The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article this week by Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, a clinical psychologist, family therapist, and author of, among other things, Letters to Sam: A Grandfather’s Lessons on Love, Loss, and the Gifts of Life. I was excited to read Dr. Gottlieb’s article because he talks about what students themselves can do to deal with the homework problem. Only days earlier, I’d been asked by Teen Vogue what teens can do. It’s unfortunate that we don’t hear very much from students, since they’re the people most affected by homework and education policies. (On this blog, I’ve posted a poem by a teenager and a few students have left comments, but I’d love to have more entries by students. So spread the word.)
I asked Dr. Gottlieb whether I could post his article and he graciously told me I could. I hope you like it as much as I did.
Inside Out | Teenagers Drastically Need More Downtime
By Dan Gottlieb
To all adolescents,
You need more time.
Ninety percent of the high school students I speak with say they are under great stress. Most of it is time-related, and much of that is a combination of too much homework and too little sleep. You need time to sleep (physicians say nine hours a night at your age), to read whatever you want to read, to dream about your future, to just hang out. You and I are not the only ones who know this. A new study by local pediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg demonstrates how important unstructured play (a.k.a. hanging out) is for children’s development. The same is true for adolescents.
Free time fosters creativity and emotional development. It gives you the opportunity to deepen relationships and learn about yourself. Without free time, I worry that you could grow into adulthood valuing yourself more for your performance than for your humanity – therefore putting yourself at greater risk of self-absorption, depression and anxiety disorders.
Mental health professionals all over the country are concerned, but nothing seems to change. Perhaps, in talking to adults, we’ve been addressing the wrong people.
So, how can you create more time? Let’s start with homework. The three to four hours a night I’m told is typical is way too much. Many well-respected educators say students should be assigned about 10 minutes of homework per grade (20 minutes in second grade, etc.).
For seniors in high school, that means two hours or so a night. Harris M. Cooper, a psychology professor at Duke University and author of The Battle Over Homework, agrees; so does the National Parent Teacher Association. In their new book, The Case Against Homework, Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish find no evidence that homework helps elementary school students at all. And the U.S. Department of Education has said elementary students should be given a maximum of five math problems a night. Yet many children are sent home with dozens of math problems and words to memorize.
Convinced? Here’s what you can do about it:
At each school, form a committee to deal with this issue. Check at least one of the above books out of the library and start gathering evidence for your argument.
Have every student on the committee document how much time he or she is spending on each subject – and tell each teacher how much time it all adds up to. Many teachers may not be aware of how much homework you get from other teachers.
Try to get parents on your committee. I know many parents resent all the homework because it virtually eliminates precious family time. But parents should not take the lead in this project. They should be there to support you because this is your project, not theirs.
Set up a meeting with school administrators. Show them your data. Ask them for evidence of the benefits provided by this amount of homework. Perhaps you could begin a dialogue about how much homework is reasonable and relevant – and how it could be coordinated among teachers.
Ask administrators if they would designate a “homework coordinator” so students are not buried by multiple large assignments.
If you believe you are not being heard, try getting more parents to join your committee, and then bring them – and your argument – to the PTA.
Finally, keep me posted on your successes and failures so we can continue the discussion.
Any good education teaches you how to navigate your way in life. If, when you graduate, you see injustice in the world, I hope you will feel a sense of responsibility backed by the power to do something about it.
Begin now. If you believe your homework assignments are unjust, do something about them. Do it for yourself, for your future, and for the younger children behind you. You might end up changing the culture.
Stop Homework 
I am writing this comment because I just broke down and started crying and throwing because I hate homework so much. It is literally ruining my life. I am trying to find a way to not let it take up my whole life and keep me from getting enough sleep, spending time with my family, my friends, mySELF. I find myself saying things like “don’t let it suck your soul away”. All of this sounds so overdramatic and stupid but I honestly feel like school is keeping me from doing so many things that I want to do in life. I like my school itself, and I love learning because I’m a very curious person but I could not possibly hate the education system more than I do. The whole point of school is to LEARN and to explore things we’re interested in and become knowledgable about things that we can eventually use in life. And when I say eventually, i mean way down the road because we are young, we’re teenagers, we aren’t supposed to be stressed out and working until 2 a.m. like adults in the working world. THEY shouldn’t even be that stressed out. I am developing serious problems with stress and anxiety that I never had before school. I used to have amazing skills with getting things done and NEVER ever ever procrastinating, but now as I am in high school I’ve grown to hate school and homework so much that I just don’t do it until later at night or the night before its due. It seems to me that that is the only way I can rebel and try to live a life outside of school but I just end up staying up super late and constantly being tired. Then I can never even do anything on the weekedns because I’m exhausted and my mom is worried for my health because I always get sick when I am over tired. Needless to say, I am sick very often. I could rant for much much longer but ironically enough I have a few hourse of homework that I have to go do.
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We go to school for 7+ hours and come home only to do 3-4 hours of homework
What I would like to be doing:
exercise
tennis
museums
hanging out with my friends
learning italian and french
becoming fluent in spanish
learning to play guitar
become better at piano (practice more)
sleeping as much as I need to in order to be healthy (for me 9-10 hours)
be with my family
travel
learn about taoism
learn to meditate
be outside in nature
do fun exciting things with my friends
I could go on and on
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I just read the first couple comments. Yall think 2-4 hours is a lot of work, lasting until 9pm is bad? You lucky ducks. I’ve got about 8-14 hours of homework every night. 6 hours would be a hoilday. This weekend? Roughly 18 hours plus a 9 hour robotics kick off. I’m tired, oh so tired of it all…
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Cobra, I laugh at the 2-4 hours of homework as well. In junior year, each of my daughter’s seven teachers told us at Back to School Night the child must do two hours of homework PER CLASS. Lovely. You do the math. 14 hours of daily homework plus weekends and holidays would be uproariously funny if it weren’t all so sad.
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It’s 12:30 am and I am only halfway through my five-page English assignment that is due tomorrow. I have to get ready to leave in five hours. Two weeks into my sophomore year of high school and already I’ve pulled two all-nighters. Two! There aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the homework I’ve been assigned! Yesterday I had to be dismissed from school because I became so disoriented and dizzy that the room started spinning. I fell down on my way to the nurse’s office. Lack of sleep is really destructive, but all that going home early accomplished was just getting farther behind on my homework, so I have to stay up later. It’s a vicious cycle. There should be some sort of teacher accountability program so that students can’t be assigned multiple large assignments at once. I don’t have any time to start a program–I’m too busy doing homework. Isn’t that ironic? Sighhhhhh I need to go finish my English paper now. Goodbye all
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I only got through about 15 of all the comments on this page, but Its easy to see that we all have too much homework. That is why I am going to send a link to this site to my schools headmaster. We all talk about how we have so much homework, but so far, i have only heard complaints and no feedback about trying to reduce homework. I want anyone who reads this message to DO something about homework because talk has no value. I will try to check this site often and tell whoever reads this how its going. By the way, I’m in 9th grade and have about 3-5 hours of homework on an average night.
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I completely agree with this article. My friends and several students are trying to bring awareness throughout my school. Homework has been ruining our social lives and making a majority of students sleep deprived. I get a maximum of 5 hours of sleep because of overwhelming amounts of homework. My brain is barely function and at this point i just want to get it done and over with.
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Lets face it…..there really is too much homework in schools in this modern age. Arguments with you parents…..the grogginess and sleep deprivation even after you COMPLETED around about 50 worksheets for homework. Parents are not always around to help you with it either :(…….teachers don’t know what it’s like to be a student in high school(I live in Australia)these days. It is damaging our health as the years go on.
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I am in 7th grade and have soo much homework I get home at 2:30 and start my homework, it lasts me until 9:00-10:00 at night sometimes and have NO free time:(
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Im not sure if anyone is reading the comments anymore but you should. Not that we need to hear each other constantly complain about it (110 comments is alot of moaping) but if we all check this site every week or so we can all pool our ideas to stop homework. We will be alot more impactful as a group rather than a bunch of whiney individuals who all give up after two days. Im not sure if anyone will ever read this, but if you do, please save some kind of a link to this site and then respond to what I am saying. I can only check this site about every three weeks, which is way longer than I would like, so I probably will not reply to YOUR reply until then.Also, I made a previous comment about four… yep, four, up which I decided will just be an idea until I get input from whoever on the planet is reading this( I am from the Northwest most corner of the U.S.)
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Yeah. My friend sent me this text “Some people say high school bores them. WRONG. I can’t stay away without being haunted by the fact that if I miss a day all my grades will drop. All this homework is stressing me out so much I think I am starting to develop insomnia…” It just goes on and on and on about how homework is ruining him. I replied,” You’ve got that right” and he knows he was.
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ahhh homework is stupidd
it
sucks
i
hate
mr.
walker
he
suck
and
all
the
teachers
in
my
middle
fin
b i a t c h e z
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ahhhhhhhhhhh
drama shit going on in my life
plus
too much homework please please please just stopppp
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On Friday I had to do a five paragraph essay that we barely started on Thursday
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i’m only in middle school, but i go to a charter school. On average, i get anywhere from 1-4 hours a homework a night (even though i’m not off task during resource or when i get free time)! Lots of parents have been complaining to teachers about the amount of homework, but our school admin is stubborn. I have even considered switch back to public school due to this problem! this is great idea to propose to the school.
-7th grader
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I’m only in Middle School, but I have a solid 2 hours of homework a night. One of my teachers gives one 5 page packet and 2 worksheets on the same topic a night. On top of that, I have writing assignments, math, and very little Social Studies homework. The worst part is that I do travel baseball and basketball too. I also do wrestling from 2:37-5:00. I end up doing all of my homework after dinner, and I am usually up until 11 doing homework. Then at around 11:45 to 12:00 I go to bed. After, I have to wake up at 6:00 in the morning to get to school on time. Something needs to be done.
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I am in 7th grade and I have ADHD. Life seem like torture I have homework from 2:30 to 9:30
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Colin, I do feel for you. Homework overload IS torture for kids with ADD. It can take such a student three or four times longer to complete assignments at home. Add in fatigue, increased distraction, and unhappiness and the work load takes even longer. If homework was banished in elementary or at the very least, brought down to a manageable level, this would be doable. When homework is already three hours (as was the case for my gifted ADD child), it is not unusual for an ADD-er to spend nine hours on homework each day! Can you imagine?
When teachers come on here and blast us, do they honestly believe nine hours of work after a child has already put in a full day is reasonable? Please think about it.
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I’m a senior and everyone tells me it’s the best year ever but I’m so stressed I can’t enjoy it. I go to school 6 hours then work 8 & 1/2 hours after that. By the time I get home I fall asleep cuz I’m not spending hours on hw and get like 4 hrs of sleep every night. I tried that once and I couldnt do it. I’ve been in the habit of just doing my first period class hw and using that class to do my other classes hw so in turn I pay no attention in class cuz im doing my other work. Plus why give projects on Breaks? Who wants to worry about school while on break? Not me so hw can go away…please
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Savannah, I feel for you, dear. Can you talk to a parent about the stress you’re under?
I used to joke wryly that my daughter had no time to actually go to school, so busy was she with schoolwork. Every now and then she’d have to miss a day because she was so sleep deprived. In that one day, at home, she got more done than when she went to school.
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I found this website after searching for information on homework assigned for 8th graders. My daughter has at least two hours of homework per night, which usually turns into 4-5. She is so stressed she cannot focus. She is an A student and is incredibly smart. I worry about the students who it doesn’t come as easily for. She will not miss a day of school if she is sick or join extra-curricular activities for fear of adding to her dilemma. I do try to help her as much as possible, but some of the homework is truly busy work and doesn’t seem to have a purpose. The math is illogical to me and my husband. My husband and I have scored very high on achievement tests, board exams, and the like in math. We sometimes cannot come up with an answer, because the books do not explain how to do the work. This work takes so long. My daughters tell me that if one person gets it, the other students copy their work. These are high achieving students, forced into cheating to jump through the homework hoops! I am going to the teachers tomorrow, and work my way up through the hierarchy. My 4th grader is supposed to have 40 minutes according to the NEA. She has 30 minutes required of just reading each night, 20 minutes of math games, health worksheets, science projects, and social studies assignments. She also has additional work in reading and writing. My high school student actually has the least amount of homework, and I feel it is a reasonable amount. I do want my children in school for the social development. I do not want them isolated at home doing online or home schooling. But, I do not want to find myself with depressed children, who hate school….which I think is already happening. I am encouraged by all who post here. I want our voices to be heard so desperately by those who are in a position to change things. We are all so busy, though, that I am afraid nothing will change. I am going to start one class and one school at a time in my community.
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I only know too well about this. A typical week for me will see me get three projects on a Monday, each requiring say, 2 hours of research, 3 hours of note taking, 3-4 hours of answering questions plus around about an hour or two worth of exam questions. It seems that there is a lack of co-ordination between subjects. A teacher may very well assume that 3 evenings is time enough to complete a 10-hour project, but when you’re so busy with other you cannot start it until 4pm after school the night before there’s a problem. And of course then it’s not just Monday, there will be assignments given every other day too. Our school’s policy is however many hours we are in school we must match that time doing work at home, so 8+8=16. SIXTEEN HOURS PER DAY. On top of this are arduous extra classes forced on us, redundant projects, projects that could take even longer. It’s now 4.45am Friday morning. I have eaten food on Sunday and Thursday. I had four hours sleep Monday night and then three hours Wednesday afternoon. A few hours ago I fell asleep once again whilst doing work for about an hour. I haven’t been able to
appreciate my life, the little things I love, and being a carer for my mother I’ve been neglecting her too. I’ve had too many times where I’ve missed two nights sleep, I’ve even fainted in class from pure exhaustion and I’m not the only one. It’s affected me academically and emotionally and I’ve become physically and mentally ill from doing school work about 19 hours a day (plus an hour or two for travel and procrastination). I am fed up of this education system. It needs to be fixed, but it won’t. And now time to go continue to pop pills, drink coffee and continue my questions booklet, should be finished by time school starts.
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And I didn’t even mention their policy of an hour compulsory extra curricular activity per day plus enforced community service, they really are killing me.
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I agree. I am in 9th grade and I have at least three hours of homework every night and almost four on the weekends. With five hours of ballet per week and two clubs, I have no time to do anything else. If I get nine hours of sleep once a week, it’s a miracle. Teachers need to understand that studying takes time and projects take forever. They need to know that we don’t have just them for a teacher and that we have homework from other classes. If I could stop reading 100 pages of The Hot Zone for bio each week, take away the weekly essays, and omit 15 page chapter reviews for biology, I could deal with the rest. I am glad Dr. Gottlieb wrote this article. I feel a lot better knowing other people feel the same way.
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I’m just in 6th grade and I’m already being overloaded with homework. I have around 7 teachers and about 4 projects going on at the same time. All of which are due in the same Wednesday coming up. I’m so frustrated and the teachers aren’t helping anyone in any way. They really should coordinate with each other about the homework that’s being given out.
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I sometimes stay up till 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning to do my homework. I get good enough grades, but not enough sleep, and everything is really stressful. I even gained weight from not being able to have much time to exercise each day.
I wish that homework would be banned.
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I agree. I am in high school and the work from my AP US History class and Honors Algebra II class make me want to kill myself. Sometimes I get hours upon hours from each. This causes me to do poorly in both.
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I am very fearful of future homework. i am in Year 6, and the australian government doesnt do anything about my 1.30 hours of homwork per night. and thats just the standard, we other things like speeches, and large homework tasks. the teachers just think that the tasks arent long, but they take way longer than 1 hour of class homework, and 30 of maths. i would love to trade homework with my little kindy sister, who only does a 10 page, 2 word picture book a night! homework is causing our obesity issues, not so much all the crap we eat! OOOUUUTTTTRRRAAAGGGEEEOOOUUSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
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By the way, it is only supposed to be 1 hour in total 4 nights a week. underestimated completely. we do worse with homework, that i am sure of, happy, unstressed students = straight A’s!
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It’s wonderful to read this article and see that at least some people have common sense. I’d begun to think I was wrong for complaining about homework. Whenever we complain about homework to one of our teachers they always say we’re just lazy, and the hour of homework they assign isn’t that much–it is astounding how their ignorance and egotism allows them to forget about our other five classes which assign “only an hour of homework”. I cannot even fathom the stupidity of today’s education system. We go to class and learn nothing because everyone is running on three hours of sleep a night, and then have homework on all the material we never learned in class. Time for a test? We cram the material WE NEVER LEARNED to do okay on the test. Finals? We cram the material we obviously forgot for the tests because we crammed for them. So lets see, we suffer from anxiety and sleep deprivation all year [not to mention all the health problems that can cause later on] and learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, except maybe 99 clever tricks to get 15 more minutes of sleep a night. And on top of all that, so much of the time teachers only check homework for completion because they don’t want to take the time to grade things! They are happy to kill us, but couldn’t possibly take the time to make sure their students are actually learning anything–that would be unheard of! It makes you wonder, are these teachers sociopaths, or just oblivious? Sorry for ranting, I don’t mean to blame teachers because I know they are underpaid yadayadayada…I’d probably be less moody if I hadn’t been up all night doing homework…
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I agree, homework is very stressful and is holding us teenagers back from developing our personalities. I used to be a top student in elementary school when I only had 30-45 minutes of HW but now that I should be graduating from the 8th grade & I have 2-3 hours of homework I have a 65-72 average from each marking period. 8th graders in my school also need to have an exit project (for HS) that needs at least 10 typed pages. My exit project was given about a month and a half ago and was due last week but I’ve had so much homework recently that I’m not even half way done. My teachers always lecture me about how I was a top student and how I’m barely passing classes now. What they don’t get is that I’m stressed out because all the homework they assign. I dread the day that I have to present my exit project in front of my class because they’re my peers and they’ll judge me. I cry when I don’t get good grades or when I can’t focus on my homework & I fall asleep in school because I (probably) had to stay up until 2am doing homework.
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This artcile is totally true. I hardly have a social life because of school & it makes me feel bad because I know I should be hanging out with friends.
MY DAILY SCHEDULE:
(7:20am-8:00pm) get ready for school
(8:40am-3:00pm) school
(4:00pm-6:00pm) basketball practice
(6:30pm-8:30pm) Homework
(8:15pm-8:50pm) Dinner & shower
(9:00pm-12:00am) Study/Review what I learned
Sometimes I feel like my body is just gonna stop working. When I do homework I write so much that my fingers sometimes becomes numb & that’s only the physical pain. When I fail test or do bad I feel really bad, because I study but I hardly have energy due to lack of sleep I feel like crying & I feel like I’m stupid. The physical & mental pain that occours because homework plus my personal problems cannot possibly be good for my health.
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I am going to a summer class, by choice, for extra credit. Now I just feel like curling up and sleeping for a month. the class is a semester long class about edgar allen poe, packed into 8 days. (Try writing 4 essays in 8 days!) but I guess I made this choice, so I’ll stick with it.
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I think homework is really bad for teenagers like us because it gets a lot of people stressed out and they can even get sick. That is why a lot of students like us barely go to school and then the teachers are wondering why we are not at school. geeee I wounder why? I am a 10th grader in high school and I get stressed out a lot because I stay up till 1:00 doing my stupid homework that the teacher assign me and then they are woundering why I don’t come to school the next day! SO STOP HOMEWORK!!!!!!!
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I work hard all week long, go to cross country practice until 5, and the come home to on average, 3-4 hours of homework. Then they assign even MORE homework over the weekend like we have infinite time! I have a life besides homework! Sometimes i have to stay up to ten studying for a test! Im in eighth grade and am in Geometry and Spanish 2. I NEED MORE FREE TIME!!!!!!!
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I’m in 10th Grade and doing 1 AP, 1 Acc, 2 Honors, and an elective which assigns homework daily. I am staying up til 1 or 2 every night to get all my homework done. I am also doing 4 hours of football daily
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it is true we teens need more free time. with so much homework, we hardly have time to do anything else. and if we don’t get any social time, we tend to feel left out. i myself don’t get much homework, but i never get to go out with my friends, and so i feel more left out than anyone. as a 10th grader, i should be more involved, but i don’t get to go aanywhere, so i’m stuckin my room when i’m notin school. s really wish this weren’t true, but it is. i really really wish i could get out more…
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here’s what i think i basically have activities 5 times a week
monday: school untill 3 then go to swim practice at 6 come home at 9
tuesday : school, mock trial, swimming then im home at 9 and stuck doing homework and i have to get up at 6:30 it bites i have so much it makes me feel like screaming the weekends never long enough how am i supposed to do homework and all the activities and still get enough sleep i envy others with more time ugh!!(sorry ranting pay no attention)
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finally i find other people who understand how i feel homework bites tons of clubs +a sport its killing me and if i miss one practice to do a homework assignment my mom gets mad contempleting killing myself though im too much of a chicken to ever do it
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I honestly don’t know how much homework I have a night, because I can never finish it. It overwhelms me because I have too much, so I procrastinate or just don’t do it, then have late work because if the work I didn’t do so I then have EVEN MORE work, and then it just keeps going and going. It stresses me out majorly. Before last year when this started, I had never considered suicide, had at least decent self esteem, and had never purposely hurt myself. Now here I am. I’m fine with 10-15 math questions a night, sometimes work in other classes too. I’m not fine with 20-25 a night with work in other classes. I need less homework.
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This is entirely true. I’m a high school student and maybe I shouldn’t have signed up for such hard classes, but I’m literally bawling my eyes out at 3 AM because I cannot do this anymore. Something needs to be done. I’m not over exaggerating when I say I have a minimum of 4-5 hours of homework every night. I don’t do anything anymore except homework and sleep when I can. I’m a mess, I can’t exercise, I hardly have time to make and eat a decent meal, it’s really horrible. Teachers honestly don’t understand that every other class also gives lots of homework and the only ones trying to tell the teachers are the students, but the teachers ignore us thinking we’re just whiny or whatever, when I’ve never worked so hard for passing grades in my life along with all the other kids in my grade. I’m a junior in high school.
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I hate homework and think it is crap
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sorry. i just dislike homework A LOT!!!! plz stop homework
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I am a senior and all my classes are online. I honestly spend all day doing my school work to turn it in on Friday. I really need time for myself and to be able to sleep and plan my wedding and deal with my 4 and 5 year old brothers and take care of my cat yet i dont. I am extremely tired and staying up till 2 am and sleeping to 9:50 am is getting to me really bad. Schools need to cut down on how much work we have to do, dont get me wrong i like school in all but not how much stress im under and everything.
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Homework is a drag. I could be doing useful things like watching tv, or playing team fortress 2 on steam.
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I think your point is very valid! I am a high school student and get 4-5 hours a night! This continues on the weekends and it feels like there is no time for friends and family. All this work is really impacting my social life and defiantly gets to you emotionally. Sometimes you just feel like a robot doing the same thing every day. My only relief is sports and music and it is a struggle to find time for practice with all the work. I am so glad you posted this article and students should band together and work on national support for this proposal. I know I will bring this up among my peers!
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I hate homework, it has to stop! I am 13, in Sec. 2 (Grade 8), and I see that 92% of teens and sites agree with NO MORE HOMEWORK (and I do too) and the teachers try to find good points for homework existing. But even if they have arguments worth shit and we almost all have WAY better reasons for homework not to exist anymore, but they don’t care, because they have AUTHORITY! But good thing school authority is just concrete, I mean, we could change the system out for a good one instead of that cracked rotten 1300 year-old system! So we could all be together for no more homework! Homework has nothing to do in this world or in any world (except hell (not even sure)). We just have to play against authority (but without violence) and do a world survey for no more homework. I got an English homework for January 7, after Christmas vacation! And homework in fact exists because: Teachers don’t have enough time to make the period because they correct the previous homework with us! What a friggin’ waste of time, energy and paper that lowers grades! In a few words: HOMEWORK IS A BIG WASTE OF TIME, a vicious circle that we can’t stop because of school authority!
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Canadian students (such as me) + American students + All of the rest of the world’s students with 78% of us wanting BAN of homework and we can’t even stop it? Man, their authority is way too much! Almost (or totally) like school system don’t care about us at all (just read the rules).
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When I was in elementary school I will never forget the excitement I had for learning. The happiness I got for every A I recieved on a test, and the satisfaction I got of actually learning and becoming smarter. I got straight A’s every year, even in middle school. But when I reached high school things started to change. When I’d go to my classes I noticed that my teachers weren’t “teachers”…they were more like “assigners.” Especially in the honors classes that I took, I was assigned hours of tedious homework and impossible papers. I wasn’t taught anything anymore…I was just expected to achieve with no guidance at all. I began to have these symptoms of anxiety. I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night for hours, I would have horrible mood swings, trouble breathing, loss off appetite, and I would cry..a lot. Why? Because I wasn’t getting A’s anymore… I was getting my first C, I was fighting to pass classes, and I was juggling that with all of the new graduation requirements that were tacked on. The homework was consuming. Even when I wasn’t doing it i was having racing thoughts of how much sleep I would be able to get and how much I could complete before I fell asleep. Education stopped being about learning, it started being about getting graded. I started having fights with my mom. She started having to call the school. It was out of my character, but it wasn’t my fault. Sophomore year was the same, only this time not as bad because I had one teacher that I’ll never forget. He gave two homework assignments the whole year and I learned more in that class than in my other classes, each year, combined. I learned the capital if every country, every characteristic of Renessaince art and architecture, every creation from the Industrial Revolution and the date it happened, and most importantly I learned the life lessons that we had to write down on the last pages in our notebook. Why? Because like a teacher is supposed to, he actually cared about my well-being and my future. Now, in my senior year, I am ready to drop out of high school. I have panic attacks everyday and have thought about suicide. I have had to get medical help for what excessive school work has done to me. I have been assigned 5 research papers this school year, and it is only the beginning of the third quarter. I have three essays due per week, on average, despite the fact that 18 and need to work for the gas that gets me to school. I haven’t learned a thing this year. My once strong dreams of becoming a student at a prestigious college that my intelligence would earn have been shot. Every teacher I have overwhelms me without sympathy. They have an entitlement that only there class matters and we have no other life or outside responsibilities. I have divorced parents and haven’t been able to visit my dad in 2 months because every weekend I spend writing papers from when I awake to when I fall asleep. and I won’t lie, I’m quite popular in high school. I’m not an outcast. I’m average person with friends that I can’t hangout with. I haven’t been able to genuinely smile and laugh with my friends for the last 6 months. I miss my friends and my family. I have recently accepted that I must go to a community college because of my grades from this senior year when I have finally lost it. I have never been able to determine my career dreams in life from all the homework I’ve been given on irrelevant matters. It’s funny how they can teach you music theory and the history of Spain yet they can’t show you how to open a bank account or apply to the college of your dreams. PLEASE, someone do something and stand up to this because God knows I don’t have anything left in me to do so. We students are not “just lazy”. I was not lazy when I got A’s in middle school and got to show my corrected test to my mom or dad with a smile, and I am still not lazy sobbing to my mom about why I may not graduate. I am intelligent and deserve a diploma and a smile on my face, and it’s a shame that all the homework I’ve been assigned during my high school experience has made it seem as though I do not. Thank you if you’ve read.
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I am in seventh grade. To be honest I used to love school and homework and learning new things. I remember I used to love the fact that I was always learning new things. I have always been an advanced reader and advanced in math. I loved being able to go home and read things by myself. This was until the end of third grade. Looking back on it when I see my eight year old brother doing second grade work, I want to go right back to my old teachers and ask them why. Why, did we do pointless assignments such as rewriting the same spelling word over and over again. It’s because “homework must be given in order to reinforce what is learned in class” no. This isn’t true. If this we’re the case then maybe homework wouldn’t be so bad. But honestly reinforcing something should only take ten minutes top. Instead it takes much longer. In forth grade I’m at a new school in a class for “advanced kids” which basically means we are all just your normal fourth graders, but we some how tested into advanced work class. Reason? We were all good test takers. Here I am in fourth grade and within the first week in expected to hand in a types five paragraph essay after one day. In forth grade just writing five paragraphs is hard, but now you want it typed too? Needless to say fourth grade was one hell whole. I had at least 2 1/2 house of homework per night. And apparently we are supposed to only have 10 minutes per grade, which would mean 40 minutes in fourth grade. Fifth grade was exactly the same. Then when I got to sixth grade I was thrown into a school that started at 7:25 and ended at 4:05. At this school I was bullied, had no friends, and didn’t learn anything all year. To make matters worse the homework was just mindless worksheets that were given for the sake of giving homework. All these things did was wasted my time. If it wasn’t for the fact that my parents made me do those assignments I would never have done them. Here I am now in seventh grade, at one of the best high schools in the country(BLS! Go wolf pack) of course I wasn’t going to have just 70 minutes of homework which would be the “correct” amount nope instead I have 25-30 minutes per class. At least that’s what the teachers say. Except that isn’t how it works with me. I am slow when it comes to pre-algebra what I’m taking now, so math automatically takes longer. Add on a worksheet for a class I didn’t pay attention in, very detailed notes on a chapter, essays, and probably another handout. That is probably the norm. But I guess I can’t complain I did choose to go to this school. But where had homework gotten me? I don’t study, I don’t care about my grades and if it wasn’t for my not doing most homework assignments I would have all a’s. But all homework does is drop grades. I frankly don’t care about my grades, it’s only seventh grade and grades don’t matter. But my parents care and I can’t not get good grades or the world will somehow be ruined. Seventh grade doesn’t count towards your GPA or anything. It is just a place you go before high school. All homework has accomplished for me is making me stressed when I put off the things I won’t learn anything from, and homework makes me never get enough sleep. I probably fall asleep at 12 on a good night and I wake up at 5:30. Homework does nothing but it seeks to infuriate us all.
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