According to Stanford research, 56% of students considered homework their primary source of stress.
Homework is being given to students as busy work; it often doesn’t have much value. It’s causing students to become overly stressed and leads to them losing sleep, cheating their way through, and declining social time to learn other necessary life skills.
Stanford research wrote that students are spending 3+ hours a day doing their homework, including study time. If students have many extracurricular activities, and don’t get home until late at night, they stay up too late trying to finish all of their homework to avoid a bad grade. Stanford research said “many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems.”
When kids are spending 2-3 hours on homework every night, they’re missing out on making core memories, or building skills they need outside of school. Teachers can give out homework to say that it is supposed to help students, but it ultimately makes students overwhelmed with the work loads from all of their classes.
Some may argue that homework can reduce inequalities when it comes to students’ ability to have tutors because it gives everyone the equal opportunity to keep learning when they are not in school. At Fordham institute, Eva Moskowitz argues that homework cultivates students’ mindsets to be more confident and they will have more curiosity to pursue and build knowledge in all facets of their lives by doing homework.
However, most teachers forget about the fact that students have multiple classes. They have extracurriculars and clubs. They have a social life outside of school. So when teachers give out a good amount of homework to do, it all adds up and restricts students from being able to go out and build on their social skills because they’re stuck at home doing schoolwork.
Schoolwork should not be done outside of school. While it is important for students to continue to learn, homework is mostly just busy work, deprives students of sleep and it keeps them from building other skills outside of school that are also necessary for growing up. Schools need to reduce homework loads, or even better, get rid of it all together.
Schools Need to Get Rid of Homework
By Tori Mohn ‘26
According to Stanford research, 56% of students considered homework their primary source of stress.
Homework is being given to students as busy work; it often doesn’t have much value. It’s causing students to become overly stressed and leads to them losing sleep, cheating their way through, and declining social time to learn other necessary life skills.
Stanford research wrote that students are spending 3+ hours a day doing their homework, including study time. If students have many extracurricular activities, and don’t get home until late at night, they stay up too late trying to finish all of their homework to avoid a bad grade. Stanford research said “many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems.”
When kids are spending 2-3 hours on homework every night, they’re missing out on making core memories, or building skills they need outside of school. Teachers can give out homework to say that it is supposed to help students, but it ultimately makes students overwhelmed with the work loads from all of their classes.
Some may argue that homework can reduce inequalities when it comes to students’ ability to have tutors because it gives everyone the equal opportunity to keep learning when they are not in school. At Fordham institute, Eva Moskowitz argues that homework cultivates students’ mindsets to be more confident and they will have more curiosity to pursue and build knowledge in all facets of their lives by doing homework.
However, most teachers forget about the fact that students have multiple classes. They have extracurriculars and clubs. They have a social life outside of school. So when teachers give out a good amount of homework to do, it all adds up and restricts students from being able to go out and build on their social skills because they’re stuck at home doing schoolwork.
Schoolwork should not be done outside of school. While it is important for students to continue to learn, homework is mostly just busy work, deprives students of sleep and it keeps them from building other skills outside of school that are also necessary for growing up. Schools need to reduce homework loads, or even better, get rid of it all together.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/03/too-much-homework-031014
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/why-homework-matters