Dawn 'Til Dusk

What jumps through your mind when you hear the phrase "Worked from dawn 'til dusk"?  You probably think of a farmer, or maybe a factory worker.  One of the people that are probably not at the forefront of your mind is a student.  But the reality is, students often fit the description just as well.  Under the load of homework in addition to the regular school day, some students can indeed end up working on school from the early hours of the day to late at night.

On a typical school day, a students drag themselves out of bed, often as early as 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, to get ready for school.  They then go to school, for what schools usually describe as a 6-8 hour day, depending on the school.  However, this time estimate does not take homework and studying into account.  When these are factored in, a true school day can last as long as 12 hours!  Assuming these students get their recommended 10 hours of sleep, this means they can end up spending up to 86% of their waking hours on weekdays doing schoolwork!  Even on weekends and holidays, which are meant to be breaks from school, students can find themselves spending a large portion of their time on homework in the form of longer term assignments!

The question is, how much is too much?  Many studies have found that the ideal amount of homework for a student is approximately 10 minutes multiplied by the grade level of the student or less.  By this ideal standard, the maximum amount of homework a student would be 2 hours of homework a night for seniors.  Pushing too far beyond this limit causes students to experience "burn-out", becoming less inclined to complete all of their homework every night, and less inclined to learn in general.  This fact explains in part why it is so commonplace to see students working on their homework from the previous night during the school day, which in turn makes them lose focus on what they are supposed to be learning at the time.  When a student's workload frequently pushes beyond the "10-minute rule", it "Can become counter-productive for students at all levels."  (Duke Study: Homework...)

But test scores are not the only part of a student that suffers under the burden of excessive homework.  Too much homework can have a severe effect on students' psyches as well, causing them extreme psychological distress.  In fact, the American Psychological Association reports that "The average student today exhibits greater anxiety than the average psychological patient would have in the 1950's" (The Case Against...  Fact Sheet), and significantly increased depression and suicide rates result.

You might be led to wonder why it is that teachers give so much homework when that excessive workload can have such adverse effects.  A study at Ridge High School showed that teacher's estimates on the time it takes students to do homework "Did not align with the student and parent responses regarding the actual amount of time it takes to complete assignments."  (Homework Survey Summary...)  This highlights teacher underestimation of the workloads they are assigning.  In an overwhelming amount of cases, the homework actually took students one and a half times to twice as long as the teachers anticipated.  In addition to this underestimation, many teachers have never been given any formal classes on homework, and homework classes are "At best an afterthought" (No More Teachers...) to the process of becoming a teacher.  They are never taught how to create fair and fun assignments, nor are they taught how much homework to give.  This lack of understanding can lead to large amounts of busy work and dull projects.

It is strange how such an enormous issue in the lives of students has been ignored for so long.  The ironic part, it can be fixed in a process which actually makes the teachers' jobs easier!  By assigning less volume of homework, teachers have less of it to grade, and a greater focus on catching students' errors and helping them fix them, whereas large volumes render teachers less likely to catch these errors and more likely for students to reinforce the errors through mindless repetition.

So, what are you going to do about it?  The facts are all there: depression, anxiety, burn-out...  Too much homework isn't set in stone, it is quite possible to make a change.  This is my challenge to anyone reading this: Take the first step in fixing the nationwide epidemic of homework overload. If enough individuals make a change, maybe the whole system will as well.

Sources:

Benett, Sara and Nancy Kalish.  "No More Teachers, Lots of Books."  The New York Times.  Web.  18 Oct 2012.

Bennett, Sara and Nancy Kalish.  "The Case Against Homework: Q & A with the Authors."  The Case Against Homework.  Web.  18 Oct 2012.

Durham, N.C.  "Duke Study: Homework Helps Students Succeed in School, as Long as There Isn't Too Much."  Duke Today.  Web.  18 Oct 2012.

Siet, Sean.  "Homework Survey Summary and Analysis 2011-2012."  Bernards Board of Education.  Web.  18 Oct 2012.

"The Case Against Homework: A Fact Sheet."  Stop Homework.  Web.  18 Oct 2012.

Wolchover, Natalie.  "Too Much Homework Can Lower Test Scores, Researchers Say."  Huffington Post.  Web.  18 Oct 2012.