult life. We can help improve our social skills by joining a club or a team because then we have to learn how to interact and connect with new people. It's good to branch out and meet new people because you may meet someone new who could end up being your best friend. Being apart of a team or a club could also teach you teamwork and collaboration skills that are important to have when you become an adult. Starting early on these skills by doing an extracurricular will end up helping you in the long run.

Being in a club or on a team will inevitably teach you something whether it's big or small. Learning new skills or lessons through activities offered at school is a positive thing because they could always be applied to real world situations. When students are given new information, they are able to do more with and for themselves, which then builds character. It also creates more opportunities to do things with their lives. Students are involved in new hobbies which adds more to how their daily lives are and how interesting they are in general.

Of course, like any plan for schools or elsewhere, it isn't perfect. There's many things someone could say as to why they disagree with the principal's choice, but, it benefits the majority of people. Now this doesn't mean that there are no good counterclaims to this decision because there are. A good amount of students don't do any extracurricular activities because they just don't have the time or means to participate. A student may not have the money to buy all the personal equipment they need for a sport, or the transportation to and from the activity, or they simply have too much on their plate, like babysitting a younger sibling. A good solution to these issues is to have it discussed with a guidance counselor to find a way to fix these problems. They could find a way for the school to help pay for them to participate in a sport or they could help find someone to carpool with. if no solution can be find though, then the student should be allowed to exempt from participation if there is no other solution.

In conclusion, the decision the principal has made is one that could help every student benefit from. It can add a lot more to a student's life and change it for the better. There is a large enough variety of extracurricular activities that the majority of students will be interested in at least one. This new rule is intended to help students in the long run as this will make it easier to develop new and exciting skills for themselves to use. It helps them develop social skills and be apart of something big and they learn new things for themselves. However, they do come with negatives as I had talked about, but there are solutions to them. In all, mandatory extracurricular participation is a rule I'm on board with.