Horrible Homework
Why are you always so tired in the morning even though you didn’t stay up really late? Higher achievement isn’t caused by homework as so many teachers think. Homework has increased over 40% in the last 15 years and that number will keep increasing unless somebody does something. Homework is a horrible waste of time and it needs to stop. It’s a time consumer, a stress causer and isn’t good for a kid’s life.
My first reason why we need to get rid of homework is it takes up a ton of a kids time. We already have school for seven hours each day. That should be enough time to learn something well enough and if it isn’t for those few select people, they should study. Teachers don’t realize how much time the homework they assign takes. My school says that each night, homework should take up no more than thirty minutes of your time. My math homework alone takes about 1 to 3 hours to finish (usually about 2 hours).
Try adding studying Spanish, working on some sort of project, and writing this English paper on top of that. Then the worst part is after all that I still have to get a good nights rest and eat. It’s not like I don’t have after school activities to get to or other responsibilities to do. I simply don’t have time to do all that. So the first thing to go is the fun stuff.
No free time, no time for friends, and I can say goodbye to after school activities. ‘Free time plays a key role in fostering both creativity and emotional development, factors just as basic to long term success as academic gains’, says John Buell, a regular writer on labor and environmental issues. Also, a lot of this homework carries over to weekends too. “They’re in school for six-and-a-half hours a day,” Cheryl Weaver said of her children. “They don’t need to come home and do another two or three hours of homework.
That’s more than a full-time job.” What really makes me angry though is when I spend my time on busy work. Busy work is things that relate to what you’re learning but aren’t teaching you anything. For example, word searches, which is a huge time consumer, having to find every word and getting stuck on a word for half an hour. Also, coloring some map or cycle where you just have to stay inside the lines and not a tiny speck of white can be showing or your grade will drop dramatically. My second reason why we need to get rid of homework is it causes a lot of stress.
If you have a lot of homework like I do, you know what I mean. This stress builds up if you have a lot of homework that you have to get done before tomorrow, or even just a lot of homework. For example, I have to study for my Spanish test tomorrow but my final draft for my English paper is due tomorrow and its only half done, I’m still working on my math homework and it’s 5:00 P.M., by the time I finish it will be 6:00P.
M., and I have to eat dinner. There is simply not enough time to get all of this work done. In this situation I am under a lot of stress. Stress causes mistakes in your work because of rushing.
If I go back to check my work and there are a lot of mistakes, once I am done I have to go to sleep because it’s very late. If I don’t go back and check for mistakes because I’m tired I’ll get bad grades. The next morning I am tired and can’t concentrate during school. Therefore I have to bring more work home from school in order to get everything done. Stress is a vicious cycle and it is very hard to pull yourself out of it. My third and final reason of why teachers need to get rid of homework is because homework also can be hurtful to a kids life.
As I said before it takes up a lot of time and there’s no time for your friends so that friendship can grow apart and leave you apart from other people. ‘Some studies do find a relationship between homework and test scores,’ says Alfie Kohn a writer and speaker on human behavior, ‘but it tends to be small.’ Also, homework has been proven to cause anxiety, fatigue, and emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is when, once you’re done with your homework, you don’t have the energy to cope with other people and you start to not be yourself and let go of your emotions. You get angry quicker and frustrated easier.
‘A modest amount of independent work, say two hours a day, may well be appropriate for high school students.’ Says John Buell, ‘but let’s stop trying to buy school reform on the cheap and at the expense of children and their families. The place for our children to be doing independent work is the setting designed for such work, the schools themselves.’ Homework takes up a ton of time, is very stressful, and is bad for a kid’s life. These three reasons are why teachers need to stop giving kids any homework at all. Like I said before, ‘Horrible homework.
‘ Works Cited Does homework stress crimp kids’ family life, well-being? CNN. January 27 2008 http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/children/12/29/homework.stress/ gme, jp.
Homework is bad for you. January 27, 2008. http://gme.jp/arch/002487.html Homework is bad. Scholastic.
January 27, 2008. http://content.scholastic.com/browse/subarticle.jsp?id=2953 Why homework is bad for kids.
AlterNet. January 27, 2008 http://www.alternet.org/story/9682/
