Hold the Homework: Homework is important, but only to a certain extent and there should be more choice involved for students

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who enjoys homework. I agree it can be helpful, but there’s a certain line when homework no longer helps a student learn.

Especially in high school, when you’re already spending your evening working a four-hour shift, chasing around your nanny kids or running sprints at practice, there is little time to do homework while also getting to balance having a social life, job, hobbies and sports.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying homework shouldn’t ever be done — but if you think I’m going to do 40 problems deriving and integrating equations after an evening of soccer practice — you’re wrong. 10 problems to make sure I’m understanding the content and keeping the concepts in my mind outside of school? That’s more reasonable.

Teachers over-assigning homework to the point where students have a difficult time balancing having a life outside of school leads to burnout and hate for a given subject when deep down, the student doesn’t hate it at all — they’re just overwhelmed.

If a student feels they’re struggling enough to truly need the 40 problems a night, so be it. They’re free to do that. The textbooks are there and students can go as far as they’d like, and teachers can give guidance or optional work. It should be offered, not required.

Teachers obviously want students to understand their curriculum and grow and learn outside of class but that doesn’t work if students themselves don’t want to do so.

If a student has a packed schedule and suddenly realizes they forgot to do their homework for their next class period — they will most likely ask a friend to send them that homework rather than taking the zero, or just skip the class altogether. What good does that do if students aren’t even really doing the work assigned?

Yes, using others’ work only hurts them in the long term aspect, but then why grade 100 worksheets that were done by actually only half of those students. This wastes time for students and teachers.

It’s sad spending seven hours at school and then coming home wanting to relax and knowing you have another five hours of work ahead of you — and you have to do it all over tomorrow. To me, it sounds like burnout.

Some may say that if you choose more challenging classes, you choose the heavy workload and the busy schedule, but having to worry about homework and center your life around it doesn’t make sense to me.

Again, I wouldn’t say homework is “stupid”, but students should have more preference in how much they really put into their school work outside of these walls.