The Negative Effects Of Schoolwork Stress On Students

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.

All parents want to see their kids succeed in school. However, by the time a student graduates they will then feel a sudden urge of relief after have encountered a significant amount of pressure throughout their high school years. The pressure is not only received by the school, but by society and the parents as well. Several students have experienced staying up long nights to finish homework, a loss of interest in a hobby, or an academic burnout at one point. It is common sense for one to say that school is not easy. Between trying to manage homework from all of their classes, studying for multiple different tests at once, and trying to maintain a decent social life, school can become very stressful for a young person. Too much pressure should not be put on high school students because it can lead to academic failure, truancy, and depression.

Nowadays there are so many problem in the schools of America. The biggest problem school faces is stress. Stress is a state of mental emotional strain or tension on the brain or body. One of the ways kids usually get stressed is from homework. Teachers today assign about one homework sheet for each class which means we get at least seven items of homework to take home a day. Another area of stress for students is grades. Students feel a lot of pressure from their parents and teachers to get good grades. If students don’t get passing grades, they have to redo the classes and this is very stressful. Finally, kids feel stressed because of all the pressure they get on the end of trimester or semester, all the teachers telling if you don’t

One of the biggest lies ever said about teen years is that they’re “the best years of your life.” If you were to ask any high schooler in today’s world how he/she feels about that phrase, they may think the exact opposite. Education dates back to the earliest human life. The American Education System offers a cosmic field of choices for all students. With so many choices, students get to choose different subjects. With all those different subjects, students become busy with a lot of classwork and/or homework, thus creating stress on students. Students who are stressed by school work, such as testing, studying, and homework, should be given less to do, because it would improve student’s energy and relaxation.

Roberto Nevilis, a teacher in Venice, changed history when he created the first use of homework in 1095. Since then, students’ opinions of homework haven’t changed. Roberto Nevilis started homework as a way of punishing his students for not doing their work. Nowadays, homework is assigned to help students receive more practice for what they learned in school that day. Despite the good intentions that homework is supposed to provide, it actually proves more harm than good. In the twenty-first century, the increase of homework negatively affects American teens’ sleep schedules, stress levels, and after school opportunities. Parent involvement in homework can turn into parent interference.

To an untutored observer of my nightly homework routine, it might appear that I am attempting to deal with an intensely emotional situation. However, despite the fact that many assignments are given approximately a week before the due date, I always manage to leave them until the night before. Nevertheless, as a relatively exceptional student I am able to escape punishment with this on a regular basis. That is, until my junior year, when I attempted to juggle three AP classes along with a handful of honors courses. Finally, I began to notice how detrimentally this tendency affected my schoolwork. Stress added up throughout the year, and by the time June rolled around it felt as though I had aged at least a decade. Thankfully, the summer months

“ 9-13 year olds said they were more stressed by academics than any other stressors-even bullying or family problems”. This quote demonstrates how stressful homework can be on elementary aged students. Elementary students should not have the added responsibility of homework. For example, an average student of that age is at school for at least 6 hours a day, then they have to go to daycare of some form until their parents are off work. After that it’s already almost 6:00P.M. After two hours of homework, that leaves little to no time for social interaction with others. Children at this age are at a very critical time in their mental and emotional development, social interaction plays a large role in their development in those areas.

School can be stressful. It can cause anxiety or extreme stress. It can even end in mental breakdowns. I think that mental health should be a more recognized thing in schools. I feel as though it is often overlooked and should be addressed. We should be focusing on making sure that students are mentally well and able to do work than if they got their homework done.

Stress is evident in all our lives. It is correlated to various issues, like anxiety, depression, and back pain and neck issues. According to stress.com, eight out of 10 college students have experienced stress in the past three months. The period that college students are going through is called emerging adulthood. Emerging adulthood is the period during ages 18-25 years where students are growing up and learning the struggles of being an adult. Stress is in all aspects of our lives. In the cognitive domain, students with time management skills can decrease the amount of stress in their lives. In the emotional domain, depression and anxiety are related to life stresses, such as financial difficulties and losing family members or friends. In the social domain, workplace relationships influence the amount of stress a person can have as well as their mental well-being. In the physical domain, back and neck pain issues are related to stresses in college. Stress affects college students’ wellbeing in all aspects of their lives.

For the essay, I followed Watson and Tharp (2013) guidelines and started to monitor situations that triggered my perfectionism, my thoughts, emotions and behaviour over couple of weeks. I used a thought record associated for perfectionism (Egan et al., 2010) because it allows me to write down my cognitions and behaviours associated with my perfectionism and improve the validity of the formulation. Rees, McEvoy & Nathan (2005) examined the influence of homework among 60 depressed and 34 anxious individuals. Finding revealed an improvement in anxiety symptoms in response to completion of thought record.

Japanese parents do not like seeing their children fall behind in school, and they go to an extreme level of parenting which is a main key point of stress onto their children. Fallows uses a quote “Pass with four, fail with five” referring to the amount of hours their children should sleep (204). Four hours of sleep lets the student have more time to study than five hours of sleep. Extreme levels of parenting lead to excessive pressure on their children, and many teachers and parents “complain bitterly” about their education system, but little is done to change it (Fallows 204). Pressure on students may lead to stress and depression that can change their lives forever. It can affect teenagers, and young adults by encouraging them to do illegal things such as drinking, smoking, and doing drugs because pressure would change their behaviors, attitudes, and even their morals.

The health of students is impacted because of excessive amounts of homework. According to the American Psychological Association, researchers have said, “The average high school student can only withstand 10 minutes multiplied by their grade of homework.” This means that a 12th grader should only be given 120 minutes of homework a night, or 2 hours of homework. Many seniors in high school stay up until one in the morning trying to complete all of their work from each of their AP classes, and are trying to maintain a good GPA as they get ready to apply to college. Staying up to complete these ongoing homework assignments leads to sleep deprivation, which will result in poor focus in class the next morning. According to research, sleep deprivation can eventually lead to depression and chronic illnesses. Students have to balance the workload for each class in order to complete all the assignments for that night. This leads to excessive amounts of stress which has also been proven to lead to depression, suicide, and too much or too little eating. This could unfortunately lead to obesity or anorexia. There are students who have actually committed suicide because they were not able to complete all of their assignments for the next day. Five students from New York, along with others from Virginia, California and Massachusetts took their own lives because of the amount of stress that was put on them from the schools assigning too much homework that was difficult to get done on time.

This paper offers insight to how the education system places an abundant amount of pressure for teenagers to perform in all the different aspects of their lives. These areas include: academics, athletics, and social lives. This pressure creates an enormous amount of stress to the students. Stress is one of the leading causes of anorexia. Anorexia is when one restrains themselves from consuming food and can also be demonstrated by over-exercising. The huge amount of pressure and stress forced upon one in school is not the cause of anorexia, however it certainly triggers it.

Growing up with a household containing mostly girls, it can become a stressful environment. My parents have always pushed my two sisters and I to be the best. In school I was the child that was struggling while both my younger sisters were top of their classes. I had to work to earn my grades and make sure I was hanging on along with my sisters. As the oldest my sisters would always look up to me, and I wanted to be the best example, but that would but a lot of stress on me. Since freshman year I started preparing for my life, touring colleges, and deciding what I would like to major in. My home environment was stressful, but school was even harder because I have wanted to succeed in life for the longest time, even at a young age. When I discovered dance, it allowed me to become my own person and take some stress off me.

Based on these findings from research done previously I feel that this study is important. Firstly, we need to understand what causes the stressors and how it affects the individual. For example, if you have an entire university with stressed students, not being productive, not performing well academically perhaps thinking of dropping out of university because of the overwhelming anxiety; it can be detrimental to the institution in terms of status and students in terms of individual realisation. Secondly, we soon have to formulate effective and efficient stress management guidelines as we