One day a teacher said to one of his students, “Son, if you didn’t have homework, you wouldn’t learn.” Based on polls from actual students and research from notable scientists, homework can actually do the exact opposite of helping a student learn. In fact, too much homework can be a detriment to a student’s grade and mind. Some people were enthusiastic about school until the homework load came. Some people claim they simply don’t have time for the homework while some say that homework is unhealthy and they don’t do any homework because it’s all busy work. Furthermore, other nations assign their students very little homework, yet their testing scores are higher than those of the U.S.

Students moving into middle school and high school lives are, at first, excited about their new schooling. But after the first little bit of school, students begin to “hate school” and dread waking up in the mornings as they have to go back to a place where they are given hours worth of homework. Instead of being a place full of fun and enthusiastic learning, schools turn into places that are just barley tolerable. Students now go through as much as eight classes a day in which at least thirty minutes of homework is assigned every night. This adds up to about four hours of homework a night on top of any other extra- circular activities a student participates in. So, when its all said and done, many students don’t finish for the night until well after midnight. Even at that point, many students still have homework left over that they have to finish up at school.

Due to the large homework loads, people end up fail school as they have lives that exist outside of school. It seems as if people are punished for actually living and not spending one hundred percent of their time focused on school. A student from Woodland Park High School stated that “We simply have lives. It’s too hard to do it all and sleep at the same time. I don’t think I need homework at all.” Another student says that, “ten to thirty minutes would be ok, but I have a life too.” With the busy lives that students lead, it is impossible to get it all done.

Though there are massive loads of busy work assigned to be done at home, the government still spends its time advertising that exercise is good and that people need to remain healthy. Yet, our schools think that it’s smart to have people sit in class all day, then send them home to sit more and do hours of homework. All of that sitting isn’t beneficial for the brain, nor the body. In fact, it is said that exercise is key in helping students learn, so teachers should give people time to have fun and get exercise versus make people sit for long amounts of time doing more school work. The only thing that comes out of many hours of homework is a tired mind and a body that only gets worse for wear as one sits.

It has been known that countries like Japan that give little to no homework produce better test scores that countries like the United States, Greece, and Iran that give tons of homework. Furthermore, according to the Time Magazine, “homework can actually lower a student’s test score.” But, homework doesn’t necessarily need to be thrown out all together. In fact, researchers from the Huffington post say that “one to two hours of homework a week” can be beneficial for grades ten through twelve. But, for any grades lower than that, even one to two hours of homework a week is too much for the students. In addition to the fact that only one to two hours of homework a week is beneficial, another student from Woodland Park High School says that “Students actually learn better at school versus at home because students will actually pay more attention at school.”

Due to the excessive loads of homework, students get less sleep, make worse grades, score worse on tests, and live less of their lives. Homework seems to be nothing but busy work for most students and they learn nothing at all from homework. The only place students seem to learn is at school itself, so teachers should leave the learning to be done at school, because it won’t be done at home.
















Howard, Jacqueline. "Too Much Homework Can Lower Test Scores, Researchers Say." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 30 Mar. 2012. Web. 23 May 2013.


Ryan, Rachel. "Study Finds Too Much Homework Bad for Students." WCAV RSS. Newsplex, 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 23 May 2013.

Wallis, Claudia. "The Myth About Homework." Time. Time, 29 Aug. 2006. Web. 23 May 2013.