Excessive Amounts of Homework for Students by Marushka Rout, 8ReM

‘Is the unnecessary amount of homework you’re receiving from your school keeping you up all night, desperate just to finish it? Well, you’re not the only one'

A mother wakes up to the sound of a pencil dropping and plastic bags moving. She immediately got worried as it was 4:30am. As she walked down the hallway, she saw her that her 17-year-old son’s light was still on full brightness. She opened the doors to see him packing his bag, driven to a state of pure exhaustion. She instantly sent him off to bed so he could get at least two hours of sleep before he would have to get up for school. Wait, why was he still up though? He wasn’t up because he was playing video games or talking to anyone, oh no it’s nothing even near that. So then why was he up?

An excessive amount of homework.

Yes, that’s correct. An excessive amount of homework was what kept the exhausted teenager up all night. He even ended up sleeping through an entire class, luckily managing not to get caught! According to study that was published in ‘The American Journal of Family Therapy’, kids in elementary school receive up to 3 times as much homework as they really should be getting. A kindergartener, for example, had 25 minutes of homework, which is too much for a small child.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” says Denise Pope, a senior lecturer of Stanford Graduate School of Education as well as a co-author of a study that was published in the ‘Journal of Experimental Education’.

As mentioned previously, students are receiving 3 times more homework than they really should be getting as opposed to the recommended homework amount by the NEA and the National PTA. There is a 10 minute rule that some schools supposedly follow where the grade determines the amount of homework that should be given, for example, Grade 1 receives 10 minutes of homework a night, Grade 2 receives 20 minutes of homework a night and so on until Grade 12 that receives 120 minutes, 2 hours, of homework a night. However, a report showed that first graders who should be having 10 minutes of homework a night ended up having 28 minutes instead!

Also, a study last year showed that high school students are negatively impacted by the amount of homework that they receive, causing them to develop health issues, the main one being sleep deprivation, followed by ulcers, migraines, stomach aches and unhealthy weight loss. Students aren’t the only ones being affected by the excessive amount of homework though. It was reported that too much homework also causes intense stress in households, especially in those with undereducated parents. (i.e. those who didn’t have a college degree.) The report showed that families with undereducated parents are 200% more likely to have fights and conflicts with their child over their homework. They also showed to have much less confidence in helping their child with their homework which was also a main cause for high stress levels in the household.

“Anybody who’s tried to keep a 5-year-old at a table doing homework for 25 minutes after school knows what that’s like. I mean children don’t want to be doing, they want to be out playing, they want to be interacting, and that’s what they should be doing. That’s what’s really important.” says Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, director of the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology.

Children in elementary school are also prone to health issues due to their homework, which can cause a negative impact on their growth and could even make them develop unhealthy habits. After all, children of such young ages really shouldn’t be forced to sit at a table. As Donaldson-Pressman said, they should be outdoors, interacting and playing, as it will generally make them happier.

A while back, a Stanford researcher had also found that too much homework is bad for kids. They had decided to survey 4,137 students that were from 10 high-performing high-schools in upper-middle-class California Communities. The average amount of homework that high schoolers were assigned was a total of 3.1 hours of homework a night. Looking back at previous information, the most homework that should be assigned for the highest grade, Grade 12, is 2 hours! Looking further into the negative impacts of excessive homework, the researchers found that 56% of high schoolers admitted to homework being the main cause of their high stress levels, 33% admitting that they put pressure on themselves to try to get good grades in the subject of the assigned homework. They also described their homework as being ‘mindless’ and ‘pointless’. The results also showed that many high school students were giving up many of their hobbies and talents and stopping any extracurricular activities and even limiting their time with family and friends to almost none so they can complete their homework and study, just because they feel they have to in order to get a good grade. Of course, after those reasons we see a reoccurring one; Sleep deprivation and health issues that are caused by an excessive amount of homework. The health issues reported this time were headaches, exhaustion, unhealthy rate of weight loss and stomach problems, essentially the same as the previous mentions. However let’s go into more depth of the symptoms of sleep deprivation.

Symptoms of sleep deprivation include decreased performance and alertness, memory and cognitive impairment, increased stress levels, poor quality of life, obesity/unhealthy weight loss, headaches and exhaustion. By just losing an hour and a half of sleep can result in approximately a 32% reduction in alertness during the day. Also, by having lower alertness as well as daytime sleepiness, it can impair your memory and cognitive ability. (your ability to think and process information given to you). Increased stress causes people to not think clearly and not be able to be truly calm and relaxed. Poor quality of life means that because of your daytime sleepiness and lack of awareness and alertness, you’re unable to take part in activities which involve/require a sustained amount of attention. This means that it would be really hard to watch a movie or a television series, or even read a book without fully comprehending what is happening. Headaches can be irritating to endure throughout the day, and it also clouds your mind and with the pain in your head, it makes it hard for you to concentrate.

As you can probably see, too much homework causes quite the large number of problems and cause short-term and long-term effects on our general health. Two 8th grade students that attend a public school in London, England, said that they receive an average of up to 4 hours of homework a night, when by looking at the 10 minute rule mentioned before, 8th graders should be receiving a maximum of 80 minutes, 1 hour and 20 minutes, of homework! Several students that attend UWCSEA East in Singapore spoke of coming home from activities at around 8pm and after eating dinner and saving a few minutes to relax, having to do their homework from 9pm to 12am maximum, a total of 3 hours of homework! When those students come to school the next day, they look incredibly tired and sometimes, they end up falling asleep in class! (and if they’re unlucky, they get caught by the teacher… Oops!)

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development.” Says Denise Pope (continued from a previous quote in this article). Teachers should be wary of the amount of homework they’re assigning, and take into consideration that there are other subjects that a student has as well as upcoming projects and tests. Homework shouldn’t be something that is ‘mindless’ or ‘pointless’, and it definitely shouldn’t be something that is just done for the sake of getting good grades or points and not for actually learning. Most of all, we should stick to the ’10 minute rule’ so that students don’t have to experience any extra stress and develop health issues like sleep deprivation.

But if you’re still losing out on sleep? Try to sleep on the way and back from school! Or you could even pick a hated subject to sleep through, if you so desired.


Sources :


”Kids Have Three times Too Much Homework, Study Finds - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2015.

"Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework." Stanford University. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2015.

"Chronic Sleep Deprivation and Health Effects." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2015.