By Mika Richter-Fleishman
Does Beacon assign too much homework? It’s a popular opinion among students– and there’s reasoning to believe that it’s true. Excessive homework doesn’t just impact mental health but in some cases physical health as well. Alongside homework not efficiently teaching you what you need to retain, it can also limit your development of traits like teamwork and communication and what future tasks like jobs will appreciate and require. Over the past 40 or so years, the amount of homework in the US (especially in elementary schools) has doubled. The amount of stress has doubled as well, now at 70% of kids’ source of stress. Homework limits the time students have to themselves after school, and can lead to many consequences.
Does Homework Actually Work?
Though many people believe that homework can positively impact your grade, data can disprove this. We can compare the test scores of Finland (a country with little to no homework) and Italy (the country with the most homework on average) to see that while homework can give the appearance of success, the results don’t always reciprocate. According to the Program for International Student Assessment, a study that measures 15-year-olds’ average test results every three years from across the world, Italy scores just below average worldwide in the categories math, science and reading while Finland scores well above average. The country has also been deemed as the “happiest place on earth” since 2016 by The World Happiness Report, a yearly survey that is based on everyone’s own personal assessments of their life. This illustrates in reality how little homework affects your grades and how more homework can actually impact you negatively. The decrease of homework leads to a more stress-free environment, ultimately making you more content.
Imbalances
The amount of homework Beacon supplies does affect student’s well being. “I don’t think the amount of homework I receive is helpful, it just makes me worry about how I can make time to do it,” explains one sophomore. Homework for students just generates worry, making them sacrifice their other plans to complete it. A 2014 Stanford study looked at the students from the most high-achieving schools and communities and saw that they bore the most stress, physical health problems and imbalance in their social and academic lives because of these increased amounts of homework. The Stanford study looked at more than 4,300 students and found that the vast majority confessed to homework leading to lack of sleep, headaches, and many other health effects– including even stomach aches. Most of these students added that homework was “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” and also led to them dropping extracurricular clubs or hobbies. In other words, the more expected and pressured with homework a student is, the more stress and other negative health effects occur. Beacon teachers need to change the amount of homework students receive to not only reduce health problems but also to help students grow into healthier and more balanced people, ultimately benefiting us in ways they do not immediately see.
Goals to Work Towards
Beacon’s main focus is to prepare you for when you’re older and getting a job, and the best way to do that is to learn the habits and traits that jobs are looking for now. According to Marissa Campbell, MS/RD, jobs look for the ability to problem solve, collaborate, communicate, and thrive in a leadership role. Beacon does a pretty good job of this, many Beacon students pursue successful careers, though a way to step it up is to change our ways with homework. One way to do this is limiting the amount we give out, leaving time for kids’ extracurriculars and opportunities to learn these helpful traits.
Hobbies Help
Child Care Plymouth states, “Families are beginning to see the benefits of allowing their kids to partake in extracurricular activities rather than focusing solely on homework. Some of the reasons families choose extracurricular activities over homework include the following: Development of new skills and interests… teamwork…[and] benefits in mental and physical health.” This demonstrates that being able to take part in pastimes can develop these much needed traits. If Beacon students had more time to participate in these activities, we can infer the growth of helpful new traits, such as collaboration, will be more present.
In the end, changing homework will help with students’ general health and development, especially since kids in the past few years are already dealing with increased rates of depression and anxiety. Choosing alternatives to homework or even something as small as limiting homework will work wonders with student stress and even the time from the teacher taken by grading it all.
The Beacon Beat 