Hillsborough High School Homework

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

This article was about changing the delivery of homework to give kids more autonomy and relatedness to improve their attitude and motivation towards homework.

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

Students in high school get anywhere from 1 hour a night to 4+ hours a night of homework adding even an extra 30 minutes for that one class can stop students from wanting to learn. After a long day at school and a meeting for a club you go home and immediately get started on all of that day’s work, and after a while you get the feeling of being “burnt out.” This can stop a child or teenager from wanting to learn in the end, may even make the student hate the subject itself, and if students are given too much homework it can make them have anxiety and horrible stress.

It has been said that “with all the homework students start to think less creatively and they might lose the learning to try and avoid challenging tasks” (Kohn). The fact that homework is able to make the students lose what they are learning is perhaps the most important reason that is is not beneficial. Homework has been seen as a way to increase learning and practice what students are learning, but with too much homework it can defeat the purpose. Students are getting much more work that is harder, because the schools are receiving stricter standards from the government that they must follow. But “the main effect ‘of the drive for so-called higher standards in schools is that the children are too busy to think,’as said by John Holt in 1959” (Kohn). Students are not being able to think creatively, because they are tied to standards and homework. “For students to become lifelong learners and good people, we need to work with them rather than using techniques like rewards and punishments, which merely do things to them” as said by Alfie Kohn, author of the book The Schools our Children Deserve (Kohn). Students see large amounts of homework as a punishment, and as said by Alfie Kohn that “merely does things to them” (Kohn). Homework should not be given in amounts where it starts to be counterproductive, and is no longer helping the students learn or think

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.

Homework is very stressful on students, due to the fact that students may have other activities to do and may have less time to spend on homework. “Homework is frequently the source of frustration, exhaustion, family conflicts, a lack of time for kids to pursue other interests and, perhaps most disturbingly, less excitement about learning” (Akman). With too much of homework for students each night they can get worn out from it and develop a dislike from learning. Homework can be the cause of many things and with much conflict from homework students can build up more stress which can harm their health. “Empirical studies have linked excessive homework to sleep disruption, indicating a negative relationship between the amount of homework, perceived stress and physical health” (LeTendre). Too much homework for students each night can raise their anxiety levels and cause more stress for the student. Homework now is more difficult for students to comprehend and can take hours to complete leading students to more and more stress each school

In the United States, according to the Institute of Education Sciences, “In fall 2015, about 50.1 million students will attend public, elementary, and secondary schools. Of these, 35.2 million will be in prekindergarten through grade 8 and 14.9 million will be in grades 9 through 12.” During attendance at these schools, students usually tend to receive homework that is assigned by the teacher to be completed on time outside of class instruction. With this distribution of homework, there has been a call to question the banning of this tool in most schools. However, there are numerous arguments to be made in the denial of banning homework.

In today's education system, its teachers are held to a standard where they are supposed to give carrying amounts of homework to their students. While on paper this sounds like an obvious decision, recent studies have shown that while homework is helpful, the content that is on the homework can be unimportant or irrelevant. Often times homework is most important for students in high school and should be utilized more effectively. Therefore the amount of homework should remain the same, but at the same time be challenging and productive as well as relevant to the topic at hand.

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.

Most high school students around the world are faced with outrageous amounts of homework that consumes majority of their lives, from the moment they arrive home to the time they need to be sleeping. If students have homework taking over their lives there is no real balance between school life and socializing also with the amount of homework given out is causing major stress on students and causing conflict within families.

The younger generations have been assigned an extreme amount of homework in school. The homework has overwhelmed many of them making them dislike school or even wondering the point of it. Education today is taught on the same level to all students but every child is different on their ways of learning, their attitude towards it is different. It is sad to know that even an Act created by a president titled “No Child Left Behind” has failed in an article by Kenneth Jost critics say that law has hurt education by overemphasizing standardized tests and unfairly labeling schools as underperforming without providing necessary help to improve. Students should be taught in a group and one on one at their own pace not the pace that some teacher’s paper says. Today, schools are issuing an abundant amount of homework to pupils ones which has caused a lot of stress, a dislike of learning, and even have caused grades to drop.

In 2008 the MetLife American Teacher series polled students, teachers, and parents on their feelings and thoughts about homework and the results were as follows; one-third of parents rated the quality of homework given as fair or poor, one-quarter of students say that they as if their homework is busywork and unrelated to what they were learning in class (MetLife). But, one of the leading reasons that people support homework in elementary levels is because they believe it can kick-start healthy and even necessary habits. These habits include; time-management, study skills, independent working, etc. It is unrealistic to expect students to gain important life skills from poorly created and unrealistic homework.

Many teachers assign large amounts of homework to students. Unfortunately this causes a great deal of stress, loss of time, or decrease in homework quality and effectiveness. Too much homework is not worth the extra effort put out by teachers and students, and teachers should take consideration to the well-being of the students by encouraging them to learn and accomplish the schoolwork effectively and correctly. Student’s careers and lives often depend on what they learn in school, and what is taught can make an enormous impression on their opinions and attitudes, so it is imperative that they are taught in a manner that is effective and understandable. Large amounts of homework are not the most effective ways to teach.

Ample research has been done on the correlation between homework and academic success with many opposing views. Research has shown that homework can be linked to better grades, improved standardized test scores, and more prepared students entering the post-secondary arena; however, this correlation is weak and the opposition has equal ammunition to support that there is no correlation between homework and academic success. There have been movements to abolish homework as well as movements to increase homework. Research has been done to show how homework has a negative effect on students as well as how it has a positive effect. Homework may be beneficial to academic success, but must have meaning to the student, must be measurable by