text: Another reason that extracurricular activities are a bad idea is that lower income families need their students to take part time jobs or watch their siblings, as stated in the last paragraph. Students who take jobs need time to actually do those jobs instead of getting sidetracked by meaningless activities. They will be needed by the family to provide for them, and these activities will do nothing for the family. Their parents will depend on them to stay afloat and keep everyone together, and if they're late for their jobs they could get fired, which would most likely be catastrophic for the family. Students from lower income families also most likely don't care as much about extracurricular activities as others do.