Heavy homework load may be detrimental to health
Assignments a source of stress for many students
It’s no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas about workloads?
Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework.
Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn’t assign it because the “whole premise of homework is flawed.”
He says he can’t grade work on “even playing fields” when students’ home environments can be vastly different.
“Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that’s what a lot of homework is, it’s busy work,” he says in the video. “You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18.”
Mental health experts agree heavy workloads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.
Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold, says studies have shown heavy workloads can be “detrimental” for students and cause a “big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health.”
“More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies,” she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep.
Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace, says taxing workloads can also cause mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.
And for all the distress homework can cause, it’s not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.
“The research shows that there’s really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom,” he says.
For older students, Kang says, homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night.
“Most students, especially at these high achieving schools, they’re doing a minimum of three hours, and it’s taking away time from their friends, from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person’s mental and emotional health,” she says.
Catchings, who taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she’s seen the positive effects of a no-homework policy while working with students abroad.
“Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school.”
The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely but to be more mindful of the type of work students take home, suggests Kang, who was a high school teacher for 10 years.
“I don’t think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy worktype homework. That’s something that needs to be scrapped entirely,” she says, encouraging teachers to consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.
Crucial conversations
Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the past two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic, making heavy workloads even harder to balance.
“COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated,” Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. “School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared.”
But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, he suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.
“We’ve seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do,” he explains.
Get organized before going back
In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to “get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet.”
To help manage workloads, she suggests students “get organized.”
“Sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time,” she says.
Breaking up assignments can also make things easier to tackle.
“I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they’re much more manageable,” she says.
If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.
“They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own,” she says. “It’s good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students.”