Kate P.
English 2A
January 16, 2013
So Much Homework, So Little Time

Homework is a part of life. Most schools operate approximately seven hours a day, five days a week, for forty weeks. Recently, the Board of Education made a recommendation that high school students be assigned at least three hours of homework each night. This recommendation would not be beneficial for the students at our school, or any high school for that matter. Requiring teachers to assign three hours of homework would affect students’ health both physically and mentally, would interfere in students’ ability to play sports or hold down part-time jobs, and would lessen the quality of the homework assigned by replacing it with quantity. Students having three hours of homework every night could really take a toll on their health, affecting them both mentally and physically. If a student is up all night doing homework, they won’t be able to focus during their classes, which could cause their grades to drop. Similarly, a student might be stressing over homework to such a degree where it causes them to have a mental breakdown. Too much homework can also cause stress and fatigue due to lack of sleep. Studies show that two to three hours of homework each night caused a weight gain of 10.9% and an exhaustion rate of 53.5% (Galloway and Pope). As all students know, school textbooks can be pretty heavy and carrying around a backpack filled with multiple books can be rough on the back. As a result, some students might start to have back problems at a young age. Many high school students play sports, are involved in other school activities, or have part-time jobs. Most sports practice right after school and usually last about two to three hours. With teachers assigning so much homework that would barely leave enough time to do anything else. Students may get behind in school because with sports and other priorities; there just isn’t enough time to get homework done. Research indicates that 52.2% of students doing two to three hours of homework every night dropped an activity (Galloway and Pope). A student that is juggling school and sports plus those three hours of homework is going to have less time to sleep. Therefore, they might not have enough energy to perform their best at a sporting event. Some students may be forced to quit a sport because they are getting behind or their grades are dropping. People always say “quality over quantity”, and in this case, the quality of the homework is what is important, not the quantity. Students won’t benefit from doing “busywork”, hours of time consuming, yet pointless homework every night. “The results from this study imply that homework should be purposeful, and that the purpose must be understood by both the teacher and students,” said Robert H. Tai, an associate professor of science education at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education (Arrington). “Too much homework