According to a 2019 study, Three quarters of American high schoolers and half of middle schoolers described themselves as “often or always feeling stressed” by schoolwork. 40% of college students in the U.S. admit to feeling inadequately-rested five out of seven days a week. For American middle schoolers, 61% of teens admitted feeling a lot of pressure to get good grades. Students everywhere are getting overworked and stressed out from a young age. Kids in middle school are being forced to do hours of homework a night, these kids are only 11. Kids in highschool are getting stress related health issues. You may think that you have finished your schooling and that everyone went through that in school, but school work has just gotten more difficult throughout the years and I’m sure you remember how stressed you were throughout school. This much work and stress shouldn’t be normalized. I might just be a Freshman in highschool, but as an advanced student and student in general, I experience so much school related anxiety and stress. Homework is causing too much stress within schools, and we should get rid of it. It may sound insane, but I’m going to explain to you why we should get rid of homework. First I’ll explain why homework isn’t helpful for school, next I’ll explain the outcome of homework, and finally I’ll explain a logical way to get rid of it.
Homework may seem like a good idea, but in reality it isn’t helpful. Not only does it cause stress for students, but when it comes to help in school, too much homework doesn’t help. In a study by Alfie Khon, he discovered, “Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night.” Although this study only applies to younger students, it shows that homework isn’t needed. As you get older homework does become more helpful, but when given too much homework students will perform worse or be more likely to cheat. In a Britannica article, it stated, “Excessive homework leads to cheating: 90% of middle school students and 67% of high school students admit to copying someone else’s homework, and 43% of college students engaged in “unauthorized collaboration” on out-of-class assignments.” You may think, well studying has been proven to help in school, and yes that is true, but I wouldn’t consider that homework. Most teachers tell you to study and give you packets to study from, but most don’t give assignments and require studying, so I wouldn’t consider it homework, but also when students are given a lot of homework it distracts from studying. Overall, homework is doing more damage than it should and it’s not helping.
Now most homework seems to have a good outcome in the end, right? It gets grades up and keeps students learning, well in this situation the bad outweighs the good by a lot. Students are constantly stressed and anxious about school. According to Phd Kathleen Smith,” For teens, the most commonly reported sources of stress are school (83 percent), getting into a good college or deciding what to do after high school (69 percent) Many teens report lying awake at night (35 percent), overeating or eating unhealthy foods (26 percent), and skipping meals (23 percent) due to stress in the past month.” Now while this is not all homework caused, homework is a big part of the stress especially after going to school for 7 hours a day. You could say, well not all of that stress could be from school or they’re just kids they don’t have stress, but by saying that you are proving my point. Kids shouldn’t be this stressed from just school. Kids should be able to enjoy their lives and shouldn’t have to be so overwhelmed about something the government requires them to do. Mental health is a real issue and when schools are making mental health worse, there’s a problem. Stress and anxiety shouldn’t just be a part of life, it needs to be dealt with, homework is causing too much stress.
Finally, I’m going to explain how we could logically get rid of homework without repercussions. Now the most difficult thing with getting rid of homework is learning everything we are required to. Well, in my opinion we shouldn’t be required to teach ourselves through homework, but I can understand the difficulty of having to teach everything. A simple solution would be not doing anything. Once we get rid of homework, students could get more sleep and there would be less burnout, compared to when students take their work home and have to do hours of extra work. Natalie Regoli wrote, “When students are dealing with the impact of homework on their lives, it can have a tremendously adverse impact. One of the most cited reasons for students dropping out of school is that they cannot complete their homework on time.” This shows the lack of energy students have when it comes to homework and the amount of effort they put in when there’s too much. Getting rid of homework really wouldn’t be that complicated, and could give students so much more energy.
In conclusion, homework really doesn’t help in the academic field and is damaging students’ health, it also wouldn’t be very difficult to get rid of. If you want to help the next generation and help build up the future, you should care about the amount of stress homework causes and how difficult it is. You may think you can’t help, but it’s really simple, you can write a short email or talk to your local school district board or a teacher you know. It may take forever or it may not change anything, but more awareness of the subject can make a big difference. Stress and anxiety shouldn’t be normalized. Our schools have overworked teens and kids for too long without a second thought. There needs to be some sort of change, so go say something or at least think about it the next time you see a stressed student. It’s too much, we need to get rid of homework.
