From the Mouth of a Ninth Grader
Dear Sara,
I’ve seen your website, and I just want to say how grateful I am that someone out there besides my friends and I understand how awful homework is and how it really doesn’t help us learn at all.
I’m a freshman at a competitive public high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’ve always spent large amounts of time on homework; last year, I spent maybe 2 1/2 hours on homework on average. This year, it’s much worse. On good nights, I spend maybe 3 1/2 hours on homework. On especially bad nights, I spend up to 4 1/2 hours doing homework.
All my teachers give horrible amounts of work; my math teacher gives us up to 30 long, complicated math problems, which takes me a while because I’m not particularly good at math, and I check my work because I’m afraid he’ll give us a pop quiz on it the next day. My history teacher gives long, grueling assignments, mostly involving reading long textbook chapters and then doing worksheets on them. My English teacher gives huge amounts of work; we have to memorize 200 vocabulary words a month, complete terribly long essays he grades meticulously, do worksheets on a novel we’re reading exclusively in class, AND read a novel that’s supposed to be read exclusively at home. It’s horrible, because English has always been my favorite subject, and now I dread
going to class every day because I’m afraid of the mountainous pile of work he’ll give us that day. I’m in three advanced classes; English, history, and Spanish. Most of my friends are in all advanced, which means they have even more homework than I do. One of my friends goes to school, goes to sports practice and gets home by 7:30, then does homework until midnight and has to wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning to get to school on time. Another one of my friends told me she stayed up until midnight working on one essay. An essay! Essays should be challenging, but not so challenging that they take 3 hours to do!
Most of my homework, truthfully, is studying. I usually have at least three tests every other week. I have two next week, one Monday and one Tuesday. I’ve always done well in school, and now that I’m in high school, I have to work even harder to get the A’s that came so easily in middle school. I study all my class notes maybe for 20 minutes each. Then I have to do the written homework, which takes forever because I like to do a thorough job.
If something is worth 4 1/2 hours of my time, it should be useful, right? It should help me in some way. But homework has never helped me. In 7th grade I spent an hour a day filling out math worksheets my teacher gave us; they were essentially 50 of the same math problem. But I did it all, because if I didn’t, I would get a zero which would kill my grade. But the thing was, usually after the 5th problem I got the concept. So why should I have to do 45 more?
Every time I talk to one of my friends–which isn’t often, because we all have the same ridiculous amounts of homework–all I hear is, “I’m so overwhelmed,” “I had so much work last night!”, or “I forgot to study for the vocab quiz today because I had so much science homework last night!”.
It’s just terrible, how we never have time to do what we want to do. How I don’t have time to hang out with my family, see my friends, write, read, or do anything I love to do, because I have so much work every night. School should be about learning. And I am learning. But the 4 1/2 hours I waste every night does not help me learn in the slightest.
I’ve played hockey for the past year and a half or so, and I love it. But I recently had to quit because practices went on too long and I was up too late doing homework. I’ve always loved creative writing and I joined a literary club at my school–one of the few things I like about high school–and I had to skip the meeting yesterday because I just had too much work.
You have weekends, my mom tells me every time I complain to her about how much homework I have. The thing is, I don’t. I usually have Friday nights and Saturdays, but then on Sunday (which should be the day of rest!) I sleep in until about 10, exhausted from how little sleep I get every week, and then do homework on and off all day.
I’m 14 years old. I should be allowed to be a teenager! It’s so unfair. My friends who go to other public districts near me don’t have nearly as much homework. I hate it.
Thank you so much for speaking out and taking a stand. Everyone should know how useless homework is and how it just consumes the lives of kids who are still just that–kids. And we should be allowed to be kids.
Reading your story Ninth Grader, I think back to my own high school days and I know it wasn’t much different 35 years ago. Good students work hard. But now that I’m almost 50, I don’t see where all that time spent did me much good. I was a shy kid and I could hide behind my mountain of books, but was that good for me?
I never had summer school work, but I worked every summer in fulltime summer jobs. When (at age 41) I took 8 months off work after I adopted my baby, it was the first time EVER in my adult life that I was not working at a job or going to school. It was bliss…it was the best time. And somehow I don’t think that I did myself any good being a slave to teachers, then professors, then employers, all the while ignoring myself and what was going to make me happy. Our lives are bigger than that and we only get one shot, at one life.
Maybe we’ll be able to turn this ship around in the next few years….I hope for your sake that you get a chance to be a teenager, somehow, sometime.
October 14th, 2009 at 8:59 am
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One of the issues we need to confront is the Cult of Overwork. Just because you’re working hard doesn’t mean you’re accomplishing anything useful. The work might not be productive.
If we threw out unnecessary homework, we’d reduce the volume by at least three quarters. But even if all the homework was useful, there would still be such a thing as too much.
This issue comes up all the time in the comments posted by teachers. They’re always exclaiming over the hours they spend and all the work they do. I have the same questions for them. How much of that work is useful? How much is necessary?
October 14th, 2009 at 9:47 am
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More on the Cult of Overwork:
http://positivesharing.com/2006/04/the-cult-of-overwork-2/
October 14th, 2009 at 10:37 am
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FedUpMom and Psych Mom- well said. I thought the purpose of an education was to better one’s quality of life. In the here and now, my daugher’s homework and school projects erode my family’s quality of life. The “subtext” of what the teachers seem to post is; “I’m miserable so my students should have to be too.”
October 14th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
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October 15th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
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That really is too much homework. I’ve been sharing the Bill of Rights of Homework, which Sara posted recently, with all my colleagues in a public school in South Jersey, not too far from you. My middle daughter is a senior at Central High School in Philadelphia. She transferred there after ninth grade at a private school in the burbs, where she had a similar workload to yours. At Central, she has had about 2.5 hours a night, which she can handle. It’s still primarily busy work. I have an eight grader applying to Central, CAPA and Masterman. You’re probably at one of those! If your parents go to conferences or PTA meetings, they should share the Bill of Rights. It’s from Rethinking Homework, by Cathy Vatterott and is posted on this website.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
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I have a ton of homework… I used to play the guitar but can’t anymore because I can never practice and don’t have time for lessons, I use to Run for like a hour a day, and now I can’t or participate in the soccer and basketball i used to….. I have at least 5 hours a night, on weekends I spend all of Friday and Saturday on homework, and on Sunday I get up and go to church then come home finish homework and go to bed, or else I’d end up with like no sleep ever.I started my homework today at 3:30 PM, and I didn’t eat dinner or take any breaks, and I stilll have at least an hour more after this break, and tonight I’m lucky :)….. usually I’m up till 12 or 1, and I get up an 5…. Alll I ever do is homework, another thing that stinks is that is we miss a PE because we were sick we have to ake it up at school after school, and I don’t have time with so much homework, sometimes I’ve stayed up all night on homework, did I mention I’m in Seventh Grade, my friends from school who have school year b-day parties don’t even have parties cuz no one at my school has time….
-http://lilyrama.tk
(you can contact me there)
October 27th, 2009 at 1:20 am
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There have been teachers on this blog who read stories like mine and Lily’s above and conclude our situation is very very unique. One teacher told me so and suggested we switch districts. Okay, I’ll give her some slack on the suggestion, she couldn’t have known our situation, but my daughter is not in a base or neighborhood school so we can’t just switch districts. The public school option for us is to leave the magnet and go to base.
But this incredulity teachers express. What planet are they living on? They really have no clue, or are they just putting us on? How can schools assign homework and be so uninvolved in how it’s executed? They want to see it done but never ever question how it went? The cynical side of me says, why should schools bother? When you get this much free labor, you keep your mouth shut, right? Why rock the boat when you’ve got a good thing going. I’ll bet you teachers will be the first to protest Obama’s longer school day plan. After all, we all know the day is already lengthened. With free involuntary labor.
What is astounding is how many school officials deny that what Lily describes is a reality. The students at my daughter’s school have written school newspaper articles on depression and sleep deprivation. When they interview school officials, the standard line is, it’s the kids’ faults.If only they had better time management and less extra curriculars, asserting it’s those two issues and not homework overload that is causing our “high achieving” teens to become depressed and sleep deprived.
Never mind that kids get conflicting messages all the time to begin with. Colleges say, take the most demanding classes your school has to offer but make sure you retain your love of learning. We want to see tons of extra curriculars, accolades and awards but make sure you get sleep. They keep talking passion and the kids are bleary eyed and just trying to survive. In short, high schoolers are told to take the hardest courses and as many extra curriculars as possible and then blamed when they do just that.
We’re sensible in our household. Limit the APs and don’t over schedule. Truth be told, I’d rather my daughter did more after school activities and a lot less homework. She needs the former far more than the latter. It gives her socialization, team work, a passion, an art form, an outlet.
October 27th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
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Very well written and well-put. Me, a 14-year-old and soon-to-be freshman, completely agree. I have been getting 2-3 hours each night and the teachers said it gets much worse in high school, and I can’t believe it. My mom says in her generation she usually got thirty minutes to an hour tops– even as a senior! It’s a good thing I read this as I think any late middle schooler or high school student can relate.
I’m so glad I found this website too. Already I’m a full-fledged supporter :)
PS. You must have liked English, considering you’re an amazing writer. Keep up the good work.
July 12th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
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