A study has revealed that children are made to spend an average of three hours every night on homework, and this level of homework load has not been reduced since 1984. The research further says that this workload may be making the children sick. Even more interestingly, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, Denise Pope, has said that some students do more than those three hours of homework every night. In the study, 4,300 students were surveyed, and the goal of the study was to examine the relationship between student well-being and the homework load.
The results of the study showed that a lot of homework stressed the students a lot, and more than 50% of the students cited homework as the major thing that stresses them daily. The students battled with issues like sleep deprivation, migraines, weight loss, ulcers, and exhaustion.
The study focused mainly on students from affluent families because it is in the upper-class homes that homework is taken very seriously. And students from these homes cited the pressure of performing well in school and school work as the dominating force in their day-to-day activities. Denise Pope also did some work with Challenge Success, and homework was the most common tension point for most students as far as their mental and emotional health was concerned.
Then there is the role of the parents. Some parents wanted less homework while some wanted more. Some parents even go as far as buying workbooks for their children if they notice that the teacher was not giving them homework. Some, on the other hand, complain that they see less of their children during a holiday weekend because they were busy working on homework tasks.
The most important thing to focus on right now is for children to enjoy family and social support as those are the only protective factors for toxic childhood. Children must have responsive relationships with their adult caregivers. Parents should be careful about the health of their children and excuse themselves from the correctors and graders roles that they are trying to take on. Parents should be cheerleaders and advocates for their children. The kids should see their parents and have hopes of being shielded from unnecessary stressors.
When Denise was asked what the recommended time that students should spend on homework is, she responded, “a maximum of two hours for high-schoolers and one and a half hours for students in middle school.” For elementary school, homework is not linked to academic achievement in any way.” She also says the research does not show anything about the non-academic extracurricular skills that teachers link with homework such as meeting deadlines, organization, and a sense of responsibility.
According to her, parents should keep the dialogue respectful by subjecting their children to learning conditions recommended by existing research and studies. Parents play a vital role in making life easier for their kids, and regarding homework, they need to do better by taking away these stressors.