The arguments opposing and supporting homework have always been there. Whether homework actually solves a purpose is still in research.
But homework stressing out the students to the extent of hating school and education is not a myth. With increasing competition, students are getting more and more homework every night than they used to get 5 years ago. Nowadays a sincere school student needs 2 hours of extra work after school to just keep up with the homework.
Today, we will discuss why homework should be banned and as it isn’t going to be considered soon, websites to cheat on homework is the way to go. It’s also noted that parents get anxious and develop stress if children are subjected to homework that isn’t in sync with their development level.
No one complains when a university student pulls out an all-nighter, as they have reached the level of maturity where it’s suitable. But 25-30 minutes of homework every night is enough to drive a kindergarten student insane with stress and anxiety.
Why Homework Should Be Banned?
Too Much Homework
You wouldn’t find me advocating to ban homework altogether. You might even find me encouraging you to keep doing some of the homework that you are getting. But schools have adapted to a culture, where more homework is considered better. Especially in the case of high achieving societies, where children are expected to do well by the parents and the school is developing depression and anxiety-related symptoms that have directly been associated with increasing homework in junior and senior high school.
A general rule of thumb is to have 10 minutes of homework every increasing grade. With that reference, a first standard child should get 10 minutes of homework, while a high school senior is expected to get 2 hours of homework a night, and a kindergarten student, none.
I, personally, think it is a failure of the schools. Schools are pushing parents to teach their children through an awful amount of homework, which is only working as an advertisement for the institution, and not much progress is being made to the child’s academics.
Overworking
Schooling is a full-time job. The whole academic life of a student is a long term project. Just as you don’t expect to work beyond the decided hours, students should also not be forced to do school work outside the designated hours, including the homework. Yes, homework may be important, but forcing a child to overwork only contributes to their hatred towards school and education, as research suggests.
Family Stress, what about family stress? Parents without a college degree are more prone to accept the level of homework given to their child and in most cases are just hesitant to talk to the school about this because of their lack of higher formal education. Most of the parents who participated in this research have already started to develop stress-related family issues like separation and divorce.
Most of the parents with higher formal education just tell their children to avoid doing homework deliberately and engage them in more physical and mental afterschool activities.
Mental Stress with No Extra Benefits:
Homework over the 10 minutes per grade level doesn’t even work. It has no added benefit to your child’s academics. The only thing surplus homework contributes to is early depressive symptoms in children and their parents.
According to a Stanford University Study, 56% of students of various grades have regarded homework as ‘stressful’, and only 1% of the students don’t consider homework as a major source of stress.
Why have homework when it doesn’t even function beyond a certain point? Beats me. A student, grinding his way up in school and then again at home doesn’t sit well in parallel with the researchers either. Burnout is what they experience when subjected to a massive amount of homework, following the development of stress-related symptoms like tiredness, sleep deprivation, headache, and weight loss.
When research was conducted among 10 top-performing high schools and more than 4000 high schoolers, 80, yes, 80% of the students admitted to having at least one stress-related symptom during the past month, and 44% admitted to having more than three.
Disrupted Sleep
Students go through daily disrupted sleep cycles due to the massive amount of homework they have been given regularly. Not just with the sheer pressure of completing an assignment, more younger students are losing their sleep over the anxiety of being given more homework the next day or not being able to submit the remaining one.
A healthy sleep cycle is the single most critical thing in a child’s life to improve mental and physical health and not being provided enough is causing them to lose their quality of life.
Unethical Expectations:
Teachers often hand over homework that is way over a child’s ability to perform. They expect the parents to function better for their children and assist them with the homework. Which frequently often fails to derive the intended results.
Parents find themselves in a stressful competitive environment and often start to blame the student for failing to satisfy the unethical expectations of their school and parents.
In that scenario, students start to lose their self-confidence and perform worse in exams than intended. Which makes the parents blame more on themselves and their child, and the cycle goes on.
Loss of Social Life
Students prioritize homework over other social aspects. They lose the ability to communicate effectively, they start making fewer friends, they start losing their cognitive abilities to sing, dance, and paint, they start neglecting their sleep, food, family time, and pets. In the long term, they stop functioning as responsible adults and stop growing in physical and mental aspects prematurely.
Conclusion
If you are a student reading this, remember to not let your homework disrupt your normal life as a human. 8 hours of school in addition to 2 hours of homework is not what you only want to do with your life. If you have hobbies, be mindful to take care of those today.
If you are a parent, I congratulate you to take the first step. Talk to your school counsellor and your child if you think the homework they are getting is abusive.