More homework does not equal more learning

Imagine waking up at six in the morning, going to school for seven hours, heading to your extracurriculars for about two hours, and then finally getting home to three hours of homework: this is the life of a high school student.
90% of students are not getting enough sleep at night, according to Craig Canapari, MD. Homework was created to help students better understand what they did in class that day and hold students accountable for making an effort to learn the material. However, this is not the case, leaving many students overwhelmed and unmotivated. According to Greatschools.org, students are receiving more homework now than ever before. With the creation of advanced placement classes, the workload increases drastically for some students.
Many colleges require AP classes to be taken in high school, leaving students no choice but to take on the extra workload.
With six classes a day, the workload adds up quickly and can be very difficult to tackle on top of extracurriculars. In a poll conducted at Milford High School, 30.3% of students say they spend 4-7 hours on homework a night.
“Homework is very stressful and mainly ends up being a waste of time,” Junior Taylor Mitchell stated. “As a student-athlete, I find it very difficult to make time for all the homework while also having practice for two hours every night.” This has become a common problem as many students are encouraged to participate in athletic, music, and other extracurricular activities. The question remains, do our teachers realize we have other classes and obligations?
Some teachers have a more empathetic approach with their homework assignments–giving students many days to complete, optional assignments, or accountability-based homework.
Another obstacle many students face is working after school. A lot of students have jobs; some work more than others, but regardless, working on top of schoolwork and extracurriculars is too much for teenagers.
Junior Bailey Pietraszkiewicz said, “Sometimes it helps me understand the concepts, but sometimes it’s just busy work and over-kill that makes me super stressed out and unable to focus on actually learning the material; instead, I just want to get it done.”
This is not an uncommon feeling for many high school students. Spending seven hours at school, going home, and doing 3-7 hours of homework along with work and extracurriculars leaves little to no time for sleep.
Junior Ryan Hanlin explained, “There is no advantage to homework; it does not benefit us at all. Extra work outside of an eight-hour school day while kids work and play sports is horrible.” Hanlin’s frustrations are prevalent in our society.
On top of the mental and physical exhaustion excessive homework causes, the lack of time to complete it causes students to stay up later.
According to the CDC, teenagers re-quire 8-10 hours of sleep. With homework and extracurriculars, this is simply not possible for students to accomplish.
This often causes students to fall asleep in class or have trouble paying attention resulting in even more homework and less sleep.
Altogether, the stress of homework affects high school students in harmful ways.
People may think, it’s just homework, what’s the big deal? Not everyone realizes how many different factors it disrupts in students’ lives.
On the other hand, homework can have its benefits, but the current surplus of it needs to be changed. The right type of homework may help this. Rather than vocabulary work and other busywork assignments occupying our nights, beneficial homework, like reading or practice problems, would be a much better use of our time.
If teachers assigned homework made to help us rather than just to make us do something, all our lives would be a little nicer.