After spending hours at school, many students have an extracurricular activity after school or a sports meeting they have to attend. Homework is given to us students every night, and while homework is beneficial for practice, it does cause a lot of stress about worrying if you’re going to be able to complete it on time or not.
I think that students should have less homework and more free time to relax or have time for their interests. More free time can open up lots of different and new opportunities as well, like a sport or club outside of school. There can also be downsides in doing this, though, such as getting less practice for certain classes and not learning the material well enough.
Sophomore Neily Beaumont says that, “Less homework at night would be beneficial for students because it gives them a brain break and more time to spend with their family and friends or on extracurricular activities, sports, and hobbies. This would also improve their mental health as well as providing more time to sleep.”
AP Government and Politics teacher Mrs. Newmark says that, “As far as my classes go, I think that students have the right amount of HW. They’re taking college-level classes, and there is a lot of material to cover. If students didn’t read some of the material at home, I’d have to spend time teaching that material instead of building on what they read for HW.”
Mrs. Newmark mentioned that Raleigh Charter starts later in the morning than most of the public high schools around here, “So we make up for that hour by asking kids to do more at home.”
“Homework helps prepare students for what we’re going to do in class, or it gives students a chance to practice what they have already read,” she said. “So you would have a hard time convincing me that I need to cut back on my assignments.”
Having less homework every night could decrease the amount of practice that students get from the things they learned in class, as well as not preparing them as well for upcoming tests or quizzes. There would also be less responsibility for managing your homework since homework can help students learn how to work independently and to balance homework with any other out-of-school activities.
To find a balance between this, the classes could give us shorter assignments every night and to give students no homework on certain nights as well, instead of just every day. Also, the teachers could coordinate with other teachers about the amount of homework they are giving to their students and make sure that they aren’t all giving so much work all on the same night and due on the same day.
A study published in The Journal of Experimental Education in 2013 shows how the workload given to students every day can cause stress, physical health problems, less balance in their lives, and less time for family, friends, and hobbies. Overall, students would benefit from lowering stress and anxiety by having less homework every night, as well as having more time to themself for out-of-school activities or just to relax in general. Homework is still useful for students to learn and practice their skills in their classes, although it is also important that students get some time for themselves and to be stress-free from the pressure of schoolwork.
