Aaryan 

Many students complain about the amount of homework they have after a long day at school, while teachers tend to defend themselves and say that it helps. Students state that they are given unreasonable amounts of homework daily and it doesn't give them the opportunity to take a break from school, while teachers claim that it helps the students pick up the topic faster. The majority of teachers give out unreasonable amounts of homework and students struggle to keep up.

Due to the countless hours students spend doing homework, stress levels drastically rise throughout the school year. This causes negative impacts on the students, especially in middle school. With the high amount of tests congested into short time periods, students are forced into sleepless nights, stressing about the tests.

Studies by Whitby.com, show that students should spend 10 minutes a night working on homework per grade level, translating into 10 minutes for grade 1, and 120 minutes for a senior. This, however, is clearly not the reality as students spend around two hours on average in eighth grade* working on school work, 40 minutes more than what is healthy.

Does the homework given, actually help the students, or do teachers just feel the need to give out homework? A common reason people believe that homework is necessary is that it helps the students pick up the topic faster when given homework, but is this really the case? While it may be the case sometimes, giving too much can cause stress and not be as valuable as it should be. For example, if you have Math homework, is there a difference if you are given 5 questions reviewing the topic, vs. 20 questions reviewing the topic. A study by ProCon.org, states 82% agreed that they often are stressed by homework, while 43% said it was their greatest source of stress. 

The evidence shows teachers give out too much homework and students get stressed out and struggle to keep up. Students don’t need twenty problems a night for each class and instead should just get a couple of questions to review the topic that was taught in class. This way students will be allowed to spend time with family and friends while maintaining a proficient level of understanding. 

 Kate

 In Middle School, each student has eight subjects. Over five days, the average Middle School student receives homework. So, how much is too much? Students claim that they are receiving too much homework, but in reality, they may be off task when completing their homework. The school policy states that students in grades seven and eight should receive an hour a week per subject. Teachers do not assign too much homework.   

   The ISM homework policy states that students in grades five and six should receive 40 minutes per week for each core subject and 20 minutes a week for each encore subject. For grades seven and eight, they should receive approximately one hour of homework per subject per week. When taking a survey of ten students in seventh and eighth grade, it was found that they are spending an hour or less of homework a day, which includes homework from different classes. The time that students are taking for the assigned homework is around the time that should be given per subject. 

   When doing homework, students may get off task. They may claim that they are spending too much time on homework, but in reality, when doing a task that is assigned, they are switching to another activity, such as going on to Netflix or Instagram, indefinitely increasing their overall homework time. Furthermore, students should do all their homework before moving on to another task. By doing this they are reducing the homework time and limiting the number of distractions. 

   It is recognized that students may be receiving too much homework. Teachers may be assigning more than an hour of homework a week, but it’s unlikely. A study at Duke was conducted, where it was found that homework is a critical part of learning. It was apparent that teachers are also aware of the amount of homework that they are assigning, therefore not assigning over the limit. 

  Students are aware of the amount of time that they are spending on homework. Some classes may assign no homework, and some may assign more. However, the amount of homework that teachers assign is manageable and not too much, thus, teachers do not assign too much homework. In the long run, students will benefit from the amount of homework that is assigned.