How Much Homework?!!!

Alissa Lampert ‘18

If you walk down the high school hallways towards the end of the day, you might hear the repetitive groan of, “I have so much homework tonight!”

The constant complaint high school students have is that they are overworked, stressed and have too much homework. This homework keeps some unlucky victims up past midnight, scrambling to complete assignments.

However, it is hard to understand the sheer amount of the homework GOA students receive in comparison to students from other schools, states, or even countries.

Recently, a handful of sophomores traveled to Mexico for the second half of our exchange program. A trip that was packed to the brim with excursions, we were blissfully unaware of the homework that was piling up on our friends’ desks back home. With seemingly little time in the day to even breathe, it was nearly impossible to even consider cracking open our textbooks.

Our Mexican buddies, however, did not seem to be missing any work. They went on almost every trip with us, meaning they missed many school days and had little time at night to complete work. Confused, we asked how they were able to miss all the school days with little consequences. Later, we learned that they receive little to no homework on a daily basis.

The GOA sophomores who got to experience a completely different lifestyle compared the homework dilemma in each school.

Sophomore Rebecca Landau commented on the fact that while a policy similar to the one in Mexico would be nice, there are other ways to combat the issue.

“While in Mexico, I was informed that the little amount of homework they had was the work that they did not complete in school,” she said. “While I think that would be a great policy in our school, I know that it is unreasonable. I feel that homework should never be on something you have not already learned and should only be to help for a better understanding of the work learned in class.”

Sophomore Sarah Cehelyk offered a different point of view.

“Overall, I feel that the average amount of homework we get is relatively fair taking into consideration the fact that we are a college preparatory school,” she said. “However, there are a few points throughout the year that we, as students, are bombarded with ridiculous amounts of work.”

Cehelyk believes that although homework is necessary, nightly “busy work” is excessive.

She also said that in order for students to manage their time more wisely and help the pile of assignments shrink, teachers need to be in better contact with each other and the students. Many teachers do not use the test calendar or only put major assessments up, but Cehelyk says that students would fare better if essays, projects and quizzes were up there, too.

Sophomore Rachel Berger echoed Cehelyk’s thoughts and commented that while homework is necessary to an extent, there are some core subjects that are more demanding than others and those are the main subjects that should be giving homework. Excess homework in less taxing classes puts too much stress on overworked students.

GOA students understand that the school cannot adopt the Mexican school’s lenient policy, but many feel that there must be a middle ground.

There must be some way to stop students from getting five hours of sleep a night before a test because they had no other time to study.