The Homework Debate

The+Homework+Debate

The majority of students can agree homework is time consuming and a bane to our existence, but it’s something we’re accustomed to. Ever since kindergarten, teachers have slowly introduced the idea of homework to their students. As students mature, teachers assign more homework. It’s a fact of life that we’ve all accepted. However, could there be a debate over whether or not too much homework is forced upon students?

For someone like me who involves herself in all AP classes and extracurricular activities, my life is a constant battle between choosing sleep and homework. I can agree along with many of my friends that ever since high school the average amount of sleep I receive during the weekdays has rapidly declined. Most nights, I have homework from every single one of my classes.

Considering I am involved with theater, I have rehearsals anywhere from two to four days every single week, with each rehearsal lasting three hours on average. This severely cuts into the amount of time I have to finish my homework. On some nights I’ve stayed up beyond the hours of midnight trying to finish my homework, or cram in a few more hours of study time. Most nights I don’t finish my homework and it means I have to wake up earlier than normal to try and finish it before school starts.

The worst part about having so much homework is I never get a proper amount of sleep. If I’m not well rested, I have trouble concentrating during class, all because I was up late the night before finishing homework for that class. Kind-of ironic, right? I’ve even devoted my lunch time to staying inside a teacher’s classroom just to finish homework.

Although homework in theory is beneficial to the students because it will help them earn a better grade on their test later on, when does homework become too much?