I agree. I tried to be the model student in high school, taking multiple AP courses and all that because y'know from counselors, television, society in general, etc, that's what I heard universities wanted and would give me the best shot and so that's what I did.
And so I took multiple AP classes at the same time. Like AP Government, AP Composition, AP Chemistry, etc. And while individually each teacher tried not to give out too much homework even as such, no more than say 30 min-1 hour, when u have 6 different classes when you're in school that adds up to 3-6 hours each night pretty quickly. And good that's something that annoyed me so much in high school, because that refrain of teachers saying they don't give out that much was so common. Yeah, well, maybe. But you're not my only teacher, and I know you know that, but just not their problem and something that just went unsaid.
In any case, I thought I could nonetheless hack it and did my best because it's just something you had to do for the best shot at university, but I couldn't. That was all too much for me, and my grades and performance suffeeree even in stuff I enjoyed st the time like chemistry.
Especially since it's not just the homework I was worried about. Indeed, again because if university pressure, I understood how important extracurricular activities we're. And so I signed up for stuff like Quiz Bowl. And oh God, Quiz Bowl nightsm. Quiz Bowl itself was fun and I really liked it! But I also didn't actually get home until like 6:00, 6:30 PM on Quiz Bowl nights and my amount of HW was the same whether I had Quiz Bowl or not, and so Quiz Bowl nights themselves became a constant source if anxiety because I just somehow had to swuueze more into less on those nights.
And then speaking of universities, there's the applications themselves and college scholarships and all that on top of it all. And man, on that I have to say my mom was awesome because she was constantly looking for so much stuff for me, and I appreciated that so much. But at the same time, when they each wanted their own essays as part of the application process and obviously if you wanted to win with the amount of applications those things get it's not like any rush-job would cover it, with what time left over was I supposed to write all these other essays just for so much as a chance, JUST A CHANCE, of winning and the much greater probability that effort would be wasted? And so I begrudgingly ignored them because there just weren't hours in the day left for all that.
Suffice it to say that high school was a miserable experience for me, largely because of homework.
So yeah, that bring said, I agree, homework should be as close to being abolished as possible. Because I understand that each individual teacher only has a very limited time with students, but that goes two ways, and the students' free time at home is also valuable and can't be assumed to be unlimited. And indeed, because of that limited amount of time, the benefit of homework is questionable. Because if you want understand it it's probably fine. But what if you don't actually understand it,bbut just think you do? Then you're just wasting time reinforcing bad habits, but it will take until the assignment is graded and you get it back to realize that,vat which point the class has almost certainly moved on to other subjects and it's very hard to go back to that and look it over and realize what you actually did wrong so you can correct those mistakes because like all the other students you're expected to keep up with the latest material and do that now, so making the time to reach out to understand old mistakes just isn't in the cards at all, and so things can easily just snowball. And then you have the students who have limited to no parental support at all because they have bad home lives or their parents are just working 2-3 jobs and don't have time to make ends meet even if they'd likely love nothing but to have that time, and so of you have a student like that who just flat out doesn't understand the material at all, things can get bad that much faster.
That's all to say that homework is something that only even helps those most likely to succeed anyway, those students who more or less did understand the material, who have good home lives with readily accessible parental support, etc. For everyone else,it's questionable at best if not outright harmful in certain situations (as in addition to the scenarios I've outlined above, you also have people like myself, who was a straight A student who did great in school and was great at understanding material when I had proper time, but I just burned myself out trying to keep up with what I perceived to be the expectations of the universities I'd be applying to and ended up hating school as a result).
My thoughts on this are this ultimately very similar to what I feel should be worker's rights as a result. Because like most people I imagine, I've forgotten lots of what I learned in history classes over the years, just because I had no use for it even if I did find it interesting because it really is true what they say, if you don't use it, you lose it.
But anyway, the point being that one of the things I DO remember from history class for whatever reason is that one of the motor for the worker's rights movement here in the United States was "8 HOURS FOR WORK, 8 HOURS FOR REST, 8 HOURS FOR WHAT WE WILL."
And indeed, among other things, that motto was based on what was already being learned about workforce productivity at the time, that after about 40 hours of work a week productivity starts to very quickly drop off a cliff.
And well, students aren't workers obviously but they're still hunsn beings and they're still in school for about 7 hours or so each day as it is. And while that may not be much time for any individual teacher, any individual class, that's just the problem with the school model in general, that we try to pack so much into the day but spend such little time on any given thing that a lot of it is just wasted unfortunately due to focusing do much on breadth instead of depth and comprehension and understanding.
But nonetheless, regardless of how efficient or inefficient or anywhere in between, those 7 hours or so students are in class are what they are regardless. And indeed being younger and growing and all that, with large need for sleep as well especially for adolescents, well, what I'm getting at is if anything that "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we wil" should apply to students just as much if not more so because due to that, if not the very same, being human beings themselves, if anything their limits for truly being the most productive would be lower than the adult workforce due to all of that.
Yet, while l hear a lot about productivity to defend and if anything lower the 8 hour workday for adults and rail against stuff like forced overtime/crunch in the gaming industry for instance, it's very interesting that I almost never year the same concepts that would logically apply just as much if not more so to students, well, actually being applied to them and it's just inherently assumed that they can jack it/it's good for them or whatever and even when it comes to homework critics it's interesting that's very rarely directly part of the picture at all to me.
Be ause again, I want to make this clear, I understand that teachers themselves are under huge time constraints. But that itself is a critique of the structure if schools, how we try to squeeze so much into do little, and doesn't change what people's linirs are or how much time is already spent in schools.
And I don't know what the answer is to that, I'll be the first to admit it. But at the sane time, what I do know is that sudents already spend 7 hours or so in school as it is, and expecting them to just do more on top of that certainly isn't the answer, that's for sure, especially with other obligations and stuff once they get to the high school level anyway like extracurricular activities, college admissions essays, scholarship essays, part-time jobs, etc. I don't know what the answer is, I can admit that, but expecting students to do even more when they're already doing they're best 7 hours a day isn't it, or at least it in no way should be, IMO.
