by Teah Sanchez, Guest Writer
According to the Wisconsin Department of Public education, grades 7-12 must have “at least 1,137 hours of direct pupil instruction” a year. In addition to attending school every week, students may also get assigned several hours of homework a night depending on the classes they are taking. This can be a difficult challenge for many, considering they may participate in sports or extracurricular activities.
Is all the hard work worth the sacrifice?
I conducted a survey and asked a total of 76 Indian Trail students some questions about homework.
When asked about how much time they spend on homework a night, 38.2 % of students said 0-30 minutes, 21.1% said 30 minutes-1 hour, 19.7% said 1.5 hours-2 hours, and 21.1% said more than 2 hours. The average answer for this question was 0-30 minutes.
Some possible causes for this common answer could be sports, hobbies, jobs, or extracurriculars. Homework is meant to help students practice the material they were taught in class and eventually master a skill or concept. However, if students are only spending between 0-30 minutes on homework, then how will they be able to master what they have learned in multiple subjects?
I asked the students if they felt like homework helps them. Zero said “Always”, 63.2% said “Only sometimes, but not really”, 18.4% said “No, it’s a waste of time”, and 18.4% said most of the time.
Considering the average answer was “only sometimes, but not really”, the amount of homework given may not serve its intended purpose for the majority of our students. Homework is meant to help us get a deeper understanding of a concept, but some of the students surveyed feel that it’s only helpful on occasion.
Homework is seen as a major source of stress as well. In one Stanford University study, researchers found from survey data that “56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data.”
More than half of the hard-working students that were surveyed said homework was a primary source of their daily stress.
Students are not the only ones with this belief. Alphie Kohn, a famous American author shared his views on homework in one of his books titled “The Homework Myth”. In the book, he says “As a rule, the point of homework generally isn’t to learn, much less to derive real pleasure from learning. It’s something to be finished. And until it is, it looms large in conversations, an unwelcome guest at the table every night.”
To some, homework provides little utility or benefit; instead, it sits in the back of a student’s mind all day waiting to be completed. This may cause a sense of dread and anxiety for hard-working students that could easily be avoided if the nightly homework amount decreased.\
ITA senior, Ali Maldonado, is quite familiar with the sense of dread that homework causes. When asked about the impact homework has on her life, she said that “homework has undoubtedly put a strain on [her] life. After extracurriculars and work, homework takes up the rest of [her] free time.” She said she has lost out on countless hours of sleep which has resulted in the quality of her work being poor.
We are left to wonder if the amount of homework assigned were reduced, students would not have to face the same struggles that Ali is currently facing.
Some students, however, feel differently about homework assignments. A middle school news website called The Link published their own editorial titled “Why Homework Should Be Banned”. One of the students they interviewed, Jackson Nichols, said that “the positives of having homework outweigh the negatives.” He elaborates on this by essentially saying that homework prepares individuals for the future. He does agree that homework can be time consuming, however he feels that learning how to balance homework and free time can help students learn how to manage their time more efficiently. Therefore, the more homework students get, the more they are forced to manage their time wisley. Despite Nichol’s beliefs, the editorial still makes it clear that “Homework deprives students of sleep and free time, causes frustration and stress, not to mention that most students work hard in school and shouldn’t have to spend their free time working on homework.” Teachers, therefore, should assign less homework, for it can result in sleep deprivation and an increase in stress levels.
Homework for certain subjects such as math and English is inevitable, but there are still ways to reduce the amount of homework that is currently being given. The key to making a change is communication. As students, it is our responsibility to communicate with our teachers and let them know about the struggles we are having with homework.
Teachers can also help reduce the amount of homework by providing their students with work time at the end of class or maybe even helping them start the assignment before they leave the classroom. In addition, teachers could look over the homework they’ve been giving students and see if there’s a way to revise the assignment so that it only contains essential and important information. By doing so, the student won’t be intimidated by the contents of the paper which will help them to actually begin the assignment. Not to mention, the Kenosha Unified School District holds monthly meetings that students, staff, and parents are able to attend.
From the research conducted, it seems that many students are longing for a change and want homework that does not take them hours to complete, but still helps them to understand what they are learning. Standing alone, my voice may not be heard, but if students from all around the district join together and tell the school board how much homework affects them, a change could be made.
Homework may never go away, but it can most definitely be reduced. Hopefully, the day will come where students and teachers can come to a mutual understanding and respect for each others’ time, as well as the burdens of our day-to-day personal lives.