Is it Fair to Require High School Students to Buy Books for English Summer Work?

yes because the education system does not believe in freedom they believe in no fun and all work, and making you do things you would never consider doing. is it fair, no? but will it affect your chances of failing or passing? probably not. i'll be completely honest here, when i was going from 8th into 9th grade i completely bs.d an assignment similar to this that involved reading like a 500 page book and then writing a multiple page essay, and i only read the first like 100 pages, probably not even that, and still got an 85% on the assessment. Thankfully i graduated from high school this past year, and am not going to college so i don't have to worry about it. So just buy it & do it, because once you're done, you're done, and you may end up enjoying the book anyways.

I believe that you should not be required to buy any book because you (or your parents) pay school tax and on top of that the school gets funding from the state. Most high schools (including mine) have no idea how to handle money and most of it ends up going to the administrators. I also think that students shouldn't be required to do summer assignments because they are between classes and grades so technically you are not really enrolled. Anyway, how can they lower your grade based off the fact that you didn't do a project while you weren't even taking the class?

Seeing as how that summer stuff doesn't make you any smarter, yeah. It's unfair.

Why didn't you just borrow any of the books from your fellow classmates? Problem solved. . .

Or you and your classmates can split the cost of any needed book(s), share it, and then when done donate it to your school or local library for future students. Teamwork building skills and creative solution solving will get you farther then your diploma ever will.

Just go to the library or go on Amazon and get the paperback used for dirt cheap?

I don't agree with schools on this. For my school, money is no issue, as over the last 2 years they have added about 5,000 seats to our football stadium, an built 3 new schools (1 middle, 2 elementary), and at our high school: have also added a new gym, and new locker rooms for 3 sports, as well as made a new parking lot, art building, and lots of other stuff that I'm too lazy to explain.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind that much if the school would spend a little money and buy a book for us, or just buy everything electronically for us. The thing is, my parents hate to buy books, and this time I'm just renting the book from the library. I will be able to read the book for free, but if my teacher decides to have any writing assignments over the book, I will have nothing to reference once I need to return it. I am also a slow reader, so I need almost the entire check-out period to read the book. I can say that I have never even considered reading a summer book over again.

On a side note, our school does sell the books that are required to read, but they are on sale for more than the sticker price, so they are just trying to make money off of us.

Also on a side note about schools, I really wish that they would focus on technology more. Last year my computer science teacher didn't know how to change the desktop background on Windows XP, I hope that says something about my schools computer knowledge.