How many hours a night do you spend on homework?

According to The National Parent Teacher Association guidelines, students should have ten minutes of homework per grade level, maxing out at two hours per night for a senior-high school student.  Taking these guidelines into account, perhaps the better question would be: How much of your homework is beneficial to you?  As a high-school student, I can attest to the fact that, during multiple nights each week, I spend an overwhelming amount of time on homework that is well beyond two hours. On these nights, I find myself questioning why students receive this amount of homework that may or may not be beneficial to their education or beneficial to their life.

Teachers should limit, or in some cases discontinue, the amount of homework they distribute to students on a daily basis.  The vexatious amount of homework can create unneeded stress that can negatively affect students.

According to a new NPR poll conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, “almost 40 percent of parents say their high-schooler is experiencing a lot of stress from school.” The same report noted that homework was a leading cause of stress, with 24 percent of parents saying it’s an issue.

Another study found that younger students are spending much more time doing homework these days. Additionally, it discovered that the extent of that time commitment was “not associated with higher or lower scores on any [achievement] tests.” If homework is not beneficial to kids’ learning, there is no point in adding to their workload at home.

If there is no correlation between the amount of time students spend on homework and achievement, then it should be abolished.

Another issue with homework is how students look at it.  When students are bombarded with homework, they see it as an overwhelming task and work simply to get it done rather than learn from it.  Another issue is cheating on homework, which also reduces its overall effectiveness. Since the world is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, students tend to find many or all of the answers for their homework on the Internet because it is easily accessible and can cause homework to be a nearly effortless activity.

The time that students spend on homework adds up and leaves students with a very limited amount of time to relax and, frankly, have a life outside of schoolwork.

If homework were limited to studying for tests and quizzes or assigned only for subjects where students build onto skills such as math or physical sciences, then homework could be a beneficial activity.

Homework should not be an all-consuming and stressful activity or meaningless busy work, but it should be useful to students and teachers, or it has no use at all.