The Effects Of Homework On Students ' Lives Outside Of School

One of the most controversial topics in education today is homework. This debate has been going on for decades, as teachers, administrators, and parents disagree on whether homework should be assigned, and if assigned, then what the right amount of homework should be. The time students spend on homework has increased over the years. “High school students get assigned up to 17.5 hours of homework per week, according to a survey of 1,000 teachers” (Bidwell). Recently, more fuel has been added in this debate because younger students in particular are receiving much more homework than before. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, states that “The amount of homework that younger kids – ages 6 to 9 – have

“Homework is arguably the worst punishment inflicted upon the student body.” One would think this extreme statement would come from the 10-year boys and girls who complain to their parents about the homework they have to complete. However, Rodney Jones starts of his argument against homework using this statement. He argues that homework does not help children taking up all their time. Continuing, he explains how parents should extend child’s knowledge out of school instead of homework and in the end these assignments do not help students grade. However, in contrast of Jones’ beliefs homework indeed benefits children’s learning through the small amounts of extra practice it gives to help the students excel.

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

Most of the homework adolescents tend to receive from their teachers is busy work, and children and family agree this is not fair to them. This issue is affecting adolescents, parents, and families. When students are overloaded with responsibilities from schoolwork, their participation in extracurricular and social activities decreases. An argument over homework might seem trivial, but there are many negative effects on children who are attending school and go through this pressure.

A longitudinal analysis of NAEP data by the Brookings Institution’s Tom Loveless in 2014 found that more 9-year-olds were regularly doing homework than their parents' generation: In 1984, 35% of students reported no homework the previous night. By 2012, that had shrunk to 22%. But the share of 9-year-olds reporting an hour or more of homework was also down by two percentage points in that same period, from 19% to 17%. The percentage reporting less than an hour of homework had risen from 41% to 57%. Loveless also found that 27% of 17-year-olds reported having no homework. And the share of 17-year-olds who spent more than two hours a night on homework remained unchanged at 13%. This shows that a lot of students are having homework. Kirkwood High School was trying an experiment for the sake of student and teacher mental health. Some schools across the country have already tried discarding homework, and many reports success and positive feedback from students and

Every fall, students head back to school, their backpacks slowly starting to overflow with the one thing they dread the most: homework. Imagine pages upon pages of an endless reading assignment, rows upon rows of math questions; it’s every students’ nightmare. Now it may seem like homework can help the teens, improving time management and responsibility. Afterall, that’s the point of homework. But some teachers have begun to abuse the idea, assigning their students several hours of homework every night. This should not be allowed. Schools need to place a limit on the amount of homework teachers are allowed to assign because too much homework can cause stress and prevent students from living a balanced life.

    Between managing school, extra curriculars, and anything else a student gets involved in, there is a lot of stress. With kids trying to manage their time with their hectic daily schedules, there is not much time to be fretting over ample amounts of homework. In Kelly Wallace’s article “Kids have three times too much homework, study finds; what's the cost?” she found, “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.” The effects of having three times the amount of homework can be a substantial amount of stress on a student. Instead of the heavy workloads, it’s recommended that students receive 10 minutes of homework per grade level (Wallace). Homework over this level is not only not beneficial to children's GPA or grades. There is a plethora of evidence that it is detrimental to their attitude about school, their grades, their self-confidence, their social skills and their quality of life. If teachers were to follow this “10 minute rule”, there wouldn’t only be an increase in students work ethic, but their stress levels would decrease. Students who are less

In a study General Society conducted, 16% of teens viewed themselves as workaholics, 39% said they felt under constant pressure to do more than they can handle and 64% cut back on sleep to do the things they need to do. As these tasks are quite time consuming, students state that homework is the most out of all the unpaid activities they do throughout the day, as 60% complete 2 hours and 20 minutes on average each day (CBC news, 2007). The amount of homework students receive on average daily has greatly increased in the past 15 years, which concerns parents. Homework interferes with students’ lives outside of school, a student’s overall health, and consumes countless hours, which is why it should be limited to a reasonable amount.

In recent years, the abolition of homework has been a hotly debated topic in the educational field. During the early 20th century, educators held the belief that homework strengthened students minds and created a sense of responsibility as well as developed good time management skills. However, in recent years, growing concerns that homework interferes with home activities and takes valuable free time out of student’s lives have gotten more and more attention. Research has also shown that excessive amounts of homework has lead to tremendous amounts of stress for students, as well as parents. In China, unfinished and excessive amounts of homework has lead students to commit suicide. Schools assign and expect too

In the first place, homework should not be assigned because it has a negative impact on the student's ability to focus. The lack of focus developed can lead to negative habits. According to the Journal of Experimental Education, students spend an average of 3.1 hours on homework every night (Strauss). Exhaustion created from the hours spent on homework leads to the lack of focus and the development of bad habits such as cheating. On the contrary, others believe homework can build important characteristics such as independence and responsibility (Reilly). Although this may be true, homework could help students develop negative characteristics such as cheating. Donald L. McCabe a professor at Rutgers University and the leading cheating researcher states, “there has always been struggling students who cheat to survive, but more and more, there are students at the top who cheat to thrive” (Pérez-Peña). In conclusion, students can become exhausted and lack focus due to homework and can develop bad characteristics.

The majority of students have, at one point or another, wished for less homework. For some student’s homework is not a big issue but for other students it can take hours and even days to do all their homework. That wasted time could be used for enjoyment or learning life skills instead of homework. Nine in ten high school students reported feeling stressed about homework (Galloway 4). So, should students get less homework? Yes, students should receive less homework because it improves their well-being by reducing stress and its impacts on health, increasing leisure time, and showing that homework does not affect grades significantly.

A study from the Nationwide Children’s Hospital shows that the average teenager gets between 7 and 7 ¼ hours of sleep. However, the majority of teens need between 9 and 9 ¼ hours every night. One of the main contributions to sleep deprivation is a result of large quantities of homework received daily. Due to high levels of stress and vast amounts of homework, teens tend to sleep less than the normal requirement to maintain good health. For this reason, there needs to be an adequate amount of homework given to learn a subject without overloading to the extent that students are so overwhelmed they can’t keep up and learn well. If teachers could work with one another, they could spread out their assignments, notes, and study guides throughout the week instead of assigning as well as making papers due on the same day as other classes. Therefore, this allows students to focus on other activities such as sports practices, band rehearsals, church, and even jobs that require long working shifts while balancing their school work. Because of the amount of homework given on a daily basis, students are losing their individual freedom to do anything other than study as well as acquiring an unbalanced life where they’re almost being forced to choose between schoolwork or other activities.

Lastly, homework results in a combination of corresponding negative physical and mental effects within students. In the survey conducted on high schoolers in California, 56% of participants admitted homework as their primary stressor, while less than 1% said homework was not a stressor (Strauss). Regarding physical symptoms, 72% of students disclosed their constant state of anxiety over school work, resulting in sleep deprivation, headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, stomach pain, and the lack of stability in their lives (Strauss). Over 80% of the students encountered a physical symptom in the timespan of a month, 44% of whom experienced three or more in that time period (Strauss). In addition to this, parents argued their children do not have enough time to complete chores, a skill that also trains a sense of responsibility within adolescents (Ponte). Furthermore, homework limits a child’s development of social skills, as it leaves them with little time to interact with friends (Ponte). In addition to the shortage of social interactions among friends, adolescents have limited time to converse with their family members as well. For example, junior Julia Jones was assigned a group project over Winter Break, a time specifically created for a vacation from school (Ponte). As expected, both of Julia’s partners were on vacation—one of which being out of country (Ponte). Julia experienced high levels of stress as she and her group members reached to finish the project before their

Have you ever been overly stressed or stayed up all night because of homework? Well according to Dr. Craig Canapari, sleep deprivation and severe stress in students is caused by early school start times and heavy homework amounts. This not only affects teenagers, but it is also an issue for younger children. 90% of teenagers are sleep deprived, which can have various consequences pertaining to their health, safety and overall well being. About 15% of teenage students have over 2 hours of homework per night, some even having 3, 4 or even 5 HOURS OF HOMEWORK! I recently sent out a survey to my classmates and I discovered that 36.8% of my classmates were spending an hours to an hour and a half on homework. I also found out that 31.6% of them were spending 2 hours or more on their homework, which is more than the recommended amount for children our age. Some may think this is helpful to their academic career, but it can actually be very detrimental. In fact, students can stay up doing homework for so long that they become sleep deprived and when you are sleep deprived, it becomes very challenging to retain information. So really, when students are doing hours of homework and aren’t retaining any information because of sleep deprivation, every single benefit that a homework assignment may have to offer is lost! Many people believe that homework is helpful, not harmful, but this is a lie. In fact, there is not much evidence to suggest that homework for students below high school

The debate over homework has become a controversial one throughout the years. Most of the general population is on the uprise to stop homework, while education providers try to endure its existence. While the general population see homework as a burden and unnecessary, the real idea of homework creates an obvious path of success. Part of that path to success is do to the instructors use of homework in the correct manner. While the other path, is the completion and practice a student puts forth for the understanding of the topic at hand. We create the sense of, why homework? Previous research has helped show a usefulness of homework throughout our education system (e.g. Kenny, 2013; Marzano, 2007; Jorgenson, 2013; Griffith, 2013; Dejka, 2014). While research has been conducted, there is never one concise choice that everyone can agree with. That is why the topic of homework is of such high debate. The idea of homework, though, gives us the opportunity to expand our learning and preparing us for what lies ahead.