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Priscilla Ceja

Mrs. Storer

English 3H, Block 5

28 October 2019

School Struggles

About 2 years ago, in my freshman year of high school, I remember my grandma calling

to invite me to the birthday party she was having for my grandpa:

“Hi sweetie! How are you?” she said.

“I’ve been doing great! How are you doing, grandma?” I replied.

“I’m doing good! But what I really called for was to tell you that we are having a surprise

birthday party for your grandpa this Sunday!” she said excitedly.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself, “I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I can’t go to the

birthday party because I’m going to be so busy this weekend.”

Unfortunately, I could not make my homework disappear: “Grandma…I’m so sorry but I

can’t go. I’m too busy and I have a lot of homework to do this weekend.”

“Oh…it’s ok, sweetie, I understand,” she said dejectedly, “Your grandpa will miss you.”

I felt so bad, but I simply could not ignore all the work I had to do. While homework can

be beneficial, less is more; giving students quality assignments will help them learn, but giving

them hours of busy-work will only prove to be detrimental.

Currently, I am a high school student at a rigorous Catholic school. According to my

school’s magazine, Crusader Connection, approximately 47% of the students, including myself,
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take difficult honors and AP classes in order to get into a respectable college. To add on, 90% of

the students, again including myself, are involved in extracurriculars ranging from football

practice to French Club (Crusader Connection). Most people in the school already put a lot of

effort into the school day only to arrive home and tackle a load of homework comparable to that

of college students. In fact, according to a survey conducted by the Journal of Experimental

Education, students in high performing schools, “had an average of 3.1 hours of homework a

night” (Strauss).

Unfortunately, some may argue that students do not actually receive a lot of homework

and it just seems like a lot because of poor time management skills. This is false; rather than it

being phones and devices which extend the time it takes to finish homework, “research at the

University of Michigan shows [it is actually] the amount [of homework that] has more than

doubled” (Ansari). Another probability of students taking so long on their homework other than

having it doubled is that perhaps teachers expect all the learning to happen at home. Debbie

Mary, a teacher at Kenwood Elementary, suggests it is likely that, “we have not done our job at

school and we have not thoroughly explained [the subject]” (Ansari). While eliminating all

homework may seem like the right solution, the best solution is to allow only the most

fundamental homework.

For instance, I was sitting in French class one day, trying to understand what the teacher

was saying. Despite my best efforts, I simply could not make sense of what the teacher was

communicating. Later on, I got home from school and started my French homework. It was like

a miracle; I started to understand what the teacher had been saying and I even got some practice

with the subject - all under 20 minutes. In fact, according to the George Lucas Educational

Foundation: “Research [shows] that homework has some benefits…but there are risks to
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assigning too much” (Terada). The Foundation states that this is true because “[assigning] more

than 2 hours each night” can cause “high stress levels to sleep deprivation” and “lack of effort”

(Terada). The US News and World Report agrees, “some homework is necessary, but it must be

purposeful. If it’s busy-work, then it’s a waste of time” (Lohmann). Therefore, homework is

needed, but it should be limited to less than 2 hours a night because then it will start to cause

problems.

Great River School, in Minnesota, adopted a new policy for homework. They allowed

students to work at home if they wanted to but did not make it mandatory. This means that

students would do a bit of work at home but not have an overload. Consequently, Great River

School was “rated the best school in Minnesota in 2015 by US News Report” (Wisner). In

addition, Orchard School, in Vermont, chose to replace homework with nightly reading. As a

result of this policy, “the school found that no students have slipped academically, and some

students may actually be improving academically” (Wisner). Therefore, if having too little

homework is not favorable, and if having too much homework is not helpful either, the solution

is a reasonably sized assignment.

I understand that teachers may give a lot of homework because their class is supposed to

be difficult, but in reality, the majority of working and learning should be done in class, not at

home. Homework is only meant to reinforce and clarify what was taught in class. My

experiences have made me realize that teachers should only give students homework that is

effective and time efficient, rather than just busy-work that accomplishes nothing except

consume time. Teachers can make sure that they do this by eliminating any homework on the

weekends and only giving at most 20-minute assignments a night - since that will build up to a
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little less than 2 hours if a student has 7 classes. Thus, they would only focus on the most

important topics that need to be practiced and not give anything unnecessary.
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Works Cited

Ansari, Maira. “Studies Show Today's Students Have More Homework than Previous

Generations.” Https://Www.wave3.Com, Wave 3 News, 15 Nov. 2007,

www.wave3.com/story/7334749/studies-show-todays-students-have-more-homework-than-

previous-generations/.

High School, Mater Dei Catholic. “Mater Dei High School By The Numbers.” Crusader

Connection, 2018.

Lohmann, Raychelle Cassada. “How Much Homework Is Too Much for Our Teens?”

U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, 20 Mar. 2018, 6:00 am,

health.usnews.com/wellness/for-parents/articles/2018-03-20/how-much-homework-is-too-much-

for-our-teens.

Strauss, Valerie. “Homework Hurts High-Achieving Students, Study Says.” The

Washington Post, WP Company, 24 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-

sheet/wp/2014/03/13/homework-hurts-high-achieving-students-study-says/.

Terada, Youki. “What's the Right Amount of Homework?” Edutopia, George Lucas

Educational Foundation, 23 Feb. 2018, www.edutopia.org/article/whats-right-amount-

homework.

Wisner, Wendy. “More and More Schools Are Ditching Homework - and It Looks Like

It's Working.” Babble, Disney, 4 Sept. 2018, www.babble.com/parenting/no-homework-policy-

success/.