How many hours do you spend on homework each night? Too many? Children in grades K-12 are all experiencing the issue of too much homework. In addition to the long hours of a school day, students find themselves working on homework to equal the hours of their parents work week. Even when they do not have extracurricular activities or sports, students are wasting their afternoon and nights doing their assignments. Although many students, parents, and teachers are now against homework, others say homework is helping students continue the leaning to at home and outside of school. Even though homework is beneficial outside of school, it is causing children to become more stressed, not improving children's overall school performance, lose sleep, and be unhealthy.

Every child or teen experiences stress; where is this stress coming from? According to Oxford Learning , studies show 56% of students consider homework a primary source of stress but according to Health Line , studies show less than 1% of students say homework isn’t a stressor. Grades as low as kindergartners are receiving 25 minutes of homework when they shouldn’t receive any at all, especially for their age and level of knowledge. High schoolers are given up to 3 to 4 hours of homework a night. Students are saying they get 3.5 hours of homework from each teacher every week. After sitting in a classroom for six hours each day, the last thing students want to do is go home and do three more hours of what they just learned. Because stress is becoming more profound in children, suicide rates have increased rapidly. According to Letters2President , the suicide rate among young adults ages 15-24, has tripled since the 1950’s. Also, suicide is the second most leading cause of death among students. Studies have shown, stress can lead to suicide. Thus proving that students are spending far too much time on homework, causing it to be the number one stressor in most teens.

There is a lot of talk about how homework is affecting children's grades in a negative way instead of doing the opposite. Research shows homework doesn’t improve a students performance in school, only decreases it. After a full day of learning, students become very drained and omit completing homework or rely on parent’s assistance. Due to incomplete homework, one’s grades start to slip. The purpose of school is to prepare you for your future and to increase knowledge. But, if an adult with a job does not receive homework, why should students? When spending many hours after school completing homework, students and parents almost have the same work week. Students should have six hours of in-school time and come home with time to relax and participate in sports or extracurricular activities. Homework should be benefiting students by taking home their knowledge and expanding it at home. Unfortunately, homework is not benefiting students and ends up causing them to lose motivation to do so because they had a full day of school and come home to more homework.
If students are spending hours upon hours doing homework, when do they sleep, eat, shower, or have fun? Homework can be tiring on the body. It causes a lack of sleep, headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and initiates poor eating habits. Parents have even turned to fast food as a faster alternative for meals. Also, students backs are getting damaged from heavy backpacks full of books and homework. When carrying a backpack on one shoulder, the spine can lean to the opposite side; stressing the middle back, ribs, and lower back more on one side than the other. Dr. David Siambanes did a study about backpacks and said “Research has shown that adults with severe back problems often had pain as kids. You can suffer all your life from this kind of injury” (Siambanes). These back pains can start early and last your whole life. Students say they feel like they are carrying suitcases on their back instead of a bag. These effects all hurt our bodies while we aren’t gaining anything positive out of homework. When students work on homework, they can’t keep up and meet their physical and social needs. When staying up for hours upon hours doing homework, students are losing their needed hours of sleep. According to Letters2President, studies show that 38% of teens have trouble falling asleep at night due to the excessive amount of homework. Every student doesn’t come right home and start their homework right away. Most students (especially those in high school) have mandatory sports, extracurricular activities, and jobs after school which doesn’t allow them to come home until usually around five o'clock. Then they spend their three to four hours of homework while losing time for sleep. For me personally, I have dance until nine o’clock almost every night throughout the week. This means I start my homework after school but still have some leftover which I cannot complete until about nine-thirty. I end up staying awake for hours after this, struggling to complete my assignments. Overall, homework is taking a toll of student’s bodies and health, which needs to be changed in order to keep them healthy and well kept.

In conclusion, homework should be abolished or at the very least cut down on the amount given for all schools. It proceeds to give students negative outcomes. This includes stress, not being beneficial for a student’s grades, loss of sleep, and. One idea proposed to fix this issue is the “10 minute” rule. This rule states that homework should be given for 10 minutes per grade; first grade gets 10 minutes, second grade gets 20 minutes, ninth gets 90 minutes, etc. This is a great solution because students are restricted on the same amount of homework each night and not have it vary each night. Lastly, homework is not a good idea for students because it is hurting our bodies and harming our future. Students are the future of our society and if schools are not preparing us for a serious future, then perhaps the homework policy needs to be greatly changed.

"Infographic: How Does Homework Actually Affect Students? | Oxford ...." 4 Oct. 2016. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.
"Is Too Much Homework Bad for Kids' Health? - Healthline." 11 Apr. 2017, Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.
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"UCR Newsroom: Heavy Packs Bring Kids Pain." 11 Aug. 2004. Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.