By Valeria Araujo – Staff Reporter

High school senior “Kate” from the UK posted on end-your-sleep-deprivation.com about all the homework she has and how it has caused her to lose sleep because of it.

She writes her post at three in the morning as a break from all of the work she has left.

“My headache has gotten bad enough that I need to separate me from my writing for long enough for my thoughts to clear,” “Kate” said.

Her course load has unregulated her sleep schedule for a minimum average six hours of sleep to a maximum of four. Since starting the program she continually gotten heart palpitations, her hands start to shake, huge under eye circles start to form, she experiences weight gain, and also due to her inability to go outside or see many friends she has also grown paler.

“I haven’t been outside for more than 45 minutes in months,” Kate said.

Many of Kate’s friends have the same 3:30 a.m. pass out times as well because they’re slaving away into the night, texting each other for help, they are also suffering with many of the same health problems.

Kate and her friends are some of the many high school students suffering for health issues because of too much homework. A recent Stanford University study showed that more students who spend too much time on their homework experience more mental stress, physical health problems, and also may have so damage done to their social skills.

A Stanford Graduate School senior lecturer, Denise Pope, who was a co-researcher, said more than 2 hours of homework a night can be counterproductive.

“Our findings on the effects of homework is inherently good,” Pope said.

The study was done using survey data to examine perceptions about homework (4,317 students for 10 high-performing High Schools).

Many if not all of the students confirmed that they have about 3.1 hours of homework on regular school nights.             Many of the surveyed students commented on how they believed it to be “pointless”, also only “somewhat helpful” in learning the material, and their only reason for doing it being to get a good grade.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,”  Pope said.

Pope and her colleagues believe that many teachers are just assigning homework out of routine instead of necessity, which will ultimately hurt the students in the end.

“The concept of homework is so ingrained in our culture that people can’t and won’t think about what it might be like if we just stopped making our kids do homework,” said Lisa Morguess, a mom of seven in Fullerton, California.

A high school in Germany has recently decided to ban homework as a two year test-run to see if it will benefit students.

“No child would be having their free time dominated by doing school work,” said head teacher Brigitte Fontein.

Students from Elsa-Brändström High School in North Rhine-Westphalia were facing a lot of stress because of their now longer school day. They now have to stay until 6 p.m. meaning a 44-hour work week.

“Children have a right to free time, to play games in the afternoon,” said Cornelia Schiemanowski, head of the GEW in Oberhausen.

The administration has decided to ban the homework so the students have time to unwind after school. However, students who are struggling in certain areas get homework and even that is very short and less time consuming.

The only students who are not exempt are the high school students taking exams.

 

A similar event happened in a New York elementary school, which has also put a ban on homework telling the students to play and interact with family more.

“In fact, you may be surprised to learn that there have been a variety of studies conducted on the effects of homework in the elementary grades and not one of them could provide any evidence that directly links traditional homework practices with current, or even future, academic success.” Principal Jane HsuHsu wrote in a letter to parents.

Parents are outraged and have almost resorted to pulling their kids out of school because of the ban. They believe that they are not getting quality educations and not using their young good memory to full capacity.

“They didn’t have much to begin with, but now homework is obsolete,” Daniel Tasman, father of a second-grader, told the website DNAinfo. “I think they should have homework — some of it is about discipline. I want (my daughter) to have fun, but I also want her to be working towards a goal.”

The parents must not know that students are going to actually not going to benefit for doing homework or not doing homework, it’s basically neutral.

CONSEQUENCES

The consequence of too much homework is that most homework has been proven to not help students in learning material. Especially for younger students. Through out studies researchers have not been able to link future good academic skills to doing homework while the student was young, meaning it is not necessary to even give homework because it will not help the student with the course. Many students believe that most homework is now only busy work to get a grade now a days.

Students are required to go to school for about seven hours or more each weekday, then recommended to do extracurricular activities after school whether it be a sport, a club, or both which many students do and takes about three hours or more, so they get home around 5 o’clock then they have to do the four hours or more of homework all their teachers gave them, and expected to be able to socialize and eat and shower and sleep also chores that their parents give them after all of that school work taking up all of their time. They have no time to do anything else.

Although it might not seem so, there are many health issue included with assigning a student to complete more than two hours of homework.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing school sustain students advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Denise Pope said.

The obvious alienation from social settings because of the amount time being spent on the students homework is a big problem that comes with assigning too much homework. Many of the student surveyed are “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills” Students had resorted to canceling family and friend events and not see them, dropping out of club activities, and not continuing hobbies they used to enjoy.

Alex Rosales, who is a freshman at Sacred Heart University had to quit lacrosse, his favorite sport, because of his massive homework load.

There are also physical health problems like headaches, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach  problems. “Kate” had many health problems because of her lack of sunlight (because she was inside doing homework all day), nutrients (because she wasn’t eating a balanced diet), and sleep (stayed up hours on end during her homework).

Students can develop stress because of the homework load:  Fifty-six percent of the students surveyed during the stanford study said that the homework was their primary source of stress, 43 percent said that test was a primary source of stress, 33 percent said that the pressure for them to get good grades was the primary source of stress, and lastly one percent said that homework didn’t stress them out at all.

Camila Araujo, a junior at Jonathan Law High School, said that her homework load is a leading cause of stress. When she can’t get all her homework done without giving up sleep and or other responsibilities, she gets very anxious.

Students will have more time to interact with other kids and also be happier and healthier because their time is not taken up by homework. If homework were to be lessened students like “Kate” will be happier and healthier.

(Some information courtesy end-your-sleep-deprivation.com, news.stanford.edu, washingtonpost.com, .cnn.com, debate.org, thelocal.de, kdvr.com, and alfiekohn.org)