Too much homework?
Tighe Gugerty
Whatever your academic standing is in high school, what all students love to hate is one thing: homework. No matter who you ask, homework is often the bane of a student’s weeknights or maybe even their weekends. Students from all levels of the academic ladder feel as though they are strained by their amount of homework; they feel as though it interferes with their ability to participate in sports, enjoy their hobbies, participate in clubs, or just be a kid. These dilemmas plagued Kristen Rahner, a sophomore in our school. She herself has felt the strain of homework and has attempted formulating a solution to alleviate this problem.
Kristen’s original idea was to extend the school day by one hour, adding roughly eight minutes to each period of the day. She believed the extra time would warrant teachers to give more work in class that would otherwise be assigned as homework. This initial plan was released to the masses of Homer High via a document on Google Drive. She had shared it with a few people, and she encouraged them to share it amongst their peers. The document got twenty comments on it the first day and is now shared with over one hundred and fifty people. All students were welcome to comment their opinions on the subject and a few teachers also chimed in. Initially, the idea was received with resounding approval. Students said they also felt bogged down by their workload and openly accepted the idea of lightening their burden. As the document remained up, other types of comments started to appear. Many of these comments said that no homework would be nice, but there could possibly be some burden in that benefit. Time management was a particular worry among those who commented, but they were still open minded to a possible lessening of the amount of homework.
After hearing the initial wave of responses, Kristen retracted her one hour addition plan and replaced it with the idea of block scheduling. In this plan, students would not have all their subjects in one day. They would take each class for a longer period of time but only have each class every other day. Kristen believed that this would better solve the homework problem since teachers could now teach their lesson and then have the students work on what would be homework in class. This system, she believed, would get rid of the typical day to day homework (math problems, worksheets, etc.) and would allow students more time for long term assignments.
After all of these revisions, the document had been up long enough for comments to deviate away from constructive criticism to more harsh opinions. These naysayers dismissed the plans saying it could be solved in other ways, feeling the issue was a moot point. A common argument against the plans was that it is primarily the student’s fault for their homework woes. These, who commented, felt that a student’s procrastination and general laziness was to blame for their troubles. They felt that if one better divided up their work and did not push it off, then one would not have troubles with homework. These opinions may hold some weight, but Kristen was aware of the effect that procrastination has on homework. She believes procrastination does cause some of the stress, but that with other activities added into the weekly schedule, homework is at times overwhelming. Some who commented went further than just lessening the load of homework with the idea of creating a teacher “blacklist”. This “blacklist” would be a list of teachers who students thought gave out too much of the scourge that plagues high schoolers. Once a teacher was identified as a rampant homework assigner, students planned on confronting the teacher and using collective bargaining to bring the level of homework down. Kristen felt this idea may have been too far over the line and that this may turn into a modern day witch hunt. With these dissenting opinions, Kristen was able to get a better idea of what the school thought and if her idea would be accepted or not.
