Throughout the first 8 years of a kid’s schooling life, homework is just an addition to the day. It takes about 10 to 20 minutes, and on the longest days 30. But as they come into high school, the load of after school work piles up faster than they can say it. What started out as a couple of assignments turns into an essay, five math papers, several chemistry labs that require an amazing amount of brain power, practicing for band or choir, reading a novel for English, dialectical journals and this is not including the extra time after school that one might spend doing extracurricular activities such as sports, theatre or any clubs. The amount of homework students are given is ridiculous considering the amount of time they just spent in school. School might as well run an extra four hours.
Teenagers require more sleep than younger children and adults. The average amount of time a teen should be sleeping is 9.4 hours to 10 hours. Yet if they have all this homework laid out in front of them, it’s a little difficult to rest as much as is needed. It is not healthy to not get the right amount of sleep.
Students in higher level classes can spend upwards to 21 hours a week on homework. This is not healthy. Not only have these students spent all day sitting in a classroom paying attention, but they have already done assignments in class. They cannot handle the four to five hours of homework a night and maintain a healthy body and mindset. All this homework is creating frazzled, stressed students.
Homework is made to help what you learned in class settle into the brain, not to teach new material or be over challenging. Bonus problems that are a little more difficult are alright, but making students put out even more brain power after an exhausting eight hours of constant brain activity is wrong. It is understandable that AP and Pre-AP students should receive more work than regular class students because of the amount of credit they get on their GPA, but loading them up with projects and labs and reading is not going to make their work ethic increase or help them in the long run.
If the teachers want to give homework that is their right. There is no legal limit to the amount of homework that can be given, but the “10 minute rule” would be better for students in the long run. This rule states that children are to be given 10 minutes of homework per grade level they are in. This means that a freshman should only be given 90 minutes of homework and a sophomore 100. This is a far stretch from the four, five hours that some students spend.
Homework is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing that can help students remember class work from that day and not forget what they learn. But it’s been taken way too far. All the teacher’s say that college will be harder, there will be way more homework in college, but perhaps the colleges should look into the 10 minute rule too. It would keep their student body, just like it would ours, not only smart and learned, but healthy and sane.