Homework Is Too Much Homework

Brian Sztabnik’s podcast Talks with Teachers, episode 51 “Is Homework Helpful?” is a quick episode for teachers on the go. Taken from an article written on Edutopia, Sztabnik discusses five questions teachers should ask themselves when assigning homework. Sztabnik begins the podcast describing how much time his young nephew spends forty to fifty minutes up to double that amount when distractions and breaks are factored in on assignments. He cites that the National PTA recommends teachers assign 10-20 minutes of homework for first graders and increases that amount by 10 minutes each year. Consequently, by following this recommendation, students will spend at least 137,160 minutes doing homework from 1st to 12th grade. That equals 2,280 hours or 95 straight days of homework. Students in Finland get around a half an hour of homework but still score very high on International tests.

We should not have have homework the reason is because we get out of school so late and we could have to do things after we get out of school like cleaning,cooking or we could have to go somewhere. Like it says in source 2 "it can be stressful on students and young kids by cramming for to much work.This really is not that effective.

The debate regarding exactly how much homework is too much homework has been an ongoing debate for years. As of right now, there seems to be no end in sight for this debate. Various adults believe that if children do not obtain homework, then they are not learning properly. However, numerous children are obtaining a substantial amount of homework per night, as well as per each class. Once a child exceeds a certain amount of homework, then it is no longer beneficial for the child’s education. An excessive amount of homework can essentially become harmful to the child’s education. As a result, teachers are struggling with finding the right amount of homework to assign to students. The National Education Association as well as the National Parent-Teacher Association endorse the “10-minute rule” for teachers to follow when assigning homework to students. If a child is assigned an excessive amount of homework, then the child might experience more harm than good when attempting to complete the assigned homework.

After a long day of school, students are tired, stressed, and overworked. This is often something that is ignored when it comes to students of all ages. Homework provides a heavy load that can add additional stress and time on a student’s shoulders. Schools should be making sure that students are receiving enough work throughout the day, to make sure kids do not have the worry of homework when school is over. Students who receive lots of homework, may not have enough time in the evenings to be around family, friends and enjoy the rest of their day.

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.

No homework ever again? That would be nice. But, perhaps it’s possible. There are many problems with homework that, if addressed, could persuade school boards to get rid of homework for good. Homework has a negative effect on middle school and high school students because it limits their free time, keeps them up at night, and discourages out of school activities.

Millions of students across the globe have other activities and responsibilities to take care of other than school. When school is released for the day, they expect to have time to complete those responsibilities, but instead they have 4 different packets of homework. In this day and age, you would think school boards would recognize that students don’t only go to school Monday through Friday. Daily homework needs to be limited in order to give opportunity to other students that may want to take on a job or other hobbies.

On top of too much homework making standardized test scores lower, much of this homework is just busy work (Wolchover). Many teachers ask their student to re-write pages in a textbook. This just causes the student to spend time on something that has no real purpose. Remedial work has no positive effect on students. It just takes up more time ("Too Much Homework Can Cause Stress, Depression and Lower Grades, Studies Suggest"). Even homework that is useful in some way should be limited. Studies show that a student's time is more useful when they play an instrument or a sport. Parent's want their student to be good at many things. It is more important to be a well-rounded person than to ace all of your tests (Wolchover).

Homework not only takes up time but it pressures and stresses kids out. “Fifty-six per cent of the students in the study cited homework as a primary stressor in their lives, despite the fact that most U.S. students' homework load has remained relatively stable since 1984, according to the Brookings Institute's 2014 Brown Center Report on American Education”(Daily Mail Reporter). “Fifty-six per cent of the students in the study cited homework as a primary stressor in their

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

High School students shouldn't have more than two hours of homework a night due to sports, work, and their social lives. Just imagine if you had to go to work all day, then come home and go to work again until two in the morning. How effective would that make you in the morning? You would simply just be distressed and unable to work the whole next day and then before you know it you have to stay up and work until two in the morning again. Now relate that to kids and homework, when they have to stay up and do it after a long day that they already had. And after other activities that students have had they don't have time to do that much homework.

Envision...You are back in the eighth grade. After a long day of school, sports, practice and music lessons, you had just got to bed a little after one in the morning. Why were you awake until one in the morning? No, You weren’t on your electronics watching Netflix, you were stressing over your homework and your math test for the next day. Why didn’t you complete your homework earlier in the night? It’s not because you were lazy, you didn’t get home from all your extracurricular activities until eight pm. By the time you ate dinner and showered it was nine pm. Then you are still counted upon to centralize all your attention on your essay due the next day and your math and social studies test the next day and your five page

    With these long school days children don’t have much time to go out and be a kid.  By the time children get home and finish all their homework, there really isn’t much time for sports or spending time with friends and family. Long hours of school put too much pressure on students.  According to the state, students are supposed to have three and a half hours of homework a night. Students are assigned about 17 hours of homework a week. There is a total of 168 hours in a week and 64 of those hours are taken from us by school and homework.  Out of the 24 hours in a day school, homework, and sleep take 18 hours, which leaves students with just 6 hours to do things.  Combine that with sports and after school activities, the average practice for most sports are 2 to 3 hours, which leaves the student with only 3 hours for themselves. If you add dinner into the equation which can take up to an hour ,then students only have two hours a day. Some students also have chores which can take up to an hour or even sometimes more.  What can a student do with only 1 hour of time a day for their personal goals.

Students should only spend enough time on homework so that the subject is reinforced and not just a waste of time. The national PTA suggest that from K-3 grades there should be no more than 20 minutes a day, for 4-6 grades there should be 20-40 minutes of homework, and from 7-12 grades time varies do to types of subjects and number of subjects taken(KidSource). Anymore than these recommended amount of times is seen excessive by the national PTA. Surprisingly U.S. students are working as hard as Asians: 24% of eighth graders do more then two hour of homework compared to Japans 28% and Germanys 17%(Brimelow108). Are we working to hard, researchers don't think so, U.S. student grades are improving. As of 1996 one in every sixth grader does more than an hour of