Why Homework Undermines Educational Goals

Finishing final homework assignments in the wee hours of the night after a full day of school, can be very draining for students and can undermine the entire process of learning. Many students sacrifice valuable sleep they need for their biophysical development, just so they can achieve the mere five points of their total homework grade. For many students who are busy with extracurricular activities, homework can make their day to day existence feel impossible: they get home from school late, and then start their homework even later. For so many teens, their Monday through Friday schedule is already grueling enough, the copious amounts of homework they are expected to complete is simply an unnecessary burden and doesn’t make a meaningful contribution to their overall education. Teachers should be forced to limit the amount of homework they can give to students each night. This amount should ideally be under 45 minutes total for all subjects of just concept checking exercises to make sure that students understood concepts presented earlier that day.
Part of the major reason that excess homework is such a profound superfluous burden to adolescents is because many students are already shouldering additional responsibilities, such as an afterschool job, making homework a difficult task to complete each night, while still getting a full eight hours of sleep. Research studies indicate that around 25% of high school students over the age of 16 have a part time job. Many students spend their afternoons running errands or doing chores for parents who work full-time or looking after younger siblings (Wilson & Rhodes). These responsibilities can undermine the student’s ability to complete their homework—until it’s far too late and the student’s young mind is fatigued. A study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior in 2013 tracked the sleep habits of just under a thousand adolescents from ages 12-15 and found that these youths were becoming increasingly more sleep deprived with each passing year (Sparks). During this period, the teenagers’ average sleep time decreased from around nine hours of night in the 6th grade to less than eight hours a night by age 15 (Sparks). The implications of this research are critical: this has a very debilitating impact on the overall health and wellness of a growing young person and will no doubt undermine all attempts to educate them.
Not every student has the privilege of going home to computers, Internet access, and educated parents to help them complete their schoolwork. Many students return from school to empty houses and apartments with no one there to help them if they have any questions about their homework (Gilford & Gilford). The students who don’t have computers or other forms of technology, or even parental assistance, have some of the more formidable challenges to completing their homework, and because of these challenges, it often takes them longer to finish. This can mean that students don’t even have time to interact with their families, decompress from school, or enjoy downtime with family members because of the stringent demands of homework. In order to foster total health and wellness, students need time to talk about their day with parents, discuss real or potential problems, and still get a minimum of eight hours of sleep per night, while still completing their home obligations. An excess of homework undermines these needs and causes unwanted stress to an already stressful period of the student’s life.
Participating in sports activities, extracurricular commitments and clubs is essential for an adolescent’s psychosocial development and to make them competitive applicants when it is time to apply to college. However, their participation in such endeavors becomes problematic when they return home at around 7pm and have four to five hours of homework ahead of them. After a long day of school and extracurricular commitments, students are often too tired and unmotivated to complete their assigned tasks (Wilson & Rhodes). For example, at school I personally play basketball, softball, run track, and I am a cheerleader. Cheerleading is a year-round sport, basketball lasts 6 to 7 months, and tracks goes through the spring: hence they all demand a substantial commitment from the student. From my experience, these sports practices will sometimes go until 5 o’clock or longer into the evening. In fact, sometimes I have more than one sport per afternoon, and then they overlap—making scheduling tricky. So many other student athletes have the same challenges: so after having eight hours of school and then two or three hours of rigorous sports practice, homework is sometimes hard to complete within a reasonable hour. Furthermore, if I am able to complete all of it, I will have to work past midnight, without any chance to relax after this very long day. This is so damaging because it creates a profoundly problematic situation for so many young people, where they feel exhausted all the time and creates a situation where they can become more easily overwhelmed. Moreover, it also makes it more likely that homework assignments will pile up unfinished. When homework assignments are left uncompleted this can make students feel anxious, and worry that they’re falling behind or make them feel a sense of needless failure. In a poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, parents said that their child had lost sleep because of homework; a marked lack of sleep can affect how well kids do in school (Kiliminick & Luay). The amounts of sleep students get may even affect the quality of the homework they turn in to teachers.
While those who disagree might argue that many students have too much downtime and can easily finish their homework at a reasonable hour—such a viewpoint is out of touch with the realities of being a student in modern times. Few adults who work all day would want to come home to hours of more pre-calculus problems or long essay questions to complete. Children need downtime, just as adults to do and some believe that such downtime makes them more productive. Students are so busy during the day that many have no energy left to do anything, but relax in front of the television in the evening (Gifford & Gifford). Kids need to be able to have some time to themselves on weekdays, as well on the weekend. Having some down time where they can just be kids, think and dream, and forge a sense of identity is absolutely vital to developing a balanced psychosocial development. Many supporters of no-homework policies in schools argue that kids need more free time to play and relax after a long day in school (Kiliminick & Luay). Moreover, one could argue that if teachers believe students need additional work after school to master concepts taught in school, then perhaps these same teachers aren’t doing an adequate job.
Students today have many responsibilities to juggle, aside from their long school days, such as an after-school job, sports activities or even errands for working parents. Piling homework on students adds an unnecessary burden and stress on these developing youths. Nighttime is when students need to decompress and get an appropriate amount of sleep. If teachers cannot improve their teaching methods they need to allow homework to be completed in school and not make it an encumbrance of the student’s home life.



Works Cited
Collier, L. C. "The overwhelmed child." Good Housekeeping233.2 (2001): 79-82.
Kilimnick, Nili and Marwan Luay. “Do Kids Need Homework?” Scholastic News 23 March 2015 p. 7 Student Resources in Context
Lacina-Gifford, Lorna J., and Russell B. Gifford. "Putting an end to the battle over homework." Education 125.2 (2004): 279-282.
Sparks, Sarah D. "Homework, Friends Help Shape Teenagers' Sleep Patterns." Education Week, 10 Dec. 2013, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/12/11/14sleep- social.h33.html. Accessed 15 Mar. 2018.
Stager, Gary. "Homework vs. the happy family." District Administration. District Administration (2006).
Wilson, Jan, and John Rhodes. "Student perspectives on homework." Education 131.2 (2010): 351-359.