Is there such a thing as too much homework? Yes!! Every student says at one time or another that they have too much homework, as if the teachers, administrators, parents, deans, or anyone else cares. Honestly, they don't. This is especially true if a student takes multiple honors or advanced placement classes, which give the most homework. The teacher simply says that "it is an advanced course, meaning that there has to be more homework." I do not understand why teachers act this way. Learning is meant to be done in school, so by extension, so should work. It even makes more sense to do homework in school because one can ask the teacher for help, something that a student cannot do at home.
What makes the homework even worse is that teachers never communicate and frankly, they do not want to. It allows them to give as much homework as they see fit, without feeling bad about overworking their students. A student who takes advanced English and advanced History will have at least 3 hours of homework for these two classes every night. Why? - because reading a chapter in a history book is very dull, even for history lovers, and takes a long time; same with English. Reading in English is NEVER for pure enjoyment, but to analyze diction, tone, theme, motive, etc, which all take time as well. Add to this the rest of your classes, and you are looking at around 5-6 hours of homework EVERY night. So school ends at 3:00 pm and most students will get home around 4. This means that with all of the homework, the student cannot hope to go to sleep before 10:30, accounting for dinner and short breaks during studying. This leaves no time to "enjoy life," as I like to say, because life has turned into work. For students in after school activities, they are lucky to finish their homework by midnight. I know some students who work until 2 am every morning because they must in order to finish all of their homework. I do not think that homework is meant to work students to death.
I was talking with a friend of mine while playing tennis and he told me that when he was in school years ago, that there was not much homework. He said that he had about an hour of lunch when he could work if he wanted and a study hall almost every day to finish the rest of his homework. My friend only had an hour or so of homework every night and could spend all of his free time on other aspects of his education, such as learning to play an instrument. Today there is barely enough time for students to sleep, let alone master the violin. There really is TOO MUCH HOMEWORK!!!!
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Posted in: Advanced Placement,AP Classes,High school life,high school sleep deprivation,homework overload
11 comments:
Basil wrote a very interesting and learned article about Education. All work and no play breeds discontent among students. An even balance is needed in Education, especially in High School.
Tennis Tom
Good stuff! College is important, but getting expensive. We need to make college easier for all to get into and finish.
Yea. Its hard enough to get into without all of the tests and homework from advanced classes. College should be fun, not just all work.
Basils article is so perfect, this is exactly what I deal with at school
maybe homework only appears to take long because we waste too much time on the Internet reading articles about homework taking too long when we should really be doing our homework.
I'll admit, homework would take me only a few hours if I really sat and concentrated.
Regardless, the system is completely flawed. Schools ought to be bulldozed and people need to start learning online. Khanacademy itself already renders high school/college math professors obsolete :p
You hit it on the nail...teachers act as if they are the ONLY ones assigning homework for the week or even that day not taking into consideration that you may have 4-5 other classes with instructors doing just the same. I get nearly 3-4 house of homework in 1 class and I have 5 classes sometimes I don't get any sleep and start homework at 6pm and I'm writing papers, math, quizzes, tests, answering discussion question until 4am in the morning sometimes...it's ridiculous and it's just TOO MUCH HOMEWORK...and half these teachers don't even really instruct or teach they just assign work and you are practically teaching yourself the course.
The problem with homework is that students don't even tend to learn from it. The majority of them just do it to get it finished and don't take in much of the information .I used to get homework that i would often not finish until 3am and that was only with a break for dinner. I also had to write essays over school holidays on numerous occasions. In my opinion, homework needs to be cut down.
Personally, I believe the homework level in high school is fine. I just graduated high school and I never got much homework, while being in advanced classes. I found the kids that did hours and hours of homework tended to try and do every problem to the fullest extent and get stressed over little problems in homework. If a problem is too tough to complete, that's when you ask about it going over it the next day rather than spending a bunch of time on one problem.
Overall, I found the problem to be that the kids who got "a lot" of homework each night just tried too hard on their homework.
I'm a sophomore in high school, in all advanced classes, and I think we should have more homework. People think too much homework has a negative correlation on grades, but that is because if there is too much, then kids won't do all of it, and they will lose points for completion. I think we should have an hour of homework from each subject, each day, and double the amount on the weekends.
I am the same sophomore in high school, and here is the other point of view. This is my true point of view, and I posted the other comment above to porve a point about how the above idealistic views will fail. Now that I think about it, we get more than this sometimes, and it is hard to handle whne too much is going on in your life, and then you lose sleep. What if there was a death in the family, or what if you were involved in extracurricular activities that night and you got too swamped? When you lose sleep, your brain doesn't work as well, and your grades drop. Then it becomes a never-ending cycle. You might even do great on the tests, and fully understand the material, but your grade suffers because you simply do not have time for the homework. I posted two conflicting views so teachers can see why the comment above this comment is idealistic, and these views fail.
I agree that teachers should not give students too much homework specially on weekends. My mom got me a math tutor when I was a kid who helps me every Saturdays. I wouldn't be able to finish my numerous assignments if not for her help.
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