Diagnostic Opinion Piece
- Nala Cyriac
- Sep 13, 2023
- 3 min read
Nala Cyriac
Mr. Cohen
ELS20
8th of September
Diagnostic Opinion Writing
Two hours of homework a night should not be mandatory. There are so many reasons why it is damaging for students to have excessive amounts of homework every night. Some examples could be that it could lead to burnout, it takes up a lot of time, and it could impact a student's sleep schedule. Overall, the reasons against having large amounts of homework every night greatly exceeds the benefits.
Burnout in students is incredibly common, especially when they are having to juggle multiple things at once such as extracurricular activities, responsibilities at home, or commitments outside of school. Most high school students have daily homework assignments that must be completed within a short period of time. Burnout can also be more common in students who suffer from some form of mental health issues. According to School Mental Health Ontario, “18-22% of students meet the criteria for mental health concerns,” and that is just in Ontario and just for people with mental health concerns. Even students without any medical conditions are still just as likely to develop some sort of burnout. According to Gitnux, “A significant percentage of college students experience anxiety, depression, and burnout, with rates ranging from 5% to 75%.” burnout can cause symptoms such as a lack of motivation and interest in learning, impaired ability to focus, physical health issues, lack of creativity, and decreased academic performance. All of this can lead to lower grades and worse performance which can lead to much worse things down the road. It is clear that burnout and academic performance are linked and therefore by subjecting students to large quantities of this work, it is only leading them towards burnout faster.
Students use their time outside of school for many different things. Whether it be good or bad, students still use their time outside of the learning environment to learn, grow, and develop as people and to create a unique personality that comes with time, trial and error, and of course, social interactions. By limiting a students time to become the best versions of themselves with these many mandatory hours dedicated to homework, schools are putting too much emphasis on the work itself and actually making it more difficult for the student in the future who is not able to use the valuable time after school to develop into the person that they are going to be, throwing them into the deep end in the future when they have not had time to fully create something of themselves that distinguishes them from others. According to the Arthur Morgan School, “Free time gives students the opportunity to play and experiment. It gives them a break from their daily pressures and allows them to incorporate what they learned into their everyday activities and social connections.” School can’t teach students everything that they are going to need to become functioning adults: rational thinking, problem solving, and skill development in things other than your usual subjects like Math, English, etc. allows students to become more well rounded and all together better people.
In recent times, the population, but youth in general have been getting less sleep and that is detrimental to a students performance in school. According to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital, “The average amount of sleep that teenagers get is between 7 and 7 ¼ hours. However, they need between 9 and 9 ½ hours (studies show that most teenagers need exactly 9 ¼ hours of sleep).” There are obviously a plethora of reasons why teenagers aren’t getting enough sleep, cellular devices often being the go to thing to blame but it really depends on the student. Some students have other commitments such as jobs to help their families, extracurricular activities or sports that they may do competitively that take up a lot of their time. As a whole, there are a lot of things that students have to think about and sleep often gets put on the backburner to things that they deem “more important.”
In conclusion, students have a lot of pressure on them to do well academically and homework is one of the things that causes a lot of stress for many. Whether the student is losing sleep, is experiencing burnout, or needing to spend time outside of school. Two hours of mandatory homework is absurd.
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