Homework's Influence On Students

The average high school student spends about three and a half hours on homework. That’s not including honor, advanced placement, or advanced classes. There always have been many different opinions on the harm done by homework. The idea of homework was to give students a short refreshment and overview of what they learned that day. The problem is, homework given to students today does not fulfill its purpose. It’s just busy work. As the old Czech proverb expresses, “Too much of anything, is harmful”. The immense homework load on students takes away the opportunities to learn life lessons, takes away extra-curricular activities, and is very harmful to their development. Life lessons are something everyone must learn. That includes students.

With all the time students spend on homework, they feel obligated to drop other activities in order to have enough time to complete their assignments. Most students don’t know what they want to do when they get out of high school. It is through extracurricular activities that students find their interests and learn to express themselves. The National Center of Education found that students who participated in extracurricular activities have a higher school attendance, GPA, test scores, and expected educational goals. However, students are dropping out of theses out of school activities because of the lack of time. In Denise Pope’s research, she also mentioned that, “...spending too much time on homework [means] students [are] not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills… students [are] more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy [because of homework].” This quote demonstrates how students are rather going to drop out of activities than drop their homework. The irony of this situation is, that in the long run, all of the extracurricular activities a student participated in, will give them more than all of the unnecessary homework they did. Take for example Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs dropped out of college and took elective courses that

Homework replaces the important life lessons and experiences in life and nurses unnecessary stress. Not all lessons come from teachers or school work. Nor the do all lessons come from a textbook. The most important lessons come from first-hand experience. The only way to achieve these lessons are to put down the textbooks and go outside, try new things, and experience the important moments in