During Covid-19, teenagers’ lives were turned upside-down as they began figuring out online school, but now being turned back around struggling to get into the in-person flow 5 years later. The homework is becoming overwhelming, loading them with off the charts academic emotions beyond test emotions. Teen social life being shut down and taken away as they are trying to finish their varying hours of school work at home.
Although researchers and scientists have been studying the levels of academic emotions since the 90s, it has only just recently become prominent in 2019 with journalists and authorities, attempting to eliminate homework altogether. Karl Taro Greenfield, the journalist who wrote My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me on the Atlantic, had found that as he attempted to do his 8th-grade daughter’s homework for a whole week, he found it a significant struggle. Greenfield had stated after that, “the heavy workloads are robbing my daughter of precious time to play and pursue interests outside of school”. Homework is taking away a teenager’s opportunities to explore sports, hobbies, interests, and hangout with friends as the homework per night adds up to 3 hours of work each night. While students attempt to balance their school and outside life, researchers at Stanford University conducted a study in 2020 to demonstrate the academic emotions and mental health among numerous highschool students. This study demonstrated 67% of students have highlighted homework is a top 3 major stressor in their life. This not only stresses out the student, but also their family. Schiavo, a mother of a student, said, “As a single mom, I only have a couple hours with my kid at night before they have to go to bed; Spending most of that struggling to get their homework done creates a lot of stress on a family”. Doing their homework at home can bring them to midnight, with or without help from a family member, leading them to, on average, getting 5 hours of sleep at night. Following that point, in the article Homework, anonymous has stated “The amount of homework required of a student is unreasonable. Young people who spend all day in school should not have to labor for hours on schoolwork at home”. While students aren’t getting paid to do school work at school, student’s wouldn’t be paid at home to work on their homework. This is detrimental to a student’s mental health. Sleep heals the body and mind. A teenager needs at least 8 hours of sleep to recharge and keep a healthy well-being. With only 5 hours of sleep, it is a struggle to pay attention in class and maintain a strong mental and physical health.
From a teachers standpoint, Aaron Jarosh, an English teacher at SPASH, after a conducted interview, Jarosh confirmed, “sometimes teachers forget that a students life has more than just their class. While we think 30 minutes of our classwork a night isn’t long, just think about if each one of a student’s classes tells them to work on homework for at least 30 minutes. That’s almost 5 hours a night”. After a student’s brain has been stimulated for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, they want time to relax. With that, Jarosh has said “Home is a place to have home-time and work with home chores”. Without time to relax your brain, a student may become more irritable, tired and overstimulated causing emotional outbreaks, affecting a student’s social life, friendships and relationships; whether those are with family or significant others.
If we were to eliminate homework, student’s lives would be less stressful and full of trying to find a balance of school and their social life, training them into their adulthood; the main goal of most teachers. Although without homework, students may not get material as good, they might feel unprepared for tests and have a negative effect on the change. With many schools implementing this change, not all student’s lives have been improved, though there hasn’t been much in depth research conducted with these changes. Should homework be eliminated for a student’s well-being?