Persuasive Essay: Removing School Sports

Imagine yourself as an adolescent. A teenager’s life is full of struggles. As a teenager, you are occupied with extracurricular clubs, sports, and live a hectic life because you have less time remaining to do your homework and sleep. Since homework allows a student to understand the class concepts more, it would be reasonable to remove school sports rather than remove homework. Removing school sports will definitely reduce your stress, and enable you to have additional time for studies. With the absence of sports, you will arrive home early and be able to finish homework on time. Finishing homework on time and understanding the problems will allow you to focus on and understand the concepts you are learning in classes. Removing school sports would decrease the work burden on students. Ultimately, schools should remove sports because sports distract students from
academics, sports reduce students’ time to do homework, and sports cause an increase in family expenses.
First, schools should remove sports because sports distract students from focusing on academics.
Sports allow students to believe that they can always be successful through games. Students tend to focus less on academics, and tend to have a misconception that everyone will become a professional athlete. This misconception makes students focus less on academics and more on sports. In the New York Times article, “School Should Be About Learning, Not Sports” by Amanda Ripley, Ripley asserts that, “By mixing sports and academics, we tempt kids into believing that it’s O.K. if they don’t like math or writing — that there is another path to glory” (Ripley 4). Ripley explains to us that sports are a dishonesty, and that sports lead many students to stop focusing in class. Although school sports may offer some extra career options to students, school sports do not guarantee that a student will become a professional athlete. Therefore, academics matter because they open a whole new world of opportunities that can help students be successful. In the end, Sports will distract students from focusing on
academics.
In addition, schools should remove sports because sports reduce students’ time to do homework. It is axiomatic that lengthy sport practices and games reduce students’ time to do their homework. After a long day of week filled with school and an after school game, a student will face the choice of whether he wants to sleep or do his homework. Often times, the student will do homework to avoid a poor grade. In News Leader’s interview “Student athletes can’t escape homework struggle. Does it matter?” by William Ramsey, student athlete Mackenzie Gray says “It's usually days when we have an away game where we don't get back until late that I have to make the choice whether to do my homework or sleep… For me, sleep suffers” (Ramsey 6). Gray explains to us that lengthy sports games can cause students to sleep late or even have all nighters because they need to finish their homework. These all nighters can affect students’ mental and physical health. Homework is an essential assignment that further explains to students what they are learning in class. Though some homework assignments may be long, they are mostly beneficial towards a student’s grade. Schools cannot remove homework because removing homework will interfere with students’ education. However, schools can remove sports because they are the reason why many students are wasting most of their time after school. Schools should remove sports because sports reduce student’s time to do homework, and this conflict can lead to mental health breakdown or anxiety.