Students at Kingswood Oxford are accustomed to spending hours upon hours per night completing inordinate amounts of homework on top of participating in sports and clubs, managing their health, and spending time with their families.
The KO News believes teachers at KO need to reconsider how they assign homework because many students feel overwhelmed and overworked. Students arrive at school for 8:00 a.m. or earlier, commuting from all over the state, and are typically at school until 5:00 p.m. or later depending on sports schedules and club meetings. Many students then have to drive home during rush hour traffic, and often don’t arrive home until 5:30-6:00 p.m. or even later. This does not leave much time to have dinner, complete upwards of 3 hours of homework, and get a good night’s rest.
Additionally, because each class only meets three times per week, in many instances there are at least two days between classes meeting. Often times, teachers will assign more homework because we technically have more time to finish it; however, when every class does this, it results in late nights and stress for the majority of students.
It is a reality that all students at KO want to do well academically, and the first things they sacrifice in order to achieve this are sleep and family time. Teenagers should receive between eight to ten hours of sleep per night; however, it is common to hear students around campus receiving only four to six hours regularly. Additionally, many students rarely have time to talk with their parents or have sit down family dinners which, according to Stanford Children’s Hospital, are proven to help regulate stress levels among family members. Excessive amounts of homework also stifle intellectual curiosity because students don’t have the time to pursue other passions or research topics that they are interested in. Few students actually have the time to sit down to read a book for leisure.
The National Education Association recommends that students have no more than ten minutes of homework per grade level they are in. This means that ninth graders have 90 minutes of homework per night and 12th graders have 120 minutes of homework per night. This includes writing essays and studying for tests.
The costs of the amount of homework KO students have outweigh the benefits, and it stops kids from following interests that don’t align with the classes they take. The issue of overworking students is a global one, but KO has the ability to make a difference on our own campus.
