Embedded Files
3/5/2023
Jude McCormack
Imagine that you are at home, doing whatever fun thing that you could think of. Maybe you’re on vacation, or at your friend’s house. Whatever it is, you could say goodbye to the experience. You forgot that you have a lot of homework to catch up on, and on top of that, your ELA grades are declining and you have to read an entire 200 page book to get AR points. Today, I will be showing you why AR points are a problem, and why students should not be required to sacrifice their grade because they want to spend their free time doing something else.
The first reason why students should not be required to read books for AR points is because it could be very overwhelming. A quote from oxfordlearning.com, a tutoring service, says, “When homework is piling up, it can feel overwhelming.” This could potentially lead to stress especially people who could have a lot of extracurricular activities, and according to the American Psychological Association, could lead to a numerous amount of mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, digestive issues, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, and memory and concentration impairment.Â
This is an image of a student who is currently stressed out. Stress can lead to many negative effects.
This is an image of the cost of gas per mile driven. As you can see, the prices have been growing since the past decade. Even though this chart only goes to 2010, the prices of gas have still been growing.
The second reason why students should not have AR points is because it could be really hard to keep up with the program. AR is a program that has been required since elementary school, and will have to do AR until you’re into high school. From third grade (when it started) to high school, that is an entire 6 years of required reading that you need to do. Points required to get full credit go up every semester, and you have to continue reading more and more books the entire time! Eventually, you’re going to run out of books that are lying around inside of your house, and articles could be considered too time consuming. So, you could purchase books with your own money. Depending on how high your grade is and which semester you’re in, you’d need a lot of books to keep up with AR points, which therefore costs a lot of money. I know that you could also go to the library, but assuming that you’re not within walking distance, transportation by car would cost gas, which also costs money. The AR system could potentially cost a lot of money just to keep your grade up.
The third and final reason why students should not have AR points is because it’s just not worth it. We all know that AR points provide prizes, right? Well, spending time gaining AR points isn't efficient, first off. Secondly, the prizes that the teachers provide are able to be bought easily. For example, the first prize of 10 AR points is a small lollipop. You are able to buy these lollipops in bulk pretty cheap, but doing the math, a singular lollipop costs a mere $0.06 ($0.0576709402 to be exact). Most AR books that people read provide less than 10 points, so you could be reading at LEAST one whole book, possibly more. So, why would you spend your time reading an entire book for a small lollipop (that would not even last 5 minutes) when you could just buy the very same item for not even a dime? This is just one example of an AR prize. The reward for 45 points is a bag of chips and a drink of your choice. Pretty sweet deal, right? Well, applying the same logic that we did with the 10 point AR prize, we can say that this isn’t exactly an entirely fair deal. Once you surpass the AR goal, teachers will hand out a single-serving bag of chips and a one-liter bottle of soda. The chips cost around $0.30 - $1.00 per bag, and the bottle of soda costs around $2.00 - $2.50. This also doesn’t seem necessarily fair, considering the fact that even a very long book that would provide a lot of AR points probably wouldn’t even provide 20 points, let alone 45 points. Even a Harry Potter book alone wouldn’t provide enough AR points to get that prize. The AR system provides prizes that wouldn’t be considered fair, considering the amount of time and money the actual prizes take to get.
In conclusion, students should not be forced to read books because it could be very stressful, which could lead to depression and a lot of other health problems. Keeping up with AR could potentially cost money, and the AR prizes that are given could be unfair when considering the fact that time is valuable. Tell us what you think of this new Colts Chronicles article by filling out the form below!
Page updated
Report abuse