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Josie Bunnell

Ms. Crowell

English 11: 3

6 November 2018

Homework is not the “Galloway Way”

The Galloway School 2018-2019 ​UL Handbook​ focuses on describing the school as a

positive, safe, and stress-free environment. The Handbook says, “Faculty members feel strongly

that The Galloway School should be a healthy and safe environment for all our students” (11).

Although the school generally meets these goals, there is one thing that fails to match with the

Mission Statement: homework. The tremendous amount of homework assigned to each student

has many dreadful outcomes. While teachers may believe that homework is necessary in order

for students to do well in their classes, I believe that it only adds more stress to the students and

negatively impacts their health, positivity, and passion for learning since it is normally

unimportant and excessive.

In order to obtain a teacher’s perspective on this issue, I interviewed a Galloway math

teacher who believes that homework is necessary for the proper education of students. The

teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, stated, “[Homework is necessary because] there

needs to be practice of the skills that are taught in class. There’s usually not enough time in class

for practice.” Although this is a valid argument, this still does not change the fact that it can

negatively impact the students’ mental health and restricts their time for out of school activities

they enjoy. A solution to this would be to make homework optional. For instance, students who

need extra practice or feel that they need to review the inclass concepts can do extra work out of
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school in order to catch up. This would give students time for their extracurricular activities and

would lessen the homework overall. Students would only need to work on the classes that they

struggled with that day resulting in a much less stressful night.

In the Mission Statement, it is repeated many times that the school’s main concern is the

health and safety of the students: “The few rules at The Galloway School exist for the wellbeing,

health, and safety of the students” (6). I believe that Galloway achieves this rule in all aspects but

homework. A student staying up until 3 a.m. doing homework rather than getting a good night's

sleep is the opposite of healthy behavior. If the teachers really care about their students’

wellbeing and health, they would be sure not to assign too much homework to ensure they are

getting enough sleep. Not getting enough sleep can also affect the students’ ability to participate

in class the next day. It is foolish for a teacher to expect to have a rich class discussion the day

after assigning four hours of homework since all the students will be incredibly tired. From

personal experience, I know that when I stay awake to study, I do worse the next day. The

teacher may argue to start homework sooner in the day so that the student will not stay up late

doing homework, but most students participate in many extracurricular activities, making it

impossible for them to start homework sooner.

If homework directly affects the wellbeing and health of the students, it can also affect

the students’ positivity. The handbook also mentions, “The school seeks to maintain a safe,

positive environment for students and staff” (8). I believe that it is hard for students to be

“positive” when they are at extreme levels of stress caused by homework. I interviewed Sophie

Pike, a Galloway student, about her thoughts on the relation between homework and positivity.

She said, “The more homework I have, the more stressed I get, and the more stressed I get, the
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more mentally and emotionally drained I feel.” Some teachers may argue that they do not give

that much homework, but when the time it takes to complete each assignment is added up,

because of the seven period schedule, a student can have seven hours or more each night. I

believe that if the Galloway administration wanted more positivity from students, the teachers

would be told to significantly lessen the daily homework load which would result in the students

being more positive and willing to learn during school hours.

Elliott Galloway, founder of The Galloway School, is well known for his famous quote,

“Play the game of learning, not the game of school.” He based Galloway off of this motive but I

believe that the massive amounts of homework assigned to the students directly contradicts it.

When teachers assign homework that brings the students to extreme stress levels, it is not

“playing the game of learning.” In order to play the game of learning, the teacher must get the

students passionate about learning by not constantly stressing them out to the point of failure.

When teachers assign large amounts of homework every day, the students will begin to despise

their classes and will not get excited to learn, which opposes Mr. Galloway’s famous quote. I

asked a student for her thoughts on this issue and she anonymously said, “I think it would be

more ‘playing the game of learning’ if we did our homework with our teachers so we can

understand it better.” I agree with this because I personally feel more motivated to learn when I

fully understand the concept we are learning in class. Some teachers may argue that homework is

crucial for students to complete outside of class because it is necessary to practice the concepts

that we learn in class. I believe that whether homework can help a student or not, it only adds to

the students’ stress level and opposes Mr. Galloway’s famous quote.
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A solution to this issue would be to eliminate homework or make it optional. If students

feel like they do not understand the concept that was reviewed in class, there will be an optional

homework assignment available to them to help them understand. If homework was made

optional, lessened, or even eliminated, it would positively impact the students health, safety,

positivity, and passion for learning.

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Work Cited

The Galloway School. 2018-2019 UL Handbook.

The Galloway School, 2018,

https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1536069096/galloway/irpllghg1drqfyn0xfni/UL-H

andbook.pdf.