Honors: Privilege or Punishment | Teen Ink

Honors: Privilege or Punishment

December 14, 2007
By Anonymous

Throughout the school year students are bombarded with homework. Homework is not something that should be rid of all together, but should be slightly limited instead. For regular education students homework seems to be more limited. In honors however, it is different, because there is no limit to the homework. Teachers do not always realize what they are doing to their students; Teachers hurt the students and the quality of his or her work. No matter how hard a student works on one assignment, there is always another, the next day or over the rest of week. Honors students care about their work and want each assignment to be their best, but with more and more assignments popping up they never have time to show their full potential. The worst outcome of the excess work is a stressed student, whose work does not reflect his or her capability and knowledge. The teachers forget that they are not the only teacher who is giving the students work, therefore too much work overloads the student.

Though some say that the honors students deserve more work because they chose honors, but the students do not chose to be overloaded and stressed; the students choose to be in a course that they could learn in, not just rush through all the work, and never stop to learn. In honors students choose to receive a higher learning with the abilities they have; they do not choose to be in a class that has no end to the work. Sometimes students need a break from the work to process what is going on, and take time to be teenagers, but many teachers find it necessary to give students homework on the weekends and even over holidays! The higher education classes are to prepare the more academically gifted students for college, not to go straight into college level work. The more work and stress is built up in the students, the more their work degrades. People are rushing to finish their assignment because he or she had so much other work the night before, forgetting that there was a test today on top of all the work. People crack under the pressure and just want to quit, because they wanted to learn in these classes not just be bombarded with work. I know honors accepted the harder work and as honors students we are supposed to work, faster, better, and easier; so if we receive two hours of regular education work it may only take us half that time. This does not mean we can handle everything. We are not ready for college work, and that is why we are still in high school, we can not be given college work, the teacher is there to teach, not give only work.

We may have chosen this form of courses, but we did not choose to replace learning with work, and end high school before we even started. We chose to be in classes with higher learning, class that the other classmates are not ready for. We did not choose to be stressed and over worked. We did not choose to have work over the holidays. We did not choose to stop learning and pretend we are in college. We chose Honors classes, a class where we could learn new information, work that might present a challenge and give us something new to learn. I know homework is necessary. Teachers sometimes you need to clam down the work and let the students have a break.


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This article has 1 comment.


Margara3 said...
on Sep. 6 2011 at 10:20 am
Margara3, Farmers Branch, Texas
0 articles 0 photos 4 comments
I liked it but I have a few of different opinions. I do I agree that honor student are given a load of homework and writing assignment. But I don’t agree that being an honor student is a punishment. I believe being an honor student is a privilege because you get better opportunities in life such as being able to attend the college or university you want such as Harvard.