Now, I'm not trying to sound like a lazy or overly rebellious student. Believe me, I'm not- I've gotten straight A's almost my entire life. I do my homework, or did. Lately I've just been doing enough to make it look like I did all my homework and it isn't out of laziness. School burnout, exhaustion, and a literal mental overload caused by the sheer amount of homework I have all play a part.
During the cross country season, I get home around 5:00, shower, eat dinner, and usually begin homework around 6. That should give me plenty of time to do my homework, have some actual downtime to interact with my family, and go to bed by 9:30 so I get the recommended minimum of 8 hours of sleep per night. But that simply isn't the case. On a typical night, my homework is done around 10:30 -without procrastination!- then I get ready for bed and am usually asleep by 11. So on a typical weeknight I am only getting about 6 and a half hours of sleep, not even in the same locale as 8 hours. Then, I get up for school the next morning, get through the 7 hour day, run practice, and everlasting study and homework cycle repeats.
Okay, so that's for someone who participates in a sport. What about someone who comes directly home from school every day? This hypothetical person arrives home at 3:00, eats a snack, and starts their homework at 3:15. They then do homework for two hours and eat dinner. If dinner takes about a half hour, this should bring them to 6:15. And assuming they have the same amount of homework as me and most people I know, they still have 2 and a half hours left. Which brings them to 8:45. They now have plenty of time to get ready for bed and be asleep at 9:30, but what about social development? Schools and teachers too often discourage this in favour of doing more schoolwork, but should they really scoff at this idea of a social life so easily?
As adults, life won't be all work and no play, and there's a reason for that: it leads to mental burnout. Studies show that the average high schooler today has the same level of anxiety as a typical psychiatric patient in the 1950's. The amount of schoolwork we are given is literally pushing us to the point of insanity. Besides, teenagers will need to have certain social skills that they can't learn from discussing only school-related topics with their peers, and in the real world, as can be inferred from above, they will have time for this. A full time job works 40 hours per week- 8 hours each day Monday-Friday with weekends off. I understand the notion of working overtime and having to tend to certain events, but they certainly don't take up the rest of your time with sheer deskwork that is too often also busywork. School goes 7 hours a day Monday-Friday; therefore, to really prepare high school students for the real world they should not have more than 5-8 hours of homework per week (accounting for overtime), and certainly not 4 and a half per night.
In conclusion, schools should give less homework for the sake of students' health, both mental and physical, and to develop important social skills. As a teacher I had in grade eight once quoted, "Don't let your education get in the way of your education."
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