The Tyranny of Homework
Go to school for seven hours, go to practice for two hours, go home and do homework until you fall asleep. That is the life of most high school students. We are all so busy with schoolwork, clubs and not to mention our outside of school life. Homework is just a source of stress and anxiety for a lot of busy students and takes a lot time out of busy schedules. I think this is a worry that could be eliminated.
Student athletes everywhere know what I mean when I say that when you have away games, you do not want to think about coming home to do homework on an already late night. It is tough enough to finish all of the homework that teachers assign when all you have is a regular practice. As you get older and take harder classes, the homework load and the amount of tests and quizzes also increase. Studying for these also take time and most of the time you just feel rushed to get through everything you have to do that night.
Therefore you don’t retain all of the information that you tried to cram into your head. I know of some people who really can’t finish all of their homework at night either because they have so much to do or they prioritize between studying for a big test or getting a good grade on a homework assignment. Homework is an added on stress to young people who participate in sports, clubs, and band and that stress can be taken out in destructive ways.
Another reason I think that students shouldn’t have as much homework as we do is because we already go to school five out of seven days of a week for seven hours a day. We go to school for a reason and that reason is to learn but we shouldn’t have to bring schoolwork home when we already have been to school that day. Also, most of the information we learn will never be applied in our lives or be helpful to us. I can understand the occasional paper to write or story to read and definitely studying for tests, but I think we just need to learn what we will actually use in life rather than extra information. It’s impractical for teachers to assign homework about things that I will never hear of or use again. It seems like a waste of everyone’s time.
My last argument is that most students don’t get enough sleep because they are so busy all the time. The students that participate in something where they have practices or obligations that they have to attend to are usually the ones that actually do all of their homework and studying, therefore get less sleep than they are supposed to. Adults always say you should get eight hours of sleep if not more every night but that is all but impossible when you have so much to do. I know personally I’m lucky to get seven hours of sleep on a good night and I always wake up exhausted. Lack of sleep is a very serious problem for people my age. Also, if you would be able to get to more sleep at night then they most likely wouldn’t fall asleep in class or have such a hard time staying awake. If you are more alert in class you will also get more out of the lesson and understand the material better.
There are so many reasons that homework isn’t a good or effective idea. Students don’t get as much sleep and have a hard time staying awake in and out of class. They won’t get as much studying time for major tests and won’t retain as much information when all they are trying to do is get everything that they need to do that night done. Finally, we already go to school for large amounts of time and do a lot of work there and then they try to make us do even more outside of class. School is basically like a full time job for students and if you participate in extracurriculars than it just seems like everything gets so clustered in your life. I believe homework is an unnecessary stress that can be eliminated for the young people today.
