Is Too Much Homework Research Paper

Megan Scott Rollyson

English 3

21 January 2018

MLA

How Much Homework is Too Much Homework?

Every student of high school dreads the thought of doing homework every night, and it’s much more than students wanting to play a video game or surf the internet. Highschoolers are growing adolescents that are soon to be adults, and the state of their wellbeing is important to how their future is determined. Homework, it turns out, seems to be a strong stress factor to students nationwide, and it is much more widespread than you think. High school students are receiving too much homework, it’s confusing and stressing them out, it's taking a toll on their mental and physical health, as well as their social lives.

According to the NEA (National Education

Tai of UVA (both professors), and Xitao Fan, dean of education at the University of Macau, tells us that homework is better when quality of it is considered over quantity. Inside the research, they conducted a survey of more than 18,000 10th grade students to measure and explain reasons for their performance in school. After analysis of the total amount of time spent on homework, compared to student’s final grades of a particular class, there was no substantial difference in grades between highschoolers who did homework, versus those who did little to none at all. Robert H. Tai states, “homework assignments cannot replace good teaching…beginning with the content coverage requirements that push too much information into too little time to learn it in the classroom, the overflow typically results in more homework assignments,” he says, “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…may confuse them,” (Tai, Maltese). He then also adds, “Homework should be purposeful,” (Tai). In other words, homework is good to an extent, but should focus more on the quality of the work instead of the amount, as too much of it will cause confusion and an abundance of stress in students. Focusing on the purpose of the assignment, and making the assignment clear to the one doing it would be much better than overloading them with