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 
Im new in secondary school and im already getting at least 2 hours of homework each night!!!! I spend all day Saturday on my homework!
Then when i go into school my teachers are all like
‘I assigned you homework and this is what you give ME? It must of taken you 15 minutes! JUST DO YOUR HOMEWORK PROPABLY’
And I just want to scream ‘WE HAVE TO DO 17 STUPID SUBJECTS THIS YEAR AND WE GET ASSIGNED HOMEWORK FROM EVERY STUPID ONE!!!! WE GET 3 TESTS IN ONE TERM ABOUT EACH SUBBJECT AND I HAVE TO STUDY FOR THOSE TESTS TOO, SO YOU CAN GO CRY IN A CORNER’
But I dont… I stand there.
Sure ill spend more time…IF THERE WAS ANY TIME IN THE DAY
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Reply to comment above:
I’m afraid to tell you…. It only gets worse…
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With all that homework given to us…sometimes I feel I’d be better off living in a labour camp in Poland during the Holocaust!!!
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homework suuuuuucksssssss
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i would rather eat a raw egg than do the homework that i have
I’m only 12 and i have about 7 homework sheets… for 12 different subjects! in just 2 days!!!!!!!
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i even have to do homework on CHRISTMAS DAY!!!!!!!!!!
(I’m still that 12 year old kid that posted the last 2 comments)
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I was a honor roll student for all my life. For the past few years I’ve been principals honors. Then I moved up. BAM! Three times more homework, about like two to four hours a night and my grades are going down because of stress. I get out of school at 3:00 and I’m still doing homework! (It’s 530) Teachers, we give you most of every day . Give us our lives away from school back! HONESTLY!
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I completely agree with this, I spend countless hours per day doing homework, normally, I’m exhausted when I get back from school so I take a nap from when I get back (normally around 5pm) to about 8:30pm. From there, I start doing homework and I scarcely get an early night. I don’t sleep before 1am, and have found myself once staying up until 5am doing a project due for the next day, and, in turn, receiving less than an hour in total of sleep. I find it physically and emotionally draining, I now struggle to wake up in general, it takes several attempts to wake me up and I have no recollection of the previous tries in doing so. My sleeping schedule is non-existent and I believe it’s due to the huge amount of homework we get, our teachers don’t stick to our homework timetable and end up setting us unreasonably large tasks to complete in too small a timeframe without realising what a huge workload we already have.
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I am currently a sophomore in highschool and I agree, homework sucks. I get home from school around 5pm, then I do homework after dinner so around 6. I am up doing homework until 11, then go to bed after I am done. Sometimes I stay up even later if they pack us up with more. My brain is slowly turning into mush and my mom constantly says that maybe we should place me in another school. Thing is that this is a really good school that can get me into a good college, but my focus is dwindling as the same rate my free time is. *Sigh* My life. But it is never going to change, America is too concerned about competing with the rest of the world to actually improve education. Wish me luck, eh?
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I am currently supposed to be doing math, but I am procrastinating…..guilty as charged. I am procrastinating because I am just freakin done with homework right now. Not physically done, mind you, emotionally done. I am just a freshman in high school, and tonight so far I have tallied a complete total of seven hours of homework. This is excluding the additional 45 minutes to an our I will now spend on math. Wish me luck on completing this heavy load!
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After reading article I was highly disappointed in its direction and content. As a student currently working towards an engineering degree, I believe it is good thing to burden teenagers with homework. For an extensive list of reasons not covered in this comment, homework should be continued to be requested of students.
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3-4 hours of homework? More like up to 8. From the morning, I wake up, go to school, spend 6 hours doing work there, and come home to do even more work until around 10 every night. I do not mind homework, as I enjoy learning, but I do not have anytime for myself whatsoever. It is very depressing that I must spend all my days doing homework and assignments and then go to sleep and have the cycle repeat. My life feels very empty and I am depressed.
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im lucky to get my homework done by 10:00 at night, and ive definitely had plenty of times im up till midnight on days i have afterschool programs, AP projects, senior project work and large homework assignments from multiple classes. im up at 5:30, so i quite often get under 6 hours of sleep, so i can wake up and do it again tomorrow, 5 days a week. ive had times when ive had to forgo attending a friend’s birthday party, not visit my father in the hospital, and even ignore my friends messaging me just to get all my homework done, and still have not a moment of free time left. i love to read and write, i love to game and make mods for games, ive been wanting to learn to code and draw better for a long time now, but i have had time for none of this. all this english homework i havent caught up on yet, and im getting worse at writing because i have no time to write things on my own terms. every single thing ive written in the past 3 months has been for school, and i used to be considered one of the better writers in my circle of friends. i have no time for sleep, hobbies or friends anymore, just school work.
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I completely agree with this. I am a Highschool Junior in a college prep school and on average I get 4-6 hours of sleep each night and all the time I have afterschool goes towards homework.
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I totally agree with this, first of all if i dont do it, it already affects my grade overall by so much not just that im only in middle school and i’m already getting high school homework and im getting 5 times as much homework that i should be getting and since its 2015 now there starting a new math program called iPrep Math and it involves so much technology that the teachers there dont even teach you they just give me an online tutor called Algebra Nation(this is just for math but the other classes still give out a lot of homework)anyways they also give me way mre homework in other classes too and im like failing 3 of my classes just because of homework overall i can do the work and i know how to solve the problems and stuff like that but then when they give me a s*** ton of homework i f*cking get so angry that now i have to worry about failing and getting a lecture from my parents telling why im failing and honestly im already afraid of going to school just because of HOMEWORK!!
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I’m a middle school aged homeschooled student using Providence Extension Program. PEP classes meet twice a week (tues. and thurs.) and almost all work is done at home. The work is simple for me, but I’m stressed because of the quantity of work expected of me. A main problem is balancing FLVS (Florida Virtual School) and PEP. My free time is stolen– and mostly crying at my paper to be honest. When my mom intervenes she erases my plans and makes me a schedule as we go. She often prevents me from working in attempts to ‘help’ with an assignment and I have to work into the night (until around 2 or 3am). I asked to do more independently and for her to shrink the workload, but she said no and that I must be held responsible for my failures. I stress-eat and find it difficult to sleep. That’s the whole story. What do you suggest I do?
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I’m in 8th grade at a private school which is assigning WAY to much homework. I get home at around 4 and am up until at least 11 with no extracurricular activities. On nights that I have volleyball, I’m up until around 12 or 1. What do I do? I’m working nonstop.
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Its sad to see how long this article has been up, still no progress made 😦
Bio Honors is a complete BS class. All we do is spend hours on notes each night, then answer “review” questions in class and ask any “clarifying” questions. It’s BS how we don’t have the time in class to spend on actual learning, but rather, this gets pushed onto valuable time at home. Then the tests are impossible (on most questions, there are at least 3 or 4 answers that seem correct). I cannot tolerate this bureaucracy. In many classes, information is simply shoved down our throats.
God bless my few teachers who actually teach and let me learn.
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U guys r scaring me!
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hi, i am a little sped kid and i need help
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I am a sophomore and my life is like slavery; i wake up at 5AM, do schoolwork, and repeat. I am taking the bare minimum of classes, no extracurriculars or elective classes, and have little, sometimes no time to myself. I am not getting enough sleep and can’t keep my grades any higher than a D. My parents threatened to ground me a week for each class I don’t get at least a C in. There isn’t enough time in the day to complete my homework.
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i tried to show my teachers this article and they said that it didnt matter what i thought and that i had to get my homework done
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I can’t stand homework anymore. I get a TON of Language Arts homework, a worksheet of math, and worksheet or document to complete in SS. I wish teachers would remember that students have lives. My band concert is in one week and I never have time to rehearse my parts. I had to quit the school newspaper because of homework. I was the EDITOR-AND-CHIEF! I don’t know anymore. Just please stop homework. It hurts my brain. To make matters worse, I have ADHD so it’s hard to focus. I was so happy to get such a major role and a spot in the band especially with my ADHD; now I have to quit newspaper because of homework. WTH?!?! I can only imagine high school next year….
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Im in Grade 10 and there is this one history teacher who assigns too much homework and expects too much of what we can give. She literally believes that her history course is the most important subject to the students and does not bother giving loads of homework every night. I was unable to go out with friends since enrolling into that stupid course and there were several times I devoted hours of sleep to complete the homework she gives us. And the funny thing is she expects us to do her part in teaching as well! so in our school, we have this thing called Independent Study Unit which is a huge project worth 15% of your grade for that course. She gave us the ISU where you were supposed to prepare a presentation based on some sh*t she was supposed to teach to us. Whenever students complain, she is always telling us that we need to manage our time more in academic classes or take applied ones.
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I completely agree with this, I am still up now at 11:25 p.m. working on trigonometry that i started six hours ago.
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I agree with all of this. I am up at freaking 1 am typing this because I just need a release from all of this crap. Just had 4-5 ish hours of homework, one was a presentation (which didn’t take too long, only about an hour or so, the Related Arts teacher is nice), and then I have an essay that is due today(technically yesterday because it’s past midnight) that just got sprung onto me today, and lo and behold, I get called down to the office for an hour to take a test so that I don’t get the work time in class that we got. This shouldn’t normally be that big of a deal, but it is a 6 paragraph essay due TOMORROW!!! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!!!!!!!!!! 😦
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And I am in seventh grade, but this thing is meant for high schoolers (just noticed).
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yes stop home work
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not a nofe time
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I am a high schooler and how much homework that we have is putting so much stress on me that I cant get any free time. Without free time I cant have any fun. If we can eliminate homework then we can all have plenty of free time to do whatever we want to. It does not exactly relate to us high schoolers it relates to every body. So please eliminate home work so that I can have mire free time!
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I’m only in 8th grade but I go home after I get done with all of my sports and music lessons at about 6:00pm. Then I have about 4 hours of homework which leaves me at about 10:00 of I’m don’t have has much homework. Then it takes me about 1 hour to fall asleep then I wake up at 5:30am everyday and I only get about 6 1/2 hours to 7 hours of sleep. My age group is suppose to get 9 hours so homework just makes me tired and stressed all the time. Teachers wonder why some kids just forget to do a page of homework!! HELLO? We have about 4 hours of homework to Four we are going to forget at least one page of work. I am just sick a tired of homework! I barley get to see and spend time with my family even on weekends. I have about 8 hours of homework to do on the weekend and I don’t get to socialize because of it!! The class that I have the most homework in is not math but science. I go home every week with a new essay topic that I have to write. The essays take me 2 hours ag least then I have other homework that takes me 4 hours to do so then that leaves me with 5 hours of sleep. And it sucks to not get a lot of sleep, go to school, then Four up the mountain and cross country ski then have to go down and do homework!!!! Overall homework sucks and it should be shortened if not gone!!! Please make this happen so my life isnt as stressful!!
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I’m in high school and I do work 24/7. I have no free time on weekends, I never socialize, and never do any activities except those which I must for college admissions. I hate my life so much. I get between 2 – 4 hours of sleep on a normal day, and its killing me. I do work nonstop on the weekends too – its insane. I’ve gained a lot of weight from lack of exercise (which I have no time to do) and my hazardous sleep schedule. I’m stressed, depressed, anxious, and overall miserable. People tell me to drop out of advanced classes but thats not the point. I need the challenging curriculum but not the unnecessary excess work. There’s not a day when I don’t wish I could just abandon it all. And the worst part of it all? I’m not the only one. There are SEVERAL kids in my school who live like this. Teachers just yell at us that we are ungrateful for our opportunities and should stop complaining. Others claim we work too hard but then go on to over-test and stress us. I want to like school, but I just can’t anymore.
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At my school, to satisfy the parents, we do have study hall, only in it, we are not allowed to do homework.
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I am a Junior in high school. Tonight I had a project and five assignments to complete. Tomorrow I have a math quiz and an AP psychology unit exam. I have additional tests and projects to complete this week, and midterms next week that I must study for.
I am typically a slow worker. It can take me twice as long as my peers to complete the same assignment. My teachers allow me to take home unfinished classwork, but the amount of homework I have often prevents me from finishing these assignments on time. This results in multiple missing assignments, and the workload continuously grows.
I enjoy my extracurricular activities, chorus and technical theater, but they usually prevent me from getting home until about 8:00, and also take up most of my Saturday. I also work ten hours every weekend.
Between 40 hours of school, 27 hours of extracurricular activities, and 10 hours of work per week, I am left with very little time to complete my many out of school assignments, let alone eat or sleep.
I am constantly stressed. I feel like my parents don’t understand, as all they do is add pressure on me to do well in school. I experience many physical symptoms of stress, including stomach problems, headaches, backaches, and chest pain. Tonight, like so many others, I was so overwhelmed that I was reduced to hyperventilation and dry heaving.
The expectations that today’s society puts on teen students is unhealthy. All homework does is take away from healthy sleep, exercise, and eating habits. I believe that homework is a problem that literally is taking years off of the lives of my generation.
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I’m not sure whether to feel comforted or disheartened after seeing so many people with the same homework problem. Maybe both?
Compared to my school friends and most of the people here, I’ve got it easy. I’m not exactly an outstanding student; while I understand the material presented in my classes and perform well on tests, I certainly don’t get all A’s. I’m not taking any AP courses, either (which I’m sure I’ll regret later). Getting six hours of sleep a night is normal for me – it’s not the recommended amount, but it’s enough to get me through a week.
Still, homework takes a considerable amount of time for me to finish each night, and once I’m done with it, there’s not much else I have time for except for eating, showering, and going to bed. And if I’m sick for, say, one day? When I get back, it’s a matter of choosing which assignments I can afford to miss, because I can’t do two days of work in the one night I get.
Last year, I made the mistake of trying to keep on top of everything; in the end, I found myself giving up because of the stress. I burnt myself out, and my grades plummeted. My parents were constantly asking what was wrong. I wound up in the guidance counselor’s office once a week. By the third quarter, I was afraid to go to school at all.
There are tons of things I want to be doing – reading, writing, drawing, playing video games – but all of that has to wait until summer. I can’t risk making plans with my friends unless it’s on weekends; more often than not, those plans don’t work out because one or more of us has homework. I don’t have a part-time job because I doubt I could juggle that and my homework load. Aside from piano, I don’t do anything outside of school because I just don’t know if I’ll have time, and even piano isn’t a constant thing; I’ve already had to cancel multiple lessons this year.
We haven’t even hit the halfway mark yet this year, but my friends and I are exhausted. And, apparently, it’s only going to get worse from here on out. Through senior year, through college, through work…
I don’t have a problem with homework. When I was younger, I almost enjoyed it; it gave me something to do. For me, it’s easier to remember things when I write them down; doing work after taking notes is pretty helpful. Plus, I can make sure I actually understand what’s being taught. Too much homework, however, is an entirely different story.
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Right now as I’m doing my homework I thought to myself”I wonder if there’s anyone else in the world who is having the same problems as me”. so I found this website and read through some of the comments and was amazed at what I saw. I am also in a bit of a predicament I have missed a day of school because I had strep throat (never get it if you can help it) and I came back the next day to realize that I had 9 assignments due 2 of them where the dreaded keynotes (15 slides long each) and one was a dirama (not even mentioning the test) so yea I agree with this article I too think we should have less homework and more free time
And btw I’m in 7th grade
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Hi,
i am a high school student and i struggle witht the same issue on a daily basis. as for your article it has made me realize that im not alone. and that means a lor.
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I totally agree although I am an eight grader right now. I remember every night of 3rd and 5th grade, working up to 11 pm. That was ridiculous. 3rd grade was so stressful because I have two extracurricular classes. I dropped them because I have too much homework. I loved ballet, but there was no time with homework. 5th grade’s homework? That amount was ridiculous, too. I need time to do what I want. I feel like weekends and breaks are the only time to relax… ???? Everyday, it’s the same thing. Go to school, go to home, do homework…. So stressful!!!! Especially the tests, quits, and assessments!!!
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By the way, some of my eighth grade friends complain that their teacher assign homework for the sake of assigning homework…
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The amount of homework is riduckculious… (ridiculous)
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I am kinda done with homework. I am so pissed out…
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I live in the Pacific Zone…
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High school is making me grow insane. I don’t have time to do anything else but achieve the bare minimum of a good grade. I sleep for 4 hours a day, spend at least 3 hours on homework and 2+ hours on additional studying. I also participate in sports, cutting down my time by more than half. To “shine”, and to “stand out”, countless students like me struggle, and attempt to push their limits, to simply be better than everyone else. Often, I have tests and quizzes every week. I live with the fear of failing, the fear that if I falter now, that my future, my dreams, will only remain to be dreams and fantasies.
I have developed into the stage, where I no longer know what I enjoy. I don’t know what made me happy. Why do I study? What were my dreams in the first place? Truly, I have lost my way.
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I CAN’T TAKE HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE!!! My school does standards based grading and it is torture. It’s nearly impossible to get an A in any class. But that’s my goal, and I won’t quit until I achieve that grade. But it also means I have to retake 7 tests. I only have until Christmas break, which is in 7 school days. Right when we get back from break, we have semester testing. I also get about 2 hours of homework per class from my 5 classes that regularly give out homework. On top of that, I’m studying for my retests and finals. I go to sleep at about 3 in the morning and have to get up at 5:30… I have something every morning that starts at 6:30. I don’t even have time to have dinner with my family anymore. I wake up to small piles of hair on my pillow a few mornings a week, my eyes are dark and puffy, I cry almost every day…I JUST CAN’T TAKE THE STRESS ANYMORE! It might snow tomorrow. I hope there’s a snow day so that I can sleep. They think all this crap they give us will teach us responsibility for college and beyond, but, in reality, it teaches us that if we can’t get a nearly impossible task done overnight, we’re irresponsible and not very smart and not worth much. We need to change all this, but even with the advice in this article, I don’t know where to start. My school district is to dumb and stubborn to listen anyways. I would never make a difference. 😦
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Btw I’m only a freshman.
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omg i have to write at lest a 10 pg essay on only one week how will i do this ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh help me plz
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Its not that I have a lot of homework its that I have a minimum 2 tests a week there is so much studying involved
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My school ends at 3:40. Its a long drive home for me, and my mother often goes shopping (sometimes everyday she goes shopping, I don’t understand why she can’t get it all done in one day) which means i get home at 4:50 if I’m lucky, and 7:00 if I’m not lucky…
When I get home I work on nothing but homework straight until my mother makes me go to bed (which is around 10:00-12:00) and I wake up at 6:00am to go to school.
I go to an art school, which means i often have to do entire paintings for homework and work in my sketchbook. This added with around 40 math problems and occasional essays plus chapter reading for english means I have no free time, at all.
Honestly I’m starting to hate the school i worked so hard to get into. On the weekends, they still give homework and it consumes most of that weekend. Right now I am on winter break, and the homework i received was to finish my entire sketchbook (which i had about 40 pages left of) do a 30×20 inch painting and a math packet. Im currently trying to rush my sketchbook drawings because theres only two days left, and most of my break has been mother taking me to her job since she doesn’t want me to stay home alone and taking me shopping with her for hours. We used to go to church around three times a week, but thankfully mother realizes that I have too much work for church…
I want to have some time to myself, where I can actually draw whatever I want freely. Where i can just relax and play a few games. Where I can start working on my 11+ story ideas and create the graphic novel I am so inspired to make but am not able to. Please, someone fix this system and ban homework for good, studies show its not helpful at all… I feel as though my homework has manifested itself into a dark spirit of stress that haunts my everyday life. Things must change, somehow!
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^^^^^^^^
I also forgot to mention that I’m currently in my freshman year of high school, and I recently talked to a junior who could not sleep for 4 days because of homework. She ha to resort to taking short naps before continuing her work and started experiencing hallucinations, and she still goes to bed around 2:00am and wakes up at 5:am. This is unacceptable, I would even say its pure child abuse. Things must change, we kids cannot keep going through this.
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I have 9 hours of school and get out at 4:00p.m. I have approx. 5 hours of homework every night and I have to go to wrestling for a god 3 hours so I’m up until 12 or 1 in the morning finishing my work. Senior in high school.
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