By Maggie Foight Homework supposedly helps students to remember material learned in class. However, that single benefit is actually outweighed by the stress and pressure it brings along, according to the students it is supposed to help. According to usnews.com, American students receive three and a half hours of homework per class each week, on average. For Wilson students, that means 14 hours for our core coursework every week, with an additional 10.5 if that is applied to our elective studies as well. If this average is correct, we have anywhere from about three to five hours of homework a night. In addition to the homework, Wilson students often feel pressured to join clubs and/or sports to make ourselves stand out when it comes to college. Let’s do some more calculations. We have five hours of homework—let’s make that 5 hours at the extreme, supposing we have a lot of studying to do—a night, plus an hour of extracurriculars a day and another hour for transportation and meals. That’s seven hours taken. Then, you add in the 6 hours of school, making that 13 hours of the day used up. Twenty-four hours minus 13 hours of activity leaves 11 hours left for sleep. The site nationwidechildrens.org says that adolescents need nine hours to function at our best. That leaves two hours for everything else—getting ready in the morning and night, getting stuck in traffic, decompressing… When do we have time to live? We really don’t. Hhs.gov says that high schoolers, on average, should have one and a half hours to themselves to take a step back from the anxieties of day-to-day life. But that takes up three-quarters of the time we have, according to the above calculations. We stress ourselves out, trying to make more time in the day for everything when we can’t. We aren’t divine beings. We can’t make the world rotate slower, and we can’t eliminate parts of our schedule to make time for free time because our schedule is already down to the bare bones of life as it is. Data collected by mempowered.com showed that spending more than 3 hours a day at the high school level doesn’t add up to a significant amount - we shouldn’t need to spend more than that to review and retain material. There’s our extra time. It’s being wasted going over and over material that we should be already learning in class. We need time to just be teenagers, without the stress and anxiety from mountains of homework. Besides, since adults don’t do work after they clock out and if being a student is considered a job, why do we have to work for a longer period of time than people twice our age? Just something to chew on… Photos Courtesy Of: commons.wikimedia.org; pixnio.com
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Elena Caputo
Hi! My name is Elena, and I'm a senior at Wilson and one of the Editors of the Editorial section. If you have any questions or ideas or if you want to write, email me at [email protected]! Olivia MonosHello! My name is Olivia and I'm a junior this year, and one of the editors of the Editorial section! I'm really excited to write for the Paw Print again this year!
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