Homework: Helpful or Useless? | Teen Ink

Homework: Helpful or Useless?

April 20, 2018
By Anonymous

Homework has been a hot potato between all youngsters and adults. A portion of people say that students nowadays have more than enough homework to deal with, while others say that homework is necessary for certain reasons such as that students forget what they learned over the weekend, hence they need homework to review their lessons. I personally believe that some schools assign an unnecessary amount of homework, which may negatively influence the students’ physical and mental health, and those schools needs to consider the amount of homework they are handing out to their students.


The excessive amount of stress on students that homework causes is beyond imagination. According to a research based on 4,317 students in 10 schools of California done by Donise Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford, and his team, pupils who spent more time on their homework had a higher engagement in education. However, a majority of those suffered with high stress and health problems. Approximately 56 percent of students was under any stress, due to unnecessary homework, and less than 1 percent answered that homework is a not a stress for them (How homework can affect your child’s health). Not only that, countless studies show that homework is causing high stress, physical health problems, and an imbalance of life to a majority of students. Over a half of the students who participated in the research answered that homework is their primary stressor (Is homework making your child sick?). Based on this research, we can predict that students are under a vast amount of stress. Enough stress easily has an effect on our body, thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Those which were neglected for a long period of time may cause health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes (Stress symptoms: Effects on your body and behavior). If schools continue to expose students to unnecessary homework, a majority of students will eventually experience severe health problems.


Spending time on homework only makes the students more stressed out and tired. If this kind of condition continues, the students wouldn't be able to do the best possible. Hence, at least during the weekends, students should be free from any homework unless necessary for them to spend some time taking care of their health conditions, and rest in order to prepare for the next week of school (No Homework!). Due to the vast amount of homework, students are staying up too late hanging on to their homework. This will cause the students' immune system to weaken, and eventually cause their school grades to descend (Too Much Homework!!). One of my friends, a 15 year old, would spend a majority of her day at academies or doing her homework. Despite all the time she spent on the excessive amount of homework, she would eventually go to bed over midnight. She frequently mentions that she didn’t get enough sleep last night, and due to her lack of sleep, her immune system has weakened. She had a hoarse throat last week, however, she still haven’t completely recovered due to her weak immunity. Not only that, it is obvious that her condition is hitting the bottom. She is always suffering from skin troubles and has no motivation to do anything.


Unnecessary homework is only a waste of time that makes the students both physically and mentally exhausted. Is handing out more and more homework the proper way to increase students’ grades? Schools should now pay more attention to their students’ health and conditions, since compulsory study is no help to the students’ grades at all. Adults should stop forcing them to do unnecessary work, and provide their children an environment where they can focus on their interest.


The author's comments:

My friend was staying up late to finish her homework, and I thought that it wasn't only my friend's problem. 


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