Throughout the school year, "You guys should have learned this last year" is a common phrase heard from all teachers.

Students every year come into the new school year not knowing or remembering any of the prior information they had digested the previous year.

This can be extremely difficult, not just for the students, but for the teachers who have to reteach the information that the students already learned.

In order to prevent this, teachers issue summer projects to keep the students' minds ripe and ready to learn.

The real question is if these projects requirements should be dictated by the teachers or the students.

Teacher-designed projects would work best because they would be more challenging to the students, they would be able to learn something new, and teachers can design the project so that students are starting out with the sufficient amount of information that they need going into the new school year.

The issue with a student designing their own summer project is that it will most likely lack creativity or maximum use of their intelligence to complete.

They might just end up picking an easy topic just so they could get a good grade and move on with their summer.

While students should use the summer as a break from school, if a summer assignment is assigned, than it should be designed with the student's intelligence in mind.

Teacher-designed projects would insure that students use their intelligence to the fullest.

The topic would be more "brain teasing" and students would have to use their full effort rather than half doing it.

This would ensure that students don't slack off or attempt to take the easy way out of their assignment.

Students could also learn something that they never knew about before during their summer break.

Rather than doing a project on something that they already have knowledge of, they could learn new information that could prepare them for the next school year.

This would push the student out of their circle of knowledge, forcing them to take in new information.

Or they could learn the same information, just expanded upon.

It's like how in elementary school, students just learned the basics of history and geography, but going into middle school and high school, the information learned is way more in depth and extremely detailed.

Students could be interested by how much more their is to the subject than just the basics.

In theory, it could become more "fun" for the student to learn about.

In correlation with students having teacher-designed projects, the requirements to the projects can ensure that students learn the necessary amount of information they need to start off in the new school year.

If a project is designed to cater towards the necessary knowledge needed, they'll know about the subject rather than having to relearn everything from last year in order to catch up.

Doing teacher designed projects during the break ensures that students will go into the new year having some semblance of knowledge on the subject, rather than knowing nothing at all.

Through a teacher-designed project, students will know what they need to know in preparation for the next school year.

It's good for a student to have the baseline of what they need to know so that they won't go into the school year knowing absolutely nothing.

Teacher-designed projects are the best way to go.

While it would be nice to encourage students to use their own creativity in coming up with their own project, most would half do the project just so they could enjoy their breaks.

With a teacher-designed project, the student's focus would be on doing the project well.

Teacher-designed projects are the better option because they would challenge a student's intelligence, they could learn new information that they've never known before, and teachers could design the project so as to better prepare their students for the new school year.