Students And Homework
Charlie Heald works diligently on his homework before class ends. (Credit: Mario Bondy)
Homework varies from school to school, but should students have it at all? Most students, me included, would probably prefer that it didn’t even exist. Sadly that isn’t to be, and homework is about as certain in life as death and taxes. Or is it?
Let's start with Grandview as usual. A new face who will remain anonymous, but I will refer to as M. Thank you M for giving this interview, and the following responses. M is a freshman who spends about 2 hours on homework each night, however that number went up significantly if M had a test or lab to study or prepare for. M does get a study hall period in school. But the time that M works on homework during the 45 minute study hall has already been subtracted from the 2 hours of homework mentioned earlier. This means that M’s starting amount of homework for the is closer to 3 hours. As you might be able to guess M had a few words to say about all of it. This is a direct quote “As a student athlete, it’s very difficult to manage doing both sports and academics. I wish the teachers would be more understanding about how much time we have to do homework, which isn’t enough for the amount they assign.” I can’t say I really disagree with this assessment, and as a student athlete myself I can sympathize with M in this situation. I have about an hour and a half of homework myself on a bad night. Grandview, not the best it seems.
Also as usual, we have a familiar sophomore from Dublin schools. Welcome back D! Quite impressively, when it comes to homework, D has little to none in a single night. Anywhere between 0 minutes, and 30 is the norm. D is a bit of a special case though, yes Dublin does receive homework, but D gets just enough time in class to get it all done before getting on the bus to leave. On a few days out of the ordinary, where assignments had not been completed in class, D said that the homework was still quite easy to complete at home. Around a total of one hour is all it takes for the average Dublin student to complete a single day's worth of homework.
Another familiar face, it's U, from Upper Arlington. U is a freshman, who receives anywhere between 1 and 2 hours of homework in a night. That 1-2 hours is on top of a study hall in the middle of the day, which seems to be a common thread among students. U gave a short interview in which they said that their hardest class was Honors Bio, which coincidentally is my hardest class as well. Apparently it's a difficult class no matter where you go. At least U has a few classes that don’t give homework like health and a few others. I myself don’t get homework from classes like choir or history. And while some classes don’t assign homework specifically like the communications class I'm writing this from, I do end up spending some time at home fine tuning the articles I write. It’s always quite fun.
And just to add a bit to the topic, we have an article from WGU, and they make some good points, and found some interesting things. For example, when a study was conducted they found that students who received and did homework got almost the same test grades as students who didn’t do any at all. Maybe some teachers could take notes from this.
However, in contrast to this, a professor introduced an interesting plan in his interview. Professor Harris Cooper recommends that students begin first grade with around 10 minutes of homework per night, and then that number goes up by 10 minutes each grade. This would equal a total of 120 minutes, or two hours by senior year of high school. As much as this system makes sense however, I doubt anyone wants two hours of homework at any point.
In conclusion, homework isn’t as certain in some places as others, but it is pretty likely that everyone has some work to do when they arrive at their house. Dread it, run from it, homework arrives all the same. And nobody is ever happy when it does. But winter break is coming up, and we all get a much needed respite. Happy Holidays everyone! And as always, thanks for reading.