Homework is important to reinforce what students learn in school, but too much of it can be a problem. The amount of homework that teachers assign students each and every night is not helpful at all. Coming home from school and having 3 or 4 more hours of homework does not allow students to spend much time with friends or family, or get a good night of sleep. It also does not give time for students to have part-time jobs, or do community service. Homework helps, but after doing 1 or 2 hours of it, students usually start to slack off, causing them to do poorly on homework and affecting their grades. The work becomes very boring and monotonous. Having too much homework causes students to share signs of stress, and the less homework that we have to worry about, the less stress we would have. Less homework would be more effective, and would benefit students in many ways.
After going to school for 6.5 hours, 3 or 4 hours of homework is not necessary. Shouldn’t students be able to have a life outside of school? If a student is included in any sports, they may not get home until later in the evening. After rushing through dinner, they must finish homework. There is no way to do it all, and get a good night of sleep as well. Spending all this time on homework does not allow us to spend much time with friends or family. Teachers and faculty at school want teenagers to have strong relationships with our family and peers, don’t they? If our homework takes up all of our time, how are we supposed to fit 4 hours of community service into our schedule? Some kids may also want to get, or already have a part-time job. With as much homework as we have been getting, there is very little time to spend working on something other than schoolwork. In the 2004 February Teaching Magazine, it said, “Be sure that you also never use homework to complete what you couldn't finish during class or to introduce students to new or complicated subject matter.” (1) It is when teachers do this that we have a large amount of homework. The subject being learned may be difficult or completely new which makes it take the longest. Homework has helped, however when a teacher assigns too much homework, I don’t learn anything. Too much homework can hurt a student more than it helps them, by keeping them from getting a good night of sleep, and not allowing them to keep relationships with friends and family.
After a couple of hours of homework, students start to slack off, and the quality of homework progressively decreases. Close to the end of doing 1 or 2 hours of homework, students start to get uninterested in the topic, and the effort we put into the work decreases. Teachers do want us to put effort into our homework don’t they? It takes so long to complete the homework because concentration on what we are working on at home is much less than when we are at school. If homework was quick and to the point then we students would be able to better take in the information, and learn more from it. Homework itself is very boring, especially after getting home from doing a great amount of work in school. Staring at a piece of paper, or the screen of the computer hour upon hour is just so frustrating, and makes students want to rip up the piece of paper, or throw the computer out the window. But, since we can’t do that, we just start to give up on the homework. Therefore, it affects our grades in one-way or another. I am sure that the teachers at school do not want to hurt our grades by assigning homework, do they? I have to admit, teachers do a great amount of work themselves. They have to correct homework, tests, and quizzes, and teach students so much information in one school year. However, if teachers just assigned less homework, it would be one less thing that they would have to do. As always, less homework would make school more interesting, and make life easier for both teachers and students.
Due to the large amount of homework assigned each night, large amounts of stress are also put on top of it. Homework can be helpful, however, too much of it can be stressful. Why do teachers give us so much homework? Don’t you know that it is stressful? Homework is a pile of rocks that just keeps weighing down on students, and we keep getting more and more stressed. In health class, we learned that stress could be unhealthy. Do teachers want us to live unhealthy lives? According to book 1 in the Volume Library Encyclopedia, “stress can eventually cause illnesses such as asthma, heart disease, migraine headaches, and high blood pressure.” (26) Why is so much homework assigned when stress can cause such serious illnesses? Yes, we will always have some stress put upon us, and homework in general is a good thing, but too much homework can be unsafe to our health.
Teachers are especially hardworking people, making an effort to teach students everything that they need to know, but the amount of homework that they assign every single night is not helping as much as they think. 3 or 4 hours of homework is not needed after going to school for more than half of the day. After a few hours of homework, our concentration and work quality starts to decrease, and is usually boring. Also, too much homework can cause teenagers to lead unhealthy lives by overloading us with stress. Therefore teachers, you need to choose whether you want us to be completely focused on school and homework, or to live healthy lives in which we have time to work in the community, and make a difference in the world.
