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Have you ever felt overwhelmed with the amount of homework you have due? Have you

ever felt that your homework was too much for you to handle? Well your not alone a majority of

student feel stress when it comes to doing homework. But why does homework cause so much

stress?, It's because of the pressure put on students to complete and be successful in school.

Stress can greatly affect a developing mind and cause lifelong problems to children.While

homework can be beneficial for some students, there should be a reduction of the amount

of homework a child receives because homework causes stress that can affect a developing

mind, stress can lead to many mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and insomnia, as

well as the fact that homework doesn't always help students with learning in school.

Homework is told to be beneficial for students trying to learn, but according to multiple

school districts and researchers homework poses almost no benefit on school success. High

school students could receive two or more hours of homework according to a 2007 study done by

education week, research only suggests homework increased from then. The main problem with

homework stems from the amount that's due in a rather short amount of time, In many students I

talked to all from my personal life almost always has a complaint about the amount of homework

that is due in the net two days, it often stresses them out and affects their free time outside of

school. In Hillsborough, California it changed though The school district changed its ways as of

August 2017. Instead of the typical due date for homework they had a more relaxed approach

when it came to turning in homework. The schools would assign homework and then let students

complete it on their own schedule to allow them to not be overwhelmed by the amount of

schoolwork they have. According to superintendent Louann Carlomagno the first year of this

plan was “bumpy” parents were concerned but Louann says that students seemed less stressed
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based on conversations with parents. And through the second year it seems to have gone

smoother and it has seemingly worked as standardized test scores seem to have remained the

same through the years. A superintendent in a Florida school district which has over 42,000

students eliminated homework and repaced it with 20 mins of reading a book. The

superintendent based her decision on research she found to be decisive enough. The Florida

school district has remained with the same test scores throughout the two years of doing this.

According to a 2006 study on homework effectiveness by Harris Cooper of Duke University

states that the amount of homework a student reports to having correlates to success. This study

is typically accepted by educators, but according to Alfie Kohn the conclusions made by Cooper

are “questionable”. Alfie Kohn is the author of “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too

Much of a Bad Thing” Kohn believes homework extingues curiosity and has many problems

with coopers research. Kohn believes coopers studies don't have any sort of causation, and its

central correlation is based on children's potentially unreliable self reporting how much time they

spend on homework. Kohn believes that “cramming” students' heads with facts for standardized

testing isn't really beneficial and says students will forget about what they learned the next week.

Kohn believes assigning students less homework and allowing them to spend time with family

and allow them some freedom instead of being warped with school all day. But ultimately what

does this mean? In my opinion schools who assign homework that require hours of time spent on

it are not only not beneficial but are counterproductive to the students' learning. We can see that

homework has no real benefit and replacing it with something smaller or a reformed learning

model is the best way to go as students can still learn but also not have to worry about

completing homework on a deadline.

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Homework can be detrimental to children's health, as a majority of students feel stressed

by the amount of homework received. Homework is often too stressful for it to be beneficial.

This shows homework particularly for highschool students who typically do more than two

hourBased on a study done by The Journal of Experimental Education suggested anymore than

two hours of homework is “counterproductive”. “When it came to stress, more than 70 percent of

students said they were “often or always stressed over schoolwork,” with 56 percent listing

homework as a primary stressor.” (Levy) s of homework can cause an extreme amount of stress.

Stress can promote disease like cancer and lung disease but it can also cause suicide if stress is to

much for a person to handle. Stress is also a gateway to other health problems. The NEA

(National Education Association) and the NPTA(National PTA) have bothe coined the 10 minute

per grade homework rule. That means first grade gets ten mins and highschoolers get up to two

hours of homework. Donaldson-Pressman (an expert on family dynamics) says that homework

over 2 hours is not beneficial to GPA but there is a “plethora” of evidence that homework can be

detrimental towards students' attitude towards school, their grades, their self confidence, their

social skills, and their quality of life. Homework almost always negatively affects highschool

students. Research done by Stanford University found that students in high achieving

communities spend too much time on homework, experience more stress, physical health

problems, a lack of balance in their lives, and alienation from society. “80 percent of students

reported having at least one stress-related symptom in the past month, and 44 percent said they

had experienced three or more symptoms.” (Levy) this was found by researchers who conducted

a study on upper middle class communities in California. Headaches, exhaustion, sleep

deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems are the symptoms they asked for as symptoms of

stress. Researchers also learned that a majority of students felt that homework was more
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important than developing another non school related skill. This just goes to show that

homework can not only cause stress but it can mess with students' personal lives. But what can

we do about the abundance of homework that students feel forced to do. Simply reduce the

amount of homework to ten minutes a class or under an hour a night. This would eliminate stress

and will help students with their school work. We have seen that too much homework is negative

so we should focus on quality over quantity. Homework causes too much stress for it to be

beneficial and too much homework doesnt help the student learn so we should all want to

fundamentally change the way homework is done to reduce the risks of stress for students.

The digital age of the world is affecting low income students who have little to no access

to the internet. Over 5 million students worldwide don't have enough internet access to complete

online digital homework assignments. 1 in 5 students feel they aren't able to do homework due to

lack of internet access. Additionally 42 percent of students feel like they could have done better

with homework if they were able to access the internet at home. I think the answer for this is

clear either a total abolition of homework or as previously states replacing homework with

reading. In this day and age the internet is used for everything but that doesn't mean we shouldn't

help the students who don't have access to it. School is mainly a function to set up kids for jobs

so though the 5 million sounds small compared to the rest of america but that 5 million is 5

MILLION students who have an unfair disadvantage compared to other students, and that

disadvantage is caused by homework. From my experience homework is used as a way to teach

instead of reaffirming what was learned in school. A federal survey found that 70% of teachers

assign homework that needs to be completed online, 90% of high school students say they have

internet access at least a few times of the month. Though a report from pew research 15 percent
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of U.S. households with school-age children lack high-speed internet at home. This is a problem

since almost every homework assignment is now done online. This outrage particularly

disadvantages low income Black families. Teens who lack access to the internet are less likely

to graduate highschool according to Pew Research. The lack of internet access for those students

forced them to find new ways to do homework wether it be through the kindness of other

classmates or special arrangements made with the teacher. Homework only serves beneficial to

the already privileged so what purpose does it serve to students who need it?

The reduction of homework is absolutely vital for a child's health, as the supposed

benefits of homework pale in comparison to its negative effects. The socioeconomic

disadvantages also affect a already hurting American youth. The mental illness

caused by homework induced stress can be permanent but the information taught to children

through homework won't stick with the child forever. Solutions to the stressfulness of homework

exist such as replacing average homework with reading and or replacing homework with

something as simple as a more relaxed approach release date. Learning and listening to the

students who face the risks of homework is vital for the prosperity of our future.
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Work Cited

Pinsker, Joe “The Cult of Homework” The Atlantic 28 Mar. 19

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/homework-research-how-much/585889/

Accessed 7 Mar. 21

Wexler, Natalie “Why Homework Doesn't Seem To Boost Learning--And How It Could”

Forbes 3 Jan. 19 https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2019/01/03/why-homework-

doesnt-seem-to-boost-learning-and-how-it-could/?sh=5604553c68ab Accessed 7 Mar. 21

Robinson, Ken and Lou Aricona. “How Much Homework Is Enough? Depends Who You Ask”

Education Week 19 Apr. 18

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-how-much-homework-is-enough-depends-

who-you-ask/2018/04#:~:text=Some%20studies%20suggest%20they%20do,than%20five

%20hours%20a%20week Accessed 7 Mar. 21

Levy, Sandra “Is Too Much Homework Bad for Kids’ Health?” healthline 22 Aug. 19

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-more-homework-means-more-stress-031114

Accessed 8 Mar. 21

Krans, Brian “Nine Ways Stress Is More Dangerous Than You Think” healthline 4 Aug. 16

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-eight-ways-stress-harms-your-health-082713

Accessed 9 Mar. 21

Wong, Alia “Why Millions of Teens Can't Finish Their Homework” The Atlantic 30 Oct. 18

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/lacking-internet-millions-teens-cant-do-

homework/574402/ Accessed 12 Mar. 21

Udall, Tom and Jessica Rosenworcel “ ‘Homework gap’ hurts poor, rural students” Las Cruces

Sun News 22 Oct. 16 https://www.lcsun-

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news.com/story/opinion/commentary/2016/10/22/homework-gap-hurts-poor-rural-

students/92490198/ Accessed 12 Mar. 21