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Julia Rodinec

Mrs. Storer

11/15/2019

English 3H, Block 1

Homework: Are we receiving too much?

Students receive education everyday all across the United States. However, the day of

education does not end when the last school bell rings. It can continue for ten minutes to five

hours due to homework. Would you want to go to work for hours on end? Schooling is a child’s

form of work. However, we as students are expected to work for longer hours than most working

adults. Issues such as lack of sleep, rising stress, and the lack of free time are becoming more

apparent for students because of the overwhelming amount of homework.

Education and learning is essential for success in life, but why does there have to be

extensive amounts of homework? Students collectively have an average of five to six hours of

sleep each night instead of the recommended 8 hours each night because of homework. Many

schools have made the switch to lesser or no homework to improve students sleep schedules and

they have found that there has been no change in their standardized testing scores. At one school

in San Francisco the teachers decided that homework should be meaningful and not time

consuming. They also established that homework should not be given over a weekend or break.

From this they learned that the students were less stressed and able to improve their participation

due to sleeping the allotted amount of hours. Yes, each school and teacher may have their own

method to the madness, but what could teachers try to implement at schools around the nation?

Many teachers have implemented the idea of a ten minute rule. The ten minute rule is where each

grade adds on ten minutes of homework, from ten minutes for first grade up to two hours for
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High Schoolers. This rule allows for students to still grow in their education while allowing

students to have time to spend with family or do extracurriculars. Extracurriculars are very

important for children to be a part of. Students throughout the nation have lost the ability to

enjoy fresh air, sports, and family time. Many students cannot begin to count the times that they

skip out on outings because they had to do homework or study. Many students, even after school

they have to come home and work well past midnight to complete homework. Would you deny a

young child from going to a park because they have to do homework? Would you make your

teenager quit their sport because they don’t have time for homework and sleep? How would you

feel if you only had five hours of sleep each night?

Overall students should not have excessive amounts of homework because of the inability

to have proper sleep, mental health issues such as stress, and a decrease in free time and

extracurriculars. It is not okay to put these issues upon young people and expect them to handle

it. Would you want this stress placed upon your shoulders?
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Works Cited

“Should Students Have Homework?” Hey Teach!, 9 Aug. 2018,

https://www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/should-students-have-homework1808.html

Pinksker, Joe. “The Cult of Homework.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 Mar. 2019,

https://www. Theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/homework-research-how-

much/585889/