THE IRONICALLY HARMFUL EFFECTS OF HOMEWORK

Personally, as a junior in high school, I believe that high school teachers are assigning too much homework to their students.  I know I probably just sound like a whiny, lazy teenager; but students who want to do well in school have to sacrifice much more than people realize. Students practically have to sacrifice themselves to the homework gods to get a four-point-zero grade point average.  School is dominating students’ lives through the form of homework and is preventing them from enjoying their youth.

The most apparent issue with students getting too much homework is that they have less time for other things, like extracurricular activities, and they have to cut back.  While clubs and sports have always been heavily promoted by the school staff, their promotions are contradictory to their actions. Most teachers end up giving their students so much homework, that the students simply do not have enough time to try the “so highly-recommended” clubs or go to two-hour-long sports practices every day. I have been in the Volunteer club, Environmental club, Gay-Straight Alliance club, and the Peer-Tutoring Program; however, as my homework load increases, I’ve had to drop more and more of these groups that benefit the community.  After-school programs used to be my favorite part of the day but as my homework amount grows increasingly large, I -- like many others -- simply do not have the time.

Not only do the students not have time for clubs and sports, but students lose time for everything else: family time, relax time, volunteer hours, work time, and time for sleeping.  All of these things that students are losing out on should be equally as important as homework; but they are being drowned out by the overwhelming amount of worksheets, labs, and essays. This leads to students underestimating the importance of family, sleeping, and volunteering.  If students are constantly compromising on those things, it’s logical to see why they become less and less important to the students. Students are telling themselves all the time that those things are less important than a science worksheet, or a math quiz. And if family time isn’t as important as a worksheet, how important could it be?

Excessive amounts of homework damage a student’s sense of what is truly important; but even more surprisingly, it damages students’ academic future.  Colleges do not only look at GPA; they look at other ways that students have been involved in their school and their community. But, in order to maintain a college-worthy GPA throughout high school, students will have to sacrifice their other school involvements in order to keep up with their classes and their homework. So as teachers increase homework loads on students – to better the students’ education and chances to get into college – teachers are actually hurting students’ chances to get into a good university. And, not only is homework hurting students’ future academics, but it hurts students’ present academics as well.

Giving outrageous amounts of school work can paradoxically prevent students from learning.  If students stay up all hours of the night finishing up homework for class, then students aren’t functioning at their best during school. If students aren’t focusing well enough in class because they didn’t get enough sleep, then it is harder for them to do their homework.  The harder it is for students to do their homework, the longer they spend on it, causing them to get less sleep.  It is a vicious cycle that gets worse and worse as the school year progresses. Furthermore, by giving students so much homework that school work is all that students do or think about; the students are doomed to not learn as effectively.  The human brain needs rest, but if students are always at school, or doing homework, and are not getting enough sleep because of homework; then their brains become overworked and lose focus.  Think about it; it is hard to concentrate on one project for three hours, right?  Well imagine focusing on school work twenty-four/seven.  All day, every day until Christmas break, students have to mind-numbingly focus on school. Even on weekends or supposed “breaks” students receive so much homework, that it might as well be the middle of the school-week for them!  This makes students unenthusiastic about learning, makes it harder for them to learn, and can even make some students depressed.  

Another shockingly negative effect that a killer amount of homework gives is that it literally damages student health.  The recommended number of hours of sleep for a teenager to be healthy is eight to ten hours.  I get less than half of that.  If you asked almost any high school student if they got ten hours of sleep on a regular basis, they would laugh in your face, for a long period of time.  Students do not have time to sleep, exercise, or think about what they eat; nor do students even have the energy to think about the fact that they should sleep, exercise, and eat healthy. Health drops very low on students’ priority lists after homework.  Their apathetic attitudes cause their health to slowly decay.

A typical day for me is being ripped from my warm bed way too early at six thirty in the morning by my mother; and then going through school like a brain-dead zombie for seven long hours.  I get home from school around three in the afternoon and work on homework tirelessly from then until about three o’clock in the morning.  The only breaks I get are bathroom breaks, an hour for dinner, and when I occasionally pass out from exhaustion.  Every day, I work on school work or am at school for over seventeen hours and I sleep for less than three and a half hours. My time is so pressed by homework, that once when I had a doctor’s appointment after school for an hour and a half, I had to skip dinner with my family that night so I could get all of my homework done before school the next day. My weekends used to be filled with relaxing or enjoying fun activities with my friends and family, but now I am chained to my computer doing homework. I do not have time to participate in clubs.  I do not have time nor the energy to focus on my health.  And I frequently wish I had less homework so I could catch another hour of sleep, or so I could chat with my mom for a while, or hang out with my friends who I haven’t seen in a few weeks.  With even just a few less assignments per week, I would be able to enjoy just life in general more.  

Simply stated: homework has invaded and taken over too much of young students’ lives.  When schoolwork has to be placed ahead everything, even health, then there is a problem with the amount of schoolwork students are getting.  Yes, school is incredibly important -- but it shouldn’t detract from students’ lives as much as it currently does.  This homework epidemic is slowly consuming teenagers across the United States. The solution is simple; and it is for teachers to see how their gigantic homework loads are negatively affecting students personally, mentally, and academically; and then maybe assign one less worksheet per week. 
 *Maybe this issue hasn’t come up very much because only students feel all of the effects of this problem; and they have too much homework to make their case or to completely think about the full implications of excessive amounts of homework -- well, unless they are writing an essay about it for homework.  So through the amount of time I've allotted for me to write my essay, this is me, making the case.