Extracurricular Activities

If we eliminated all extracurricular activities from school, I'm talking about sports and music and clubs, we would eliminate the reason so many kids are here. For example, I have a student this year who takes every opportunity to leave English class to do something in another class because he wants to. I'm no saying this kid is doing anything bad, but I am suggesting that given a choice, all of us would choose what we want to do over what we have to do. If we eliminated extracurricular activities, we would eliminate a lot of the distractions that come with them. For all the comparisons we make between the US school systems and the European, that's one that I rarely see discussed. They don't have school teams. They have club teams and they aren't part of the school day. I'm not talking about eliminating art or music or shop classes, I'm talking about extracurricular stuff.

The community could put on a musical or play. Kids would play for legion baseball teams and club soccer teams all the way up through to adulthood and perhaps beyond. We do have a Lebanon Community Theater. We do have the Jonestown Men's Chorus. Churches have choirs. It's there for you if you want to do it.