We’ve all been there, it’s late at night and we don’t have the energy or the time to finish our homework.  So instead, we write down random answers to questions to get a completion grade and don’t end up learning anything.  

Most students are involved in extracurricular activities such as sports, music or both.  There is simply not enough time in the day to do everything.  If each of our 7 classes assigns just a half an hour of homework each, we will have put in more time between school and homework than an adult work day, and that’s not counting extracurricular activities. I’m not saying that we should completely eliminate homework, but the sheer amount assigned by teachers causes students to be miserable and ultimately hinders the student’s education instead of helping it.  

Students are heavily encouraged to be actively involved in school, especially if they want to be competitive on college applications. One of the most common ways to do this is to play a school sport, and for the most part, sports are very beneficial to students. However, the extensive schedule of a student athlete makes it almost impossible to finish all of the assigned homework, let alone do it well and learn the material.  Sophomore Mitchell Getting was forced to quit baseball because his grades were slipping and didn’t have time for school and sports.  “I would get home at like nine at night.  There’s just too much homework to do in one night,” he said. Freshman Alex Wootton said, “It [homework] definitely hurts my grade. I have to do so much homework, I can’t do what I want and that takes me out of it.”  This again takes us back to the main problem: It’s not homework that should be amended, it’s the amount of homework assigned.  

There’s no doubt homework can have it’s benefits, but when students aren’t doing the work -or worse, when students do it, but teachers don’t grade it for anything but completion- it’s basically pointless.  The answer to the problem is simple: schools need to cut down on the amount of homework.  Students’ grades and mental health are suffering, and it’s not because they are lazy or because they’re stupid; it’s because students can’t fit the hours of homework a night into their schedules and they’re powerless and voiceless to change the system.  

Learning is important, but if students aren’t learning what they’re supposed to by doing hours of homework every night, schools must cut back on the amount of homework assigned.  It’s not like I’m asking for schools to spend money on nonsense or change school policies and rules for one individual, I’m asking the school to realize that they are making their student body miserable and hindering their education and do something about it. Even something simple, like if 7 classes alternated on which night they could assign homework, or if there was a certain amount of minutes of homework that was allowed to be assigned per night, would be a move in the right direction.