How Much Homework Is Too Much?

"I am a high school student in Philippines. I'm have been studying in Philippines for now 8 years. Homeworks always gave me a huge stress. Im a korean first of all. I wake up at 6 and go to school at 7. After school, probably 4, I go home, go to my room and start my homeworks and projects. Then I will be sleeping at 12-3AM. But what did it give me? Nothing. Once I forgot to study for my test, but as always, I have done my homework. But the result was horrible. I was Getting C's and rarely B's when I didn't study. As a Korean, this is not great. So what did homework do to my test? Nothing. They said that students get higher grades when they do homework, but what? no I dont. There was too much homework that I wasnt even able to study for my test and got a horrible grade on my test. And since teachers are self-centered on their own subject, HECK! they give more and more project and homeworks! This is not the way its supposed to be. And oh BTW, Im studying in American School. So! every or most teachers are American and British. No Filipinos. And one more thing. In Weekends, I wanted to play with my friends, but again, homeworks and Projects disabled me. IT CREATES STRESS AND CREATES SADNESS PLUS IT CREATES LOW GRADE ON TEST SCORES! People, Researchers, Some Teachers, and Some Parents got to realize that WE, modern children have extra activities. And specially Koreans in Korea, They sleep for 1-2 hours because of extra activities that they had to do! This is Madness! Every generations are Different!"

"you guys are a bunch of wimps when it comes to homework. It's easy!"

"Why are some people claiming to be doing homework but on this website?"

"Let me sum up the amount of homework I get: It was a day a didn't have any extracurriculars. I was motivated so I started my hw right away (3:15). At 7:30 I finished. I had eaten dinner for 15 minutes, went to the bathroom twice, ate one snack while doing hw, and concentrated on hw the whole time. Plus, I rushed. Then I practiced soccer for an hour 30 minutes, took a 10 minute shower, made my bed, and finally went to bed at about 9:30. I got 8 and a half hours of sleep. That was a good night. I didn't have any extracurriculars, free time, or time to think. And I was tired in the morning. I'm the kind of person who needs 10 hours of sleep, but I never get it cause I have to wake up ate 6 in the morning to get to school. Usually I get 6 hours of sleep, have more hw, don't rush (but I still concentrate), and have extracurriculars. My life is a circle. Fun. Honestly, I'd do so much more learning if there was no hw. I'd go to museums, enjoy studying cause it would be interesting, go out in the world and learn in the field instead of the freezing classroom (the ac is up waaay too much!), and get enough sleep. I see how hw could be interesting, but there is way to much to actually take it in."

"i am in grade 7 and i am invloved in many other sports related activities out side of school and i dont have time for all this homework why should we have homework we already have a 7 hour school day isnt that enough"

"hi im from Australia Do u have any idea how much homwork i get...im doing some rite now infact i have to stay up till 12 am midnight everyday to keep up, and i gotta say im above average in terms of academic levels. I go to Camberwell Grammar and im in Year 7...too much homework is not good... HELP ME"

"I have six hours of homework a night and at least eight on the weekends. At my school, we have block scheduling, which means my classes are split up into semesters. I only have four classes a day, but they are an hour and a half each. Last semester was a joke. I might have had homework once a week. But that is because my teachers did not teach. This semester, my teachers are waiting until the very last minute to do everything. We were just assigned four more big assignments for the last three weeks of school in English. My math teacher tells us that his class is the most important. My Spanish class has eight seniors in it. The teacher says that now is a better time than ever to have a lot of work. And for my last class, I have gym. I also work every day after school. Three academic classes and six hours of homework in one night, plus a job. And, i don't participate in any after-school activities linked with the school. My guidance counselor recommended me to join some things! for school because she says it will not only make me look better, but it will make the school look better as well. When am I supposed to have the time to participate in these activities? And if they want to make the school look better, they might want to consider the fact that the teachers are creating too much work for us. It's not our fault that the teachers waited until the very last second to assign everything. We students have far too much homework."

"I think subjects like languages and math are way too fast paced for students to completely take in and not have to cram for tests the night before."

"Home work just makes your grades drop because you stay up really really late! I used to be a very high A student, and now I'm getting B's! Sleep is a treat! This is why people are obese! They can't go outside and do stuff and then they eat junk food cause they're stressed! I wish I had stayed at the bad middle school that had art on a cart. I probably couldve gone to the beach every day and not worried about hw."

"I am in 7th grade, and maybe I'm a little slow, but I have no free time after I get home at 4!!! I usually stay up doing it until 10! And the worst part, some of it is just word searches for spanish that doesn't make a difference what-so-ever. A lot of it is on the computer, so my eyes get really dry and they're probably getting worse. I learn so much more when I'm not doing hw. I used to read 30 minutes a day. Now I only read school books, which they make dull by assigning us sheets and questions, and making us highlight things. One of my teachers says she wants to make middle school a 'wonderful experience,' but I think she just enjoys giving us hw. And the weekends? Sunday nights are horrible. I have things that I do outside of school. I play sports, an instrument, and I want to LIVE. I want to watch the clouds go by, I want to look at the moon, I want to have a peaceful dream. I want to play with my pets before they die or I go to college and I want to read books. I know! what I want to do with my life and I'm stuck doing homework that just makes my overall grade worse until 10 pm. And then I have to get up at 6:30 in the morning. In my opinion, its inhumane. They say they're 'preparing you' for SOMETHING. In elementary, its middle school. In middle school its highschool. We even have to do this stupid book report during the summer. I could learn so much during that time. Is all this homework necessary? If you want to extend the classroom why don't we just live at school??! (I'd rather not). I actually wrote an essay on the Tutankahmen exhibit- because I wanted to! They are missing the point. But what do I expect from adults who have already acheived their life goal?"

"I think US children have less, much less HW than what we had in China and Japan. Especailly in China, we will have HW and we had to go back to school after dinner, get together and study til 9 pm. Maybe the school my kid is in, but she never has anything HW to do over the weekend, and during the weekdays, HW will only take...20-45 min to finish them. Plus they will have nothing during hte summer? that will never happen to us. We will have at least two-three drill to do over the summer and book report, science project... We are going to transfer her to a better school which the school starts at 7:30, goes til 5:30, even after that they will have 2 hrs worth HW to do... We thought it won't be any HW but...I guess that will help you to at least get used to the idea of study so when you leave the house to colleges, the parents won't have to ask them if they have done their HWs yet?!"

"I am the parent of a first and fourth grader. My first grader gets what I consider and amicable amount of hoemwork with math drills and spelling words. My fourth grader on the other hand is completely overwhelmed. It is now nearly midnight and I just got her to bed from starting homework at 6PM. Having a family where both parents work and both children are in an aftercare program does not afford the ability to start any earlier. For a child to spend more time on hoemwhork than on class work tells me that the child is not being taught in school and its becoming my responsibility to teach them. I ma now in search of a governing body that has the ability to curtail the excess amount of homework. This is completely counter productive as the child will now be too exhausted tomorrow to be alert in class. our society does not expect a working parent to put in more than 8 hours a day at a paying job, why should we expcet our children to put in 12-14 hours per day?"

"I am totally appalled! i am in seventh grade and i swear i feel like screaming right now.... i get home at 3is, and I start homework at 4 at latest. I work (every night!) until 7 or 8! this isnt fair! We wonder why kids are geting obease....they don't have any time to run or play. I feel like my life consists of a ' merry-go-round' routine, and i have only 3 or so months a year that i really get to be a kid/ young adult. I think this is ridiculous. They say we need to balence our lives, but when they fill us with 3 or so hours of homework there's no balence to be had. According to the '10 minute rule,' I'm doing above a Senior in high school level amount of homework each night. What can i do? How can i explain this to my school? I want more time to live... HELP!!!!"

"I get far to much homework a night i rarely get to talk to my friends. i get around 4 hours of homework a night sometimes 1 night off every 2 weeks. but for only me being on 14 .. !! "

"I attend an International high school in Baku, Azerbaijan and I feel like my workload is getting higher and higher and often it is not consistent. For example, all homework were due one week, then the next week nothing was due. Teachers are always saying, 'Well, it's your fault you don't have good time management,' or 'Well, I have a lot of workload too!' or worse yet, 'Hey, if you don't do your homework, then what's the point of school?!' Teachers actually do say that in real life and I have experienced it. I think: if it is like that in an International school, imagine how much worse is it in public schools? In our school we have a system where the teacher has to put due assignments on a big calendar which is called a homework board (like a planner of some sort). Unfortunately, they do not reinforce the school rule that teachers should write on them (and homework is not valid if not written. Also there could only be two assignments due on a given day - stated in the school handbook). We addressed this in homeroom (where we usually say what needs to be done so the school could improve) and said that we had too much homework and that teachers don't use the homework board. Coincidentally, we had a humanities and chemistry project due that day and we haven't seen the assignments written on the homework board in the morning. However, on our way to chemistry (after lunch), we all looked at the homework board and somehow both assignments were 'magically' written and both the assignments names were written in with a same handwriting (which is unusual since the chemistry and humanities t! eacher are not exactly on the best terms and one teacher would not write the assignments for one another). To be honest, I hate it that the teachers could get away with whatever they like (i.e. example above) and the students are left like that. They do not even consider the conscientious one. It is very highly unfair."

"this past week ive been getting homework everyday from almost all classes, and today i had homework from 4 different classes and so far ive been spending 5 hours on them i started at 4:00 pm and now its 10:00 and im still not done"

"I think we need Chuck Norris to roundhouse kick HW in the face or Mantracker "

"I'm graduating, finally, from a public high school in michigan in May. I'm in all APs and honors, and I hate it. I have no time anymore, no friends, recently lost my boyfriend, my family time is nonexistent, and I'm only getting about 4 hours of sleep a night. My day consists of getting up at 6:30, driving to school which starts at 7:45, driving home at 2:40, and doing homework until 2 am. Every. Single. Day. Weekends are worse. My worst weekend consisted of 26 hours of homework, mostly projects and essays. I'm severely depressed, and was at one point extremely suicidal. These aren't the best years of our lives anymore."

"It's one thing to give a lot of homework (excuse me, I'm not allowed to use the word 'thing' anymore or else I'll get several points off my essay), but it's another to not tell your students when it's due. I've found that a lot lately in several of my classes. Teachers give you assignments, and because they give you time to work on them in class (not get them completely finished) they assume they don't need to tell you when they're due. I just had two projects due today that I had no idea they had to be done this soon. That is my absolute pet peeve, that teachers never tell you when in-class assignments are due, so therefore, you don't know when or how much you need to work outside of my class. As a result, I did not bring two elements of my one project, since I was thinking it was due Monday as my teacher had casually said before. In my other class, I had a bigger dilemna. My teacher pretty much set us up for failure. I had the option of either choosing to A) Hand ! in a half-complete and error-ridden project or B) Get ten percent of my grade deducted for handing it in late. Since this was a group project, this complicated the matter. We had probably less than an hour of inclass time to fill out six different question sheets. While I worked on it on my own, it was difficult to do so because my partner was not with me. If teachers see that many students are in this situation, a few of them 'A' students, they should give an extension without any point deductions. Students shouldn't have to make choices like I did, especially if they were working on this project ever since it was assigned, and putting a lot of effort into it. Many conscientious students take longer than those who shrug assignments off to complete their work. It is unfair to be penalized for wanting to do a thorough and a complete job. "

"I disagree that students need more homework to prepare for college. Students also need time for extracurriculars for their resume (most of which through school are only offered on weekdays with the exception of sports), volunteer work, as well as time to fill out applications for college and search for scholarships. Take this from a high school student, the excess of homework is not making me feel more ready for college. In fact it is slowing down the process. People with this mindset think 'well to prepare for college you need more homework in high school' then 'to prepare for high school you need more homework in middle school' then 'to prepare for middle school, you need more homework in elementary school.' This is what's wrong with education in America. The 'it's never too soon to prepare philosophy.' As a result, my cousin in kindergarten sometimes receives two hours of homework. By giving students excessive amounts of homework in high school, students are getting! turned off to college by school. I hear many students saying 'I can't take another four years of this, plus two more years of high school!' My mom has commented that some of my teachers give us more work than you get in college. What good will this do us other than exhaust us? "

"'I dont know what school you did your study on, but we have WAY TOO MUCH! I can understand handing out homework, but not the amount they give us every single day. Its hard to do anything. I'll call up my friends and ask if they want to do anything and they say 'No, I got homework.' I only get to see my friends AT school, some of them I only see in the hallway between classes. And I have to disagree. We ARE doing more homework than our parents. My Dad and Mom have said that many a time. Its all Japans fault! Why must we compete with them?'"

"Kids now a days find themselves overwhelmed because of their involvement outside of their studies such as sports, dance and other extra curricular activities. I strongly disagree that our children should have a reduction in the homework they bring home. Education is important; this is the time to prepare your child for college and if you would like your child to be successful in college then we should not gripe about the hours spent on homework, get involved, help your child. Laziness is not going to help any one excel. Didn't any of you attend college? The hours spent on homework and study during the college years are treacherous and if our children aren't building a foundation and discipline during their pre college years, then we are setting them up for failure. Extracurricular activities should be left for the weekends. "

"I can't take it anymore! We always have homework in every single subject, often due in the next day and tests (at least 1) on 3 out of 5 school days. The teachers don't bother explaining the lesson and most of the time we copy it off the board. Next year I'm moving up into 3eme (I live in France but I'm almost fluent so that isn't really the problem) and that means 'preparing ourselves for the future' aka double the homework and tests every day. I can barely carry my schoolbag and every day i come home from school i want to sit on my bed and cry! My homework takes HOURS and HOURS and i can't bear it. I wake up at 6 to catch my bus at 7. In the evening i catch a bus at 5 but get home at 6:15 when we have tea. Then from 6:50 till 9:45 i do my homework. My parents yell at me because i don't spend any time with them and usually there is a test or something i haven't had time to revise for properly. Even during the holidays there is homework: book reviews , poetry anthology (poem, information about the poet(we were given 20 to do) , why i chose this poem and pretty decorations ), tests to revise for , art projects and normal exercises mostly all given at the start of the easter holidays ,all due in tomorrow on the first day back.And then it'll all start again. Damn. "

"I totally agree. If a teacher is good, there is no need for busy work at home for 5-6 hours - work that does not enhance what they learned in school but only reiterates the same nonsensical stuff that will never be used in life again! Focus on the important things, and then maybe kids will learn. Make it fun...and applicable to life. I am fuming because my daughter also got homework over this holiday weekend - whether you celebrate Easter or Passover it should be a time for family NOT SCHOOL WORK! WHAT WERE THE TEACHERS DOING OVER THE HOLIDAY???? It sickens me, and I am on the edge whether to stay in the school we are in now or go back to public that is 5 minutes away instead of the long commute I make daily back and forth. And the school has the unmitigated gaul to send notes to the KIDS that they should not be late! Do the kids drive themselves to school? I AM THISCLOSE to complaining to the school that if they didn't assign homework that lasted well into midnight for middle schoolers, then maybe they would be able to get a decent night's sleep and not 4-6 hours! It is audacious of them to behave this way. I'd like to see any of them do this kind of schedule. My child is near collapse, and she can't even think straight. She has no extracurriculars like many of you, and doesn't even get to watch a favorite show or two. Weekends she is consumed with more homework. It is no wonder teens rebel, are irritable and act out. Half the kids in school do not absorb any of the material taught, because they despise the teachers and the subject matter. This is a shame for those of us who pay high prices for learning. I think it's time for a rebellion against homework....I havent' found a single study that indicates it improves grades or scores. Quoting from the movie Network: 'I'm mad as h**l and I'm not going to take it anymore!' The kids are only young once, so it is something I am going to evaluate and give careful consideration to over the summer.... Good luck everyone!"

"I hate it how my teachers aren't respecting our Easter Break. Regardless of your religion, everyone deserves some time to refresh, hang with your family, work on hobbies, or just go outside. That being said, I hate it how teachers are intruding upon Easter. I will probably end up working on some assignments tomorrow, on a day that should be devoted to church and family. We only got a one day off from school for this 'break' to begin with, so teachers should at least act a little understanding and not assign any work. If you are a teacher, I beg you not to give your students work over break. They should be able to spend time with their families just like you do. Their life does not revolve around school, as much as some teachers may think it does. "

"School, I feel, is no longer about learning, but instead about preparing for homework. School for me is much more relaxing than homework (except when we have a test). My one teacher spends most of the period outlining what assignments we have to do for tonight, and going over the answers to last night's assignments. The whole class is centered around homework. I would actually like longer lectures, in-class reading time, or some sort of activity, instead of my teacher's explanations of the night's assignments. I feel like class time is wasted so much. I would get more done if I was just sitting at home, working on my assignments, instead of following my teacher's odd, choppy teaching methods in class (read for ten minutes. Stop! Vocab. Stop! Video for ten minutes. Stop! Siloquoys. Stop! Go over homework for five minutes. Stop! etc). We sit in our desks listening to our teacher blab while our minds are reeling trying to compose the first paragraph of that essay, or tryi! ng to think of our debate argument. If class time was used more efficiently for CLASSwork, we wouldn't have six assignments we'd have to do that night for this one class alone (including two tests, a debate, a short story, a novel, and Shakespeare reading, as well as worksheets). I initially thought this huge quantity of assignments was so we'd have little work to do over Spring Break. Wrong. It's only so we can get a whole new batch of assignments to work on over the break. Teenagers have families, just like teachers do. Only teeenagers don't have much time to spend with them, while teachers can spend the first fifteen minutes of class blabbing about what they did together. "

"Home work stinks. It should be banned"

"I just came across this article, and I am absolutely flabbergasted that this Brian Gill is so out of touch with reality! My daughter is in 8th grade, and she has at least 5-6 hours of homework a night! Is he insane? My daughter is in an all girls academy in the northeast, and she is up at 5:30am to get to school by 7:30am. She has had to give up ALL her extracurriculars, so she is completely denied any relaxation and fun after school. It is a non-entity. She gets out at 3:30 and we are home by 4:30 if we are lucky depending on the traffic. She sleeps on the way to and from school, and so do the other girls. They are told in health class they MUST get at least 8-9 hours of sleep a night. What a joke! Most of the parents are in denial, and they refuse to believe their kids are up late doing homework, but I can see them online as my daughter does her homework out in the open. The parents who do complain are in the minority. I would not expect an adult to come home with this kind of overnight homework. For example, write 33 sentences in French with all new vocabulary learned that day; Latin - translate 3 latin passages into English; science: do 5 labs (which includes pre-labs, expected results and then conclusions) - usually 3-5 pages EACH; between 35-40 algebra 1 math problems per night (PLUS the math teacher who is tenured CANNOT TEACH so all the kids go for extra help which doesn't help at all). English: read 4-5 chapters in a book, then write blogs about 3-5 questions pertaining to each chapter; History: make a pamphlet of a walking tour of harlem complete with graphics a! nd make sure the walking tour is in the right sequential order and direction for the walk & read and annotate 3-4 chapters while doing an outline of an upcoming paper about the gilded age. On weekends my daughter can spend anywhere from 12-18 hours doing homework on PROJECTS. THIS IS 8TH GRADE. She did a play in the fall and everday after school play practice was 4-6 and the occasional weekend 9-1...can you imagine the hours she was going to bed on those nights and the school would only exempt them from homework the night of the play (the play was 2 days) and NOT THE DRESS REHEARSAL NIGHT. I refused to let my daughter do it since she would have collapsed the next day...they didn't care. The bottom line is she is exhausted, cranky, irritable, her periods only come 4 times a year from the stress, and she is miserable. What are my choices? To send her to the local public school which stinks or homeschool her or send her to boarding school (which we can't afford). When the school psychologist spoke to the head of the school about the parents complaints and presented articles about the fact that all this homework does not add value to a child's grades, and that it was causing so much stress, the school rebuked the findings. The bottom line is the kids will tell you they hate homework, it doesn't make them do better on a test (in fact, they do worse because the tests are on days when homeowork the night before keeps them up till midnight - 1 am) and they don't remember a thing - they study to get it all over with and they wind up detesting the things they are supposed to learn about. Why not teach practical math instead of math they will never use? Teach them how to survive in the world: buying groceries, making a budget, mortages, investments, savings for college, retirement, buying a home, etc. No that would be too smart. Teach them states and capitals like we had to memorize (I did this with my own child when she was 5 thank God because the schools don't teach it; they don't teach about the Europeans until high school nor do they do US history until then as well - at least in the northeast). Can you imagine my daughter and the teacher's dismay when a child in her class (age 14) said 'is sweden in germany?' or 'russia and georgia are at war (the teacher commented) and the child said 'I didn't know we were at war with russia (thinking georgia - the state in the US)' and how about 'i'm going skiing in iowa and i think we'll stop off first in vermont to see some friends' (right, it's closeby!) and how about when the french teacher asked what the capit! al of france was and one child replied 'belgium'. THIS IS INSANE. But yet they teach latin, teach algebra 1 and trig and geometry in 8th grade, have them studying ancient egypt and china and rome in 6th (a good thing), and yet in english every book is either about black history, or the holocaust (i have no problems if that is for one year but then move on to other immigrants who were persecuted coming to the US so they have an idea of other cultures and customs). The focus is always on the sciences and math, and it is disturbing that art disappears from 7th grade on unless you want to give up a music or drama class...you can't add another language unless you drop music, art or drama and then arabic and chinese and greek are offered. It's offensive and we are told that in high school there will be 5-6 hours of homework a night (translation: give your child to us as they will be up ALL night; they told us it would be 20 mins a subject in middle school and it is NOT). My daughter never eats dinner with me as she is so stressed she won't be able to finish her homework...she has to eat at her desk..she craves junk food from all the stress...and she can't shower at night unless it's at midnight which now i've told her she MUST do when she gets home from school. I think that if my child collapses (she has to have one day off from school a week because she is so exhausted at this point), I will think about child abuse in the schools. It is an outrage. Oh, and let's not forget the kids who DO do things after school. They cheat. Yep. They use their older siblings tests (you would think the school would change the tests!!! they just change the order of the questions). One of the girls in my daughter's class must swim because her mother makes her. she hates it but she is also told to do as well as her older sibling...so she cheats...meanwhile she gets in honors classes while the other kids struggle to maintain grades....other kids have their 'tutors' do their homework. Where is the reality check - schools and teachers are you listening? One guy wrote in on a website he had a friend who cheated all the way through grad school and that anyone reading the blog should not go to so and so as he is now a brain surgeon! Sad but I think that is the state of this world right now.... I think I may opt to homeschool in high school and have my child write on the application for college - these grades were all gotten by NOT CHEATING. It's a horrible disgrace the shape of this world right now."

"Kids are over weight these days, because they don't get outside to play or excersize. "

"I am in high school and I have 8 hours of homework a day, no joke. Most days I don't even sleep, and if I'm lucky some nights I will get 1-3 hours of sleep. Some of my homework is pointless and unnecessarily takes up time. I believe I am entitled to have a life, after all I am a human being. I don't have a life though, it's all taken up by homework. I don't do anything but homework. This is serious."