I was really happy to discover that Rat Race Rebellion just reposted an interview it did with me last year. You can read it here.
And please try to listen to WHYY’s Voices in the Family today at noon. I’ll be one of the guests. Here’s how the upcoming show is described:
Homework causes conflict in many homes. It’s a source of frustration for parents and kids, and many feel there just isn’t enough time in one evening to get it all done. Join Dr. Dan Gottlieb for the next Voices in the Family when we’ll discuss homework. Does it help learning? And, how much is too much? Dan’s guest is Sara Bennett. She has written The Case Against Homework, and writes a blog called StopHomework.com. We’ll also hear from Dr. Stephen Soffer who is a staff psychologist at the Center for Management of ADHD at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Stop Homework 
homework is just a fucking waste of time
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I’m only 12 and already spend 7 hours in school each day. I go to after school study for an hour till 5 then go home eat dinner and do my homework until around midnight on average but last month i was up till 4 because i was at the hospital getting my cast off and had to catch up on everything i couldn’t do by friday and i only got my cast of wednesday. I think its really unfair. They have no consideration for whats going on at home. I was in a car accident (thats how i fractured my wrist) and my sister is now in a wheelchair and she only got out of hospital 2 weeks ago. And for any smartie pantses saying how was she out of hospital before you got your cast off, i fell on the stairs in school. my bag was too heavy and i lost my balance and the cast. Was due if the followin week. Life is so unfair!!
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I’m 9 and i had a foreign exchange student at my house ( he was 11) he was watching me do my homework and he kept looking at his watch and he said that it was taki g me a lot of minutes and i must have mean teacher!!!! I get around 4 hours homework each night at the moment which is not bad because my brother who’s 13 got 7 hours homework last night because he was out sick he had to do a 20-30 page project for this morning. I hate homework as do my friends and cousins because they all tell me and complane. And i know my tough guy brother does aswell because he cried himself to sleep last night and because when he was done his homework he threw his bag in the hall and stomped up the stair swearing and saying curse that darn teacher and he even called her a b***h!
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Oh yeah it looks like i made a typo but i didnt because my sister got out of hospital 2 weeks ago and i got my cast of last month but after she got out of hospital because last month only ended 2 days ago! Haha
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I really really really hate homework !! NO free time i have to spend them for homework!
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I am in eighth grade, and in the name of preparing us for high school, my teachers give me and my peers three or four hours of homework a night. I am expected to get A’s, so I go over everything after I finish to look for mistakes. It’s not that it’s so horrible, I just sometimes can’t really get that much sleep because I live about 45 minutes away from my school, and as I do multiple extra curricular activities (also expected of me), I can get home at 6:30, take a shower, eat dinner, and start my homework at 8:00. I admit that I take a while in the shower, but honestly if I have a choice of getting home after being at school from 7:30 to 5:45 and starting my homework immediately and getting less sleep because I did one little thing I enjoyed, I will get less sleep. Anything less feels like surrendering my humanity. I am human. Moreover, I am 14. I refuse.
Another problem is that if I start my homework at eight, I am not as efficient as I would be if I began at an earlier hour, so I sometimes take so long to do my homework that I get to bed at one. I get up at six, so that can be five hours of sleep. I know that I’m probably just spoiled, but I’m so sick of it all… and I still get A minuses in some of my classes, no matter how hard I try. I’ve talked to my homeroom teacher, but he is probably the only teacher that doesn’t give too much homework. His just usually takes twenty minutes, so it’s not a big deal. But as much as I love my English teacher, she consistently gives an hour of homework a night, and sometimes…
And constantly there are projects, and constantly is there a test to study for, and constantly me and my friends are stressed.
I hope some teacher will read this and care, but I doubt it. My parents want to try and complain, and get me special treatment, but again I refuse. I will go down with the ship, and anything less is abandoning my friends. We are a tightly knit group of kids, and we will not screw each other over. We have honor, as much as teenagers can have honor. I will stick with it, and luckily my parents respect this.
I not only am worried for myself, but for some of the other kids in my grade. I frequently help people with their homework and I also help people study for tests. For some of my peers, homework can be a six hour affair, just because they have difficulty understanding the assignment.
I will deal with all of this. It will turn out in the end. But thanks for an outlet to vent. Sometimes things just get so frustrating. But thanks.
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Though in hindsight, I suppose I have it good off compared to some of the people on this page, so I really can’t complain.
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Dreading School- I live in another country where homework demands are not so great and so to me it seems unfair that you have to suffer through so much more simply because of where you live. You may have it better than some people on this website but perhaps the real question is of why so many school students have it bad in the first place. Is so much homework really necessary for a good education?
Homework in some cases can be beneficial for helping you practise skills but it seems that in the case of many on this site, it’s had quite the opposite effect. If you lack sleep and are stressed, you probably won’t be able to learn as much in class. A psychologist somewhere said that unless basic human needs are fulfilled, people can’t take on higher order tasks such as learning. Also, homework eats away time you could use to work on your interests or study in a way that best suits you. I love learning foreign languages and as I have felt that my Chinese class at school doesn’t fulfill my needs, I get tuition so I can practise speaking Chinese and I have borrowed books from the library in Chinese so that I can learn some new words and read what I can, things that I wouldn’t have the time to do if I had to do as much homework as some people on this site. I hope to one day become fluent or almost fluent in Chinese.
You are brave to stick with the current situation, but I think that perhaps you would be braver still to try and make improvements; after all, you could have it better off by simply living elsewhere in the world. Perhaps you can work with your friends to make change to the school system over there. That way things could potentially get better and you wouldn’t be “screwing each other over,” as you put it.
I do hope that things get better for you and for others on this site.
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Dreading School says:
***
My parents want to try and complain, and get me special treatment, but again I refuse. I will go down with the ship, and anything less is abandoning my friends.
***
Dreading School, I hope you’ll reconsider this. I think you should encourage your parents to go in and complain, and if you get the chance, encourage your friends’ parents too. Otherwise, there’s no force for change.
I don’t see anything noble about going down with the ship. It isn’t worth it.
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I genuinely can’t abide homework. Mine is not just coursework but extra projects and it is REALLY difficult. I’m starting to hate my subjects a bit, and homework has never really bothered me before this year but it is SO laborious and hard. It makes me want to give up school. I wish I was an heiress!
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HOMEWORK IS SOOO STUPID!! AS I AM WRITING THIS IM SUPPOSED TO BE DOING HOMEWORK!!! MY GREAT GRANDFATHER IS IN THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW AND HE IS GOING TO DIE SOON AND WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO???? HOMEWORK!! I CANT SPEND TIME WITH HIM AND SAY GOODBYE BECAUSE IM STUCK DOING HOMEWORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I THANK THE PERSON WHO MADE THIS SITE BECAUSE I WOULD BE SOOOO MUCH MADDER IF THEY HADNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! D:< GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
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This is the best site ive ever been on other than my own. I love having people to vent to who wont judge me or think im crazy.
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hello again. i am trying to find out the names of the school board members in my district. i am having no luck at all and i am very mad!!!!!!!!!!! for two nights in a row i have had at least four hours of homework. my great grand father died last night and what was i doing when he left????? homework!!!! YEAH! i was doing homework instead of saying good bye which i really regret.
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see with middle school i have seven teachers who all give homework and with elementary school at least the teachers no theyve given you enough hw for the day but with middle school all the teachers pile up the hw and dont even kknow how much the other teachers have given us and it pisses me off
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I’m in HS. Our homework isn’t too long, but it really makes us think. Plus, it’s usually either stuff we’ve learned in school or stuff we should have learned in school.
I agree that stuff in school should be taught during the 7 hours we’re there..
And don’t even get me started on algebra2… I hate when we have like 5 of the same kind of problem to do, only with different numbers. If I understand 1 or 2, shouldn’t that be good enough?
…band homework is the best, though… Practice!
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Also, I hate bringing textbooks home to look at a couple pages… Why cant we get all of that information in notes or printed out?
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ya. i agree. we should have learned all the stuff in skool but if its reasearch like i had to do before it really sucks because you can find almost anything on google except for what you are looking for. but for me with my luck three days after the project is due i’ll just be surfing and i’ll find a site that wood be perfect for the project i just turned in!! i absolutly hate it!! and ya!! they should give us everything in our notes!! we should read in skool and take notes and then just do like a short worksheet or something for homework!! teachers tell us that we should get about an hour of exersize a day and eat dinner with our family and do things we enjoy like play instruments and play sports and stuff but with all the homework they give us we dont have time to do more than one or two of those things if any at all!!! they dont realize how much pressure we are under! i know that homework helps us learn and stuff but when they give us this much it often forces us to stay up late and then we dont get a good nights sleep and we are tierd and dont learn as well during class and that makes homework so much harder!!!
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those are some pretty great reasons.
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ya i agree i mean honeslty people homework sucks. i wish that we had less homework all it douse is waste our time. but it douse help us learn. i agree with some of u. i mean u have a good point. homework cuts into our alone time. and our free time. and some of us are too busy to do homework. we have lives to get too u know. am i the only person who feels this way?
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i think you have good sentences but u need to talk about how homework is sooo stress full =p
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I hate homework so much, I’m a high school student and I have absolutely no time for anything anymore. I take part in the school play and have to be at rehearsals for up to 4 hours on the weekdays. When I finally get the chance to go home, I’m up until midnight or later finishing pointless, time consuming homework assignments. The guidance counselors constantly tell us to get involved in a lot of outside activities and clubs, but how are we supposed to do that with 3 hours of homework every day!
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Also, at least half of what we learn in school will never be important to anything that we ever do in life. When am I going to need to know how to write a proof on why something is or isn’t a parallelogram?
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I HATE HOMEWORK!!!!! i’m in yr 8 and i’m struggling more than eva 😦 i can’t focus and i get distracted very easy! As soon as i get home from school i do homework till 10 pm!!!! I hardly get to do any sport! Homework sucks and i am fully positive every other kid feels the same as me! I am ALWAYS tired! PLZ BAN HOMEWORK!!!!
or even at least till yr 11 & 12 when exams and getting jobs and stuff!
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While I do not believe that homework is totally pointless, I feel that there is an extent to which it is ridiculous. I am in the International Baccalaureate Programme, and was prepared for heavy work, but this is just ridiculous. I spend approximately two hours each night /per subject/ and that’s not including the major assignments that are constantly being assigned or the many extracurriculars/volunteering that we are expected to do!
I have sacrificed family time to the point that I see them at supper, and my sleep patterns are so erratic that my immune system has suffered. Many nights I’ll not get to sleep until 2am but have to wake up by 6am to get to school on time for the next day.
I believe that homework is imperative to reviewing what you’ve learnt and applying it to questions/examples that you will see on examinations. I also think, however, that I have so much work that I’m not sleeping, and that my learning is suffering as a consequence. I cannot stay awake in any of my classes, and my attention span has shortened so that it is even more difficult to complete my homework.
Right now I have a lot of work to do, as well as two exams in a few weeks, my IOP which is worth a great deal of my marks.
Sure I want good grades and I want to be able to get a good career, but what about my childhood? I should be rollerblading and shopping and going to the theatre! I should be watching TV and going camping on weekends instead of sitting at my laptop doing essay after essay, and then at the desk answering question after question and filling out syllabus after syllabus.
I am stressed, I feel like crying most of the time, and I’m wasting away my childhood at my homework desk. I’m sixteen and don’t have /time/ for boyfriends. I’m sixteen and the only time I have to myself is the 45min busride to school in which I can listen to music or watch a show on my iPod if I’m not cramming for yet another test.
This is not how I should be spending my childhood.
The IB Programme was supposed to prepare me for university; it wasn’t supposed to destroy my health, my social life, my family life, and the short part of my life that I’m supposed to spend having fun and finding myself.
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Okay, so I have a project that my teacher assigned and he said we wouldn’t have any homework because we would be doing all the work in class…well he gives us five days to work on it and then says it is due tomorrow and that if we haven’t finished yet then we should take it home and finish….and guess what??? EVERYONE had to take the dumb project home because it was a big project and he didn’t give us enough time. It’s not fair!!!!!!!! Also, you know what? I have track everyday after school for about 2 hours and when we go to meets during weekdays we don’t get back until 11:45 and by then I don’t have time to do my homework because it starts right after school. Does anyone know how many hours us kids spend every year doing homework? I don’t and perhaps I am afraid of the answer.
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Stupid Stupid Homework wish it was banned
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The only reason I don’t like homework is because it cuts into my time to relax and spend time with my family. Also if you need help no one there is to help you (unless if your parents are smart). I think more kids are failing now because they don’t have time to do their homework or maybe because they choose not to do it but i feel we should not have homework because it makes you feel like you have no life out of school.
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This is the homework I have due on Friday:
Spelling Matters (book)
Spelling sheet
Modern Cursive book
Inquiry sheet
AND I’M ONLY IN YEAR 6!!!!!!!
😦 I wanna have fun at home 😦
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….instead of doing hhomework.
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i HATE homework with a burning passion. the problem with my school is that people in every single class i have mess around instead of trying to actually learn. it is extremely distracting and the teacher stops doing whatever he/she is doing if just one kid doesn’t finish a conversation with the person next to them. and so, since my teacher stopped teaching us because of one person, we have homework on whatever didn’t get done. another matter i would like to address is the teacher talking while he/she gave us something to work on, and demands you pay attention to whatever he/she is saying instead of doing the assignment at hand. UGH.
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Hello.
I’m a 15 year old student,soon 16,and I have to say that homework,no matter how boring,hard and time consuming it is, is essential for your better understanding of what you did at school.
There are several problems that need to be adressed with homework.
1.Teachers often assign more exercises than needed.They bombard you with exercises JUST to make sure that they will have a good reputation amongst teachers ”this teacher is good” or maybe they don’t wanna cope too much explaining to you in school how to do your exercises.Or maybe teachers often assign NOT IMPORTANT exercices than can be very time consuming…That depends on your professor.Personally,I would never assign my students anything irrelevant to what we did at school.If I assigned them something,it would be just to make them better in something ex:Math equations or physics laws and stuff.
2.Homework tends to be hard simply because the books can be not too well written,or the teachers simply assign homework not yet learned.
I also wanna note a few things that can maybe help you in your homework:
1.Pay attention at school.If u pay attention you save LOTS of time.
2.The best day to study is between yesterday and tomorrow.Which is today.If u study now,you’ll lose time,yes,but if u really understand everything you’ll be ready for the tests/exams coming on your way which SAVES u time.
3.You wanna save time?Don’t be on facebook or msn or skype while ”studying”.Tell yourself,time to study,1 hour studying BUT CONSANT AND EFFECTIVE 1 hour.Then you can do w/e u want for the rest of the time…U can always study more if u want.
Things are NOT as pathetic as we make them seem.At least not YET.The older you are,the more your responsibilities,can’t do anything about this,you’ll have to study.But think of this.Do u wanna be a successful citizen when u grow up?Do u want to become what you’ve always dreamed of?Then you gotta work hard.No matter how much time it takes or how much effort,if u study,YOU WILL be REWARDED for what you did all these years.The decision is yours.
Personally,I’ve got enough time to hang out with friends on friday+saturday+sunday,while attain english+french classes+h/w for school + go to basketball practices AND matches.And yes,my average grade is A- to B+.Yes,schedule’s a bit tight,but u got make it work.
Though my personal belief is that homework SHOULD be less.That depends on the subject and your professor of course but that’s how it should be.These years are and should be the best years of your life,and the the years you start building your career and social life later on.
P.S. I also hate homework
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Dear sixteen year old student:
I wish all that homework had taught you to be a better writer. Too many u’s instead of you, not enough spacing between sentences. And the like.
Not to be a stickler. But I value good deep conceptual education, crisp writing and excellent grammar. If all that homework hasn’t achieved that for you, I hope subsequent generations ask and remedy the hard questions.
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long rant sums up what I’ve always said. Homework overload is not to teach responsibility or make your kids smarter. We no longer buy into that canard. It’s work sent home because simply put, it did not get done in school. It’s a way of masking a major deficiency, that the day at school is often mediocre at best.
THAT is the real dilemma. Our kids are wasting their time in school and staying up till two to homeschool.
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home work cuts in with fun times and family times a makes u stress out
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I am in Year 6 and its the last term of the year and the teachers think that they can keep us busy with tests, tests and MORE tests(partly to do for homework). Plus, its a really busy term because we have rehearsals for a musical we are putiing on and Year 6 graduation and stuff like that. I don’d want to celebrate my last term in Primary school like this!! 😦
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I am in Year 6 and its the last term of the year and the teachers think that they can keep us busy with tests, tests and MORE tests(partly to do for homework). Plus, its a really busy term because we have rehearsals for a musical we are putting on and Year 6 graduation and stuff like that. I don’d want to celebrate my last term in Primary school like this!! 😦
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OK. Anyone on here saying that homework has its benifits, shut up and go to a different site. This is a place for people to rant. Not to justify homework. I have heard it all and when I’m calm enough to hold back the head aches, crying, and screaming, I might even agree with some of it. And all of the people out there saying, this chick is crazy, no, I don’t have anger issues, no, I’m not autistic. I’m stressed. Teachers will work you until your breaking point and the saying is “if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger.” While that maybe true for later in life, at the time you’re experiencing it, you don’t think about any benifits. You don’t consider that the teachers are trying to help you. All you feel is the stress. All you want to do is tear up the assignment and throw it out the window of a moving car, smiling and laughin like a madman. At least, that’s how it is for me. I am working on an essay right now, and you can tell because of my proper grammer and such, but I am so aggravated by just the simple nature of the project. I need four pages but I can easily fit all of the information into one and it works and sounds just as good if not better than it would if there were no page requirement.
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I’m sorry. The beginning of that last comment was pretty mean. I apologize for being so rude. I hope I haven’t offended anyone. I’m just really stressed.
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In my first comment there was a typo. I accedentaly said laughin instead of laughing. Oops.
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my teachers give you home work over the summer holidays and the christmas holidays, even though i hate homework, (everyone does) but it really does help you in class, and a tip – get all your homework done WHEN YOU GET IT so you can chill out and not worry about it.
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i hate homework soooooooooooooooo much! i m in elementary school in 4th grade and i got a really mean teacher. i only have a nice teacher for science, but i have a mean teacher for most of my classes. it totally sucks. my librarian and computer lady are ok, but i hardly have those classes. my p.e. teacher is so fat and he thinks he is so good at everything he does. he thinks he is better than us kids.i seriously hate him. he is the worst p.e. teacher ever! i hate my teachers soo much! they give m way too much homework!
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I left my Japanese textbook in my locker because I just completely forgot about it (I’m in Year 7)
But I have to copy the questions and do my answers to them AND THE WORST THING IS, ITS DUE TOMORROW!! ARGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😦
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Shelby – I would be in middle school if I was living in America!!
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My mum says I can’t go to choir tonight if i dont finish this stupid science project which takes up about 5 pages if not more. 😦 I ❤ choir…………..
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Hey guys. Last year, I wrote y’all a message about the homework in eighth grade. Oh, eighth grade me, it will only get worse. I got home half an hour ago and have about three hours of homework to do tonight. I can’t concentrate properly any more. Neither can my friends. Every kid in my friend group is tired. Why is this considered an ideal education? Prep school…
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Us kids really need our sleep these days. But with homework + after school activities, we end up being tired in the morning, dreading to go to school.
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I like pie
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Homework isn’t ever beneficial, it’s normally just recapping over what you did at school… Which is stupid. The thing is teachers expect 9-13 year olds to be as organised as they are, which is never going to happen.
You do work at school…. Keep it at school.
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I just had a terrible homework night. I wake up at 6,
Go to school for 8 hours, then come home and do homework
for 6 hours and now I have to sleep. I don’t even have time to think
about anything but homework or school.
Teachers,
Do us all a favor and lighten the load .
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I forgot to mention that I also skipped lunch just so I could get
some homework done. I probably only got about 5 percent done due to the amount I had.
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