The educational process gives many benefits for the youth as it helps children obtain knowledge, improve skills, and get ready for a future career. However, there’s one thing that bothers: Both children and parents are worried about the amount of homework teachers assign kids to study in their free time.
It’s no secret that most students share the same idea that teachers give them too much homework. And a logical question appears: How many minutes of homework should school students have? The short answer is 10 minutes of homework for each grade reacher. Obviously, school, college, and university students can’t get the same amount of homework.
In partnership with the National Parent Teacher Association, The National Education Association has created the 10-minute rule, according to which students shouldn’t be spending more than 10 minutes on doing homework each day for each grade reached. In other words, being a student of the 12th grade, children should spend up to 120 minutes on homework daily which means up to 10 hours a week.
However, statistics on homework claim that children spend around 17.5 hours a week on homework. Simply put, teachers assign too much homework, which may lead to health problems.
Although out-of-class activity is an essential part of the educational process, there are five reasons why too much homework is bad for health.
The Main Source of Stress
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There’s a great variety of homework facts and one of them claims that 56% of students consider homework a primary source of stress. Not only does homework help to improve academic achievements, but it also affects students’ grades. Thus, it’s no wonder that students want to complete their homework assignments on a good level. Once students don’t know how to do their task, they start worrying and it leads to stress. The more assignments students get, the higher risks of getting stressed.
Rising Levels of Anxiety
No matter how good as a student you are, you may still have a trouble keeping a work-life balance. Since schools ask students to do too many time-consuming things (attending lectures, reading materials, doing homework), children feel pressed. Unfortunately, more than 41% of college students suffer from anxiety disorders. And the pressure of homework assignments can increase anxiety, according to the facts about homework. If students can’t meet given deadlines, they start panicking and it results in anxiety. Thus, having too much homework isn’t a great idea if keeping students healthy is high on the list.
Chronic Daily Headaches
Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or student, you must know that homework leads to chronic daily headaches. When students get too much homework, they spend a considerable amount of time working on their tasks, so there are two main reasons why homework causes headaches: a student chooses a bad posture while sitting at the desk and he or she is worried about submitting the tasks on time. No matter why headache appears, it goes without saying that it negatively affects physical and mental health, so it also has an influence on the educational process which means students can’t concentrate on the learning materials. All in all, it’s nearly impossible to study well when you suffer from chronic headaches. Thus, it’s important for a parent to control the amount of homework teachers assign.
Lack of Socialization
Getting too much homework prevents kids from spending time with their friends.
At first blush, it seems that homework helps children spend time with their parents, as kids are more likely to ask their parents for help once they have some problems with out-of-class assignments. However, there’s no proof that working together with parents on assignments is beneficial. Firstly, many parents and teachers ask themselves: Should parents help with homework or not? Secondly, it can be daunting for adults to help their kids with homework if they don’t remember the material. Thirdly, students need socialization with their peers.
When students are overwhelmed with the amount of homework, they can’t afford to spend time with their friends which leads to a lack of socialization.
Loss of Creativity
Have you ever heard about the idea that schools are killing creativity? Since most teachers are focused on honing theoretical skills rather than boosting creativity, they assign homework that doesn’t help students showcase their creative nature. With the growing amount of homework assignments, children don’t seek out creative ways to complete their tasks; they are focused on submitting tasks without spending much time or effort. Most kids study for the test and forget, and it’s no doubt that this approach leads to the loss of creativity, which is an important soft skill every person needs.
In Short
If you have ever paid attention to the homework statistics, you know that getting a great number of homework assignments won’t help to become smarter. It has a negative effect on physical and mental health which also affects academic performance. All in all, it seems to be a closed circle: young people should keep a balance in life to stay happy and productive and working too much on assignments isn’t the way to achieve it. Thus, it’s important to control how much time students spend doing homework.