Causes of Homework as a Source of Stress (Free Essay Sample)

As if living in a pandemic wasn't enough to harm students in high school, the piles of homework thrown onto their backs have made students feel trapped, drained, and overworked in and out of their school life. Over 60% of students have noted that their main source of stress is homework, and it's only growing worse by the day. Many high schoolers have spoken out about how homework has affected them negatively, yet nothing helps to solve this situation. Constantly students feel as if they're on a never-ending cycle where anxiety and depression can even become involved. Although homework may help students learn management skills, teachers should restrict homework because it is detrimental to students' health, does not improve academics, and causes students to lack skills in life such as motivation and balance. 

Homework has seemed to have caused more issues in relevant times than helping the students to grow successful. Due to homework creating more conflicts for high school students to face, there remain many reasons why homework should become restricted or limited. For instance, one reason homework should become limited is because homework stands overall detrimental to students' health. School boards and teachers have a common thought that homework has no effect on the health of students, however, students' mental and physical health are holding on by a string. Abeles's article represents an idea supporting my thoughts, “Is it any wonder that deprived of the labor protections that we provide adults, our kids are suffering an epidemic of disengagement, anxiety, and depression?” (Abeles 1). Due to the overload of homework creating more disengagement, burnout, and even anxiety, the weight of stress is being held on students' backs, and we know what weird things stress does to our bodies. Abeles’s quote proves the fact that not only homework is creating a global issue, but it is causing students to drown in their own mental health. Students spend an unhealthy amount of time stressing over assignments, this creates a lack of focus on their health overall. For example, in the article “Why Homework Should be Banned from School” by Vicki Abeles states, “I feel like I’m working towards my death. The constant demands on my time since 5th grade are just going to continue through graduation, into college, and then into my job. It’s like I’m on an endless treadmill with no time for living,” (Abeles 1). This suggests a great simile of how homework is making students feel. With this not only can I compare my point on how homework is destroying students' health, but is proven to lead to bigger problems including harming one's well being. As homework is sucking the life and health out of students, they are put on a path of social isolation destroying their mental and physical health standing in the way. 

The time students spend struggling on a homework assignment not only stands pointless but doesn't inevitably result in better grades and test scores among students. Another reason why homework should be limited is that studies have shown that homework does not improve academics. Especially in current times, throwing more homework at students can cause their grades to severely suffer. In addition to the maximum amount of stress students are handling, meaningless homework has a higher chance of being uncompleted, resulting in grades being harmed. According to APA research,  “Too many kids are feeling a lack of engagement with their take-home assignments, many experts say. In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful,” (Weir 1).  Not only does a useless assignment cause more stress, which can ultimately lead to a bad grade, but the results in students' academics won't be achieved. If students are already feeling a lack of engagement from the excess amount of homework, teachers need to realize introducing more does nothing to benefit students. Why add more to students' plates when they are already full? Along with this many homework assignments are also not reaching academic standards, and even can worsen the issue. For example, an associate professor at UVA, Tai explains, “However, students spending more time on something that is not easy to understand or needs to be explained by a teacher does not help these students learn and, in fact, may confuse them,” (Tai 1). When given assignments at a time they may not even be able to complete correctly, what is the point of taking the time to stress over them? This illustrates that studies prove how homework is not being helpful and can cause even more confusion. If teachers provide homework after school when students may forget how to do a topic, or may not even be able to complete it at home, then what is the purpose of the assignment in general? Receiving homework like this can not only confuse students with how to do it right vs wrong but can lead to it not being beneficial at all.