A New Course Of Action

Imagine having a full time job where you did not get paid, could not quit, and have at least a few hours of paperwork to complete each night. This is what students go through everyday with homework. Homework is assignments sent home from school for students of all ages to finish by a certain due date, for a grade. In the past decade, controversies over the amount of work kids and teens are given has lead many to study the benefits of homework to see if the work teachers assign is actually helping students academically and improving test scores. It has grown to an extreme amount, prevents kids and teens from getting the things they need in life, gets in the way of a good childhood, damages relationships, and has not proven to actually aid

High school students feel more stress than working adults, and children are beginning to feel aversion towards learning. Both adolescents and children are at risk of health issues due to anxiety and less time is spent with family, playing, and sleeping. The cause for all of this is too much homework that is suffocating students. Homework causes students to sleep less, have more stress, and even forces students to give up extracurricular activities. These negative results can be improved by reducing the homework load.

David Mills’s article published in Healthline, “Is Too Much Homework Bad for Kids’ Health?” is a piece focused upon the extensive amount of time consumed by homework by students of all ages as well as the subsequent health effects that typically result from the issue. With the assistance of multiple studies, Mills argues that current students are highly exceeding the national standard of allotted time for homework and instead recommends several alternatives to the problem, such as primarily focusing upon the assignments that they deem as of appropriate and beneficial quality. Although he specifically asserts that refusing to do the work altogether is one of the best methods to easily relieve the increasing pressure felt by students in vigorous schooling systems, it actually has the opposite effect: by delaying the work until later, students fall into an endless cycle of being

This is true however giving reasonable amounts of homework will allow both time for family and time for learning. Alfie Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, says that homework promotes “such virtues as self-discipline and responsibility” (3). This shows that homework not only benefits the student academically but teaches the student valuable time management skills that are needed later in

Homework has been an area of discussion for teachers, students, and even psychologists. It’s been a practice which has been used throughout the United States to help students learn material, reinforce their day’s lesson, or just as busy work to improve a student’s work ethic. Several people view homework as useless, or just plainly unhelpful; this view has been demonstrated ever since the early twentieth century, where many authors and politicians were vehemently against homework, going as far as to write whole books and draft legislation (legislation which had passed the Californian government and had been law) against homework. This opposition has ever since faded, but is now seeing a new movement around America, and there are reasons as to why that is. In an article from CNN, they quote a study from another article published by The American Journal of Family Therapy which states that: “students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended”, and, as such, students are raised within a state of stress from the first grade. Several other studies also find that homework is very hurtful; the Journal of Experimental Education published an article which had made a study that found that the average amount of time students spend on homework each night had been 3.1 hours from a sample of high-performing schools in California, when the recommended time on homework is, at most, one hour each night. Homework has been mandated work for students all around the country, and several others, and the workload seems to only be increasing, and so, how might this workload affect a student’s ability to live a healthy life, a teacher’s work plan, and a psychologist’s view of an enormous workload on a student?

The quality of students’ homework is much more important than the quantity of students homework and data collected during recent studies has proven that homework is not making the grade. “. . . American students are entangled in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math according to the most recent results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)” (Murphy-Paul). Students should not be given an excessive amount of homework because the pressure of having to complete excessive amounts of homework every night is quite daunting for most students. Knowing how much homework is the right amount correlates with age and grade. An 8th grade student should not be given a myriad of homework that would keep her awake past midnight completing assignments. In any case, there should be a limit on the amount of homework all teachers give to students because an excessive amount of homework would eventually cause students to become uninterested in school and learning, which could result in poor test scores and low ranks in international academic rankings. In order for students to carry out daily activities throughout the day restfully, teachers must be able to provide homework that does not exceed the appropriate amount of time needed to complete it, which is based on grade level. If teachers are too clueless of a students health due to excessive amounts of homework, many students will develop cases of sleep

Homework can become more closely monitored to assure that the work being assigned to students is useful and engaging. Parents and students are unhappy with homework assigned as busy work which offers little depth and instead just consumes the student’s time (Melvin). If the High School could keep a closer eye on what teachers are assigning students, this would help to alleviate students who are stuck performing monotonous tasks night after night that do not contribute to their overall educational experience. To elaborate on this, different forms of homework impact certain students differently and good teachers will be able to deliver educational value through different types of work. (Terada). Teachers who always assign only a single type of homework will inevitably be unable to engage their entire class. In order to fully get everyone to become involved and engaged in the work allotted, the school system should make sure that the homework teachers assign to students is constantly

In many American households, homework is the main cause of stress. Some people think that America is not so well and adding more homework will fix that problem. A study by Indiana University found that students who do more homework tend to get higher scores on standardized tests” (“Do Kids Need Homework?”). “Plus, part of growing up is learning to balance outside activities and the demands of schoolwork” (“Should Parents Help Kids With Homework?). Teachers have their reasons as well. “Teachers say homework is important in the learning process and can help kids develop study and organizational skills. They say kids need to practice what they've learned in school so that the material sticks in their brain” (Strauss). “Having too much homework

The survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers found that on average, they assign 3.5 hours of homework each week. For high school students who typically have seven classes with different teachers, that’s approximately 24.5 hours each week. Students spend approximately 35 hours a week at school and around 25 hours on homework. This lengthens each school day from around 7 hours to 10 hours. Now add the time students spend on extracurricular activities and sleep. They are faced with such packed schedules, and yet we wonder why they are struggling. Homework consumes an excessive amount of their time, and if we banned it, their schedules would be far more tolerable. The questionability of homework causes it to be one of the most

For the most part, education in the United States has revolved around the idea of a “work hard, and succeed” system. Educators strongly push for this idea and are in a way obliged to extend learning by assigning more work, which they are unable to complete in a school setting. In turn, they rely on homework to expand knowledge beyond the classroom. Homework has become what may seem a positive influence on education and test scores in the United States. However, It has also become one the biggest burdens on high school students.This burden fails to reflect today’s advancing technological society. It needs to conform to a more individualized and purposeful approach for students.

In a Facebook post from 2015, Katie Nemeth, a Lone Peak graduate, writes about how homework taught her “how to prioritize time, work hard…[and] learn patience.” With high students enrolling in so many classes, it can be hard for them to manage the full load of homework assigned each week. In truth, learning to manage time wisely becomes a key skill for students that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. Being able to commit to a project by setting prioritizing the day so that there is ample time to work hard is an extremely important and beneficial ability to develop. Serrano also talks about life skills taught through homework by saying, “Homework helps students develop self-discipline, responsibilities, and good habits and attitudes.” It is easy for today’s youth to simply set aside homework so they can spend time scrolling through social media feeds, doing some online shopping, and binge watching Netflix and other television programs. However, being able to practice some self-discipline by turning away from their phones and televisions for just a little while will prove beneficial in both the immediate future as well as in years to

If you’re a student you know the stress that runs through you all day, even after school ends. Yes, the learning part of the day is done but there’s still all homework that needs to be finished. As soon as you step foot inside your house, it’s time to decide whether to start studying for the science test or finish the history project. Then you would think to yourself and say; neither because you still have the stack of math homework laying on your bed. Nowadays students get so much homework that they are usually up and losing sleep in order to complete it. On an average, a student should not spend more than 60 minutes on homework per day, but if each teacher assigns homework which exceeds the time limit it adds to the workload. Due to a lack

There are many key components of every student’s high school experience: classes, social events, planning for the future, and, of course, homework. Some get more assignments than others depending on the rigor of one’s courses, but everyone is bound to be assigned homework in high school; in some cases, it can make or break students’ GPAs. Despite its appearances in nearly every high school across the country and the world, homework has become a hotly debated topic as of late due to increasing quantities of assignments and the immense pressure put on students to complete them. Some feel that it’s the natural course of the education system, while some believe that it’s all becoming nearly uncontrollable. The different perspectives on this issue have put teachers, parents, students, and

Students claim that due to numerous hours of homework assigned, it tends to build up on them and thus, causing said students to fall into a stressed state. Although this claim is proven to be valid, the fact stands that stress will not only be encountered during an average American student’s 12 years of schooling. In 2014, The American Institute of Stress released the statistics relating to that of a person’s daily life. From this data performed by the American Psychological Association, it was found that job pressure was- and still proves to be- the leading cause of stress in Americans. The category includes those who feel this job pressure from work overload in particular. Therefore, the stress that is caused from homework in students is actually preparing these individuals for the higher workload that they may face in their lives outside of school. Adults essentially face homework as well. Although it may not be identified as homework, many of these adults take home work from their job in order to complete it on time. Thus, the factor of stress does not prove as an effective argument as to why homework should be banned.

Researcher Kirsten Weir of the American Psychological Association speaks to the drawbacks of mass quantities of homework saying, “...kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress”(Kirsten Weir). Due to lack of time, it is not unusual for students to go from one subject to the next, when having so much work to complete. This being said, the more time an energy that students put forth on assignments the less sleep they are able to get in return resulting in less time and energy throughout each of their classes. This being said it is more than easy to loose focus on the true point of homework, to reinforce learning, and instead work to get it all finished even if it is not to the best