A Sticky Proposal

I believe that students should be able to chew gum in school. Chewing gum has many positive aspects; as well as a few drawbacks. Overall, it is a very positive product. It can relax and calm you and can minimize a teacher's stress. Chewing gum acts as a toothbrush, and it is healthy. With the right rules, chewing gum in school can be possible.

Chewing gum can help you relax when you are stressed out. Additionally, it can help you concentrate when you are taking a quiz or test. I chew it while doing my homework because it helps me concentrate. Gum can help you calm down when you are worked up or hyper. Chewing gum can temporarily satisfy your hunger.

As a student and/or teacher, gum can be very annoying. Students can smack their gum. That always distracts me. Some people smack their gum out of habit, and some do it just to be annoying. Spit can fly out of their mouth when chewing it. To overcome these problems, students could be taught gum chewing etiquette.

Gum has many health benefits. It helps strengthen your teeth. When you chew gum, do you ever notice how you produce a large amount of saliva? Well, chewing greatly increases your salivary production. Saliva helps break down food therefore it can be digested more easily. Many people don’t know that saliva caries calcium with it. Calcium is commonly found in milk. People say, always drink your milk; it will make your bones stronger. That is true; calcium makes your bones stronger and teeth are bones. After a while, saliva builds up in your mouth and slowly makes your teeth stronger. In addition, chewing gum can help destroy plaque and neutralize acids that are found on your teeth. When chewing gum, your body raises its alkaline levels which helps destroy plaque and acids on your teeth. Chewing gum can cause you to lose a small amount of weight. There have been tests conducted on weight loss while chewing gum. The test concluded that you can lose up to eleven pounds a year by chewing gum often. It increases your metabolic rate by twenty percent. Metabolic rate is basically how fast you break down food. The faster you break down food, the more weight you lose.

Gum acts as a toothbrush. It gives you excellent smelling breath right after eating an onion and can remove plaque. It can remove bits of leftover food from your teeth. Gum is very sticky. The gum sticks to your teeth and can easily remove small amounts of plaque and leftover food. Some of the different gum products can give you a whiter smile because the manufacturers put whiteners in it.

On the negative side, gum can be bad for your health. Some gum products have sugar in them. If you digest enough sugar, it will turn into fat. Gum can as well cause your stomach to hurt. Chewing gum makes the stomach work a bit harder and without a break, it can cause a small stomach ache. If you swallow gum, it can stick in your throat which can cause you to choke. It won’t stay in your stomach such as a common myth suggests, however, it actually passes through similar to food.
Chewing gum in school would be excellent for teachers. Teachers can easily become distracted by trying to identify which students are chewing gum. If students were allowed to chew gum, teachers wouldn’t need to worry about who is or isn’t chewing gum. This would not only relieve stress from teacher's daily activities, in addition, it would free up additional time that teachers could use to develop lesson plans. They could focus more on teaching students. The students can give the teacher a hard time because the teacher can chew gum and the student can't. They can say it is unfair and can argue about it. If you could chew gum in school, teachers wouldn't need to put up with that.
Chewing gum in school could be possible if the right rules were applied. Gum is commonly found under desks, on walls, floors, and infrequently in the garbage. I propose that rules should be set in place for chewing gum in school. One rule could be about only putting gum in the garbage. The consequences for breaking that rule could be just picking it up. Or if the teacher found it under a desk, you would throw it away and scrape the gum off from under all of the desks on the team. If the teacher saw you put it in the hallway, they could make you throw it away and sweep the whole hallway. For any other places they put it, they would write a report on why they did it, and how they will improve from the incident. Another rule could apply to the wrappers of gum. You can only put them in the garbage or keep them in your pocket. The consequences would be less severe since the wrapper isn't sticky and is easier to clean up. For annoyances, you could have three “strikes”. Two warnings and the third time, you’re out. You throw away your gum and can’t chew it for a while; one day, one week, one month, or the rest of the year. Of course, more rules would be necessary to maintain control. Without rules, gum chewing in school would be chaotic.

In conclusion, gum can help you relax and concentrate. It is healthy for you and acts as a toothbrush. It can as well relieve some of a teacher's stress. With the right rules applied, chewing gum in school would be possible. I believe that students should be allowed to chew gum in school. I hope that you carefully read and take this proposal under consideration.