Do our kids have too much homework?

"When Pre-AP & AP (honors) classes are piling so much work on students to stay up until 11:00 p.m. and bogging them down with more work it's 1:00 a.m. then, YES IT'S TOO MUCH! "

"There is way too much homework in "middle school" and higher grades when it comes to honor classes (Pre-AP & AP classes). The kids don't get to bed sometimes until 11:00 pm or even 1:00 a.m. on more bogged down busy work. "

"I will be the first to admit that students are given too much homework these days, however, I say this for an over-achiever. Most middle school students will usually take home a page or two of math (usually about 30 problems that can be completed in anywhere from 10-45 minutes depending on the math and the student), a page of science (these usually only take 10-20 minutes), perhaps a reading assignment (30 minutes), and maybe a history project or book report (these can take a lot of time, or very little). Add on some study time to that, and you'll have 1-2 hours of homework. However, for over-achievers, the time spent on homework increases. The typical over-achiever will spend 30 minutes or more on assignments that aren't due for quite a while, another 30 minutes on extra-credit assignments, and another 15 minutes on hard-core studying and reading ahead. This is where it gets a little ridiculous. 3 or more hours of homework? Most kids will tell you "no thanks!" but t! his extra homework is practically required (in their minds) for over-achievers and perfectionists. Many of these students won't be satisfied until this is all done. The worst thing about this is that most students won't realize that they are tiring themselves out. When you notice that staying up late at night to finish assignments that aren't due for 2 weeks is causing your child to lose that "hop in their step," it's time to take action. It might feel awkward to say "no more homework, it's time to sleep," it's important to do so when your son or daughter crosses the homework line. On the other hand, procrastinators will also have to stay up late doing homework. Even if they do only have 1 or 2 hours of homework, when they don't start it until 8:00, it gets late very quickly. Also, that book report spread out over two weeks might only take 10 minutes every day, but when a procrastinator holds it off until the day before the book report is due, it can take 2 hours to complete, and 3 when you want to do a good job. For the above reasons, remember that before you complain to your child's teacher about too much homework, ask your son or daughter, "How much of this is really homework?" "

"4 hours of homework a week? Please. I easily do four hours of homework a NIGHT. Up until 10? I'm up until 3:30 almost every night, and then I can't even sleep for another half hour because I'm so scared I forgot something. It seems like every time there's a test, there's one in every class, on the same day, and one of your teachers just "forgot" to tell you about it. Then, during the school day, you have to carry around your 4-5 hours of homework in a 40 pound backpack up and down 6 flights of stairs. I have scoliosis from my backpack. I've never gotten any grade lower than an A-, and I've had to make sacrifices to get good grades. I don't have time to eat breakfast, and by the time I get home, I barely have an appetite for dinner. At least once a week, I'll take one look at my half-finished math homework and burst into tears. I'm in an advanced math class, and I'm one of the best students, but I get so freaked out looking at all my unfinished homework from other ! classes, it takes me almost an hour to finish it and make sure it's all right. In March, my parents started to get worried, so I had to secretly finish all of my homework after they went to sleep. And I'm in Middle School, where the teachers supposedly "plan" homework assignments so we don't have too much homework on any given night. I don't even want to THINK about what it will be like in high school. "

"I'm in high school now and the teachers I have don't even care about the amount of homework we have. I convinced my whole 9th grade class to not do homework for one day, and we were suspended for a three days. Sometimes I do homework 24/7 or stay up all night and don't finish my homework until about the time I start school. Most of the time I have to eat my lunch really fast so I can take a nap on the bench or sit in the next classroom to sleep so I can actually focus. If this keeps up, ............ "

"omg sometimes i stay up till 1 am doing my homework. what about that being active for 60 minutes a day? it's so not fun and completely unecessary to give us this. and if the answers aren't long enough, the teacher'll give us a 0. "

"10pm that's a joke right? I stay up till 5am some days. "

"I think that homework should be optional, because it will only help thew people who need it, and most of it id busy work which will not really help in the long run besides making kids sleep deprived! "

"I actually came to this website for a homework assignment. My research paper is on the flaws of the current education system. The articles I read literally make me cry. I'm a high school sophomore and i get four to six hours a homework a night. I do not get more than five hours of sleep a night and not only is it taking a toll on me mentally, but it is physically, as well. All I want is for the teachers to finally wake up and see what they're doing to us. I'm sick of people saying that it's not this bad. It is! Many will argue that other kids don't do that much homework, and that is completely true. It's because they refuse to do all of it with the quality that teachers want. I'm starting to think that they have the right idea because this is totally not worth it. "

"I am an 8th grader and i hate homework. i think that sometimes teachers give out homework just to torture me! "

"I'm in 7th grade. I'm always trying to do my hardest in school to impress my parents, but sometimes too much is too much. 7 hours of homework? At this point, I have to decide what's worth more points and focus on that, then turn in the minor assignments for late credit. I do believe that kids need homework, but this much? When your Language Arts teacher gives you a paper regarding the topic of overburdening children with homework AS HOMEWORK, you know it's gone a bit too far. I end up doing countless math problems the way I think was correct only to find out that I was teaching myself something wrong entirely and need to relearn it all over again. Even my five year old sister has been forced into having too much work. In kindergarten, she's giving an oral report on the Fennec Fox. I really just want to have my load of homework lightened a bit... then maybe I can actually have time to talk to my friends instead of sitting in my room doing homework all the time. "

"The purpose of homework is to practice what you learned in class and to apply it. If we take homework away or cut down the time limit that a child should do homework or study, then that is only hadicapping the child for real life situations, especially those who are considering going to college (and college work is much harder and requires more time that homework given in grade school). Furthermore, how can teachers take the time out and fully examine what problem areas each child has when more and more teachers are being laid off and classrooms are overlapping each other with students? That is another reason why many teachers give the same homework assignment to everyone. Lastly, to the parents who think that homework should be done away with or cut down, how about teaching your child about time management? How to balance their everyday life experiences? It is never too early to teach them that because the earlier, the better. Also, parents need to take the time out and hel! p teach their children as well and stop relying on the teachers to do it all the time. Yes, that is their job, but as a parent, it is your job to help guide your children to the right direction as well, and if it means that you have to sit down and help them with their homework so they can better understand it, then do so. And if anything, parents need to pay attention as to why it takes your child two hours to do a 10 minute assignment; it may just solve some issues as to why your child does not excel in school or in that particular subject. "

"Agreed "

"I am in 8th grade. Today I have 30 minutes of math homework which is usually about 1 hours. 1 hour of french and then another 1-2 hours to study for a test tomorrow. 1 hour of science and 1 and a half hours of social studies. I also have 3 hours of english homework and ANOTHER 1-2 hours to study for a major english test... yay. Even without tests or quizes we are "suppose to" study every night which for a hour in every subject. So on average i have like 5-8 hours of homework per DAY. Teacher's give us homework like we have no lives, kids get a 0 if they dont have time to complete it because they have hockey or dance that day and teacher's say school 1st. This is pathetic really. I am also a honor roll student and i got my 1st C this year in french. Ok nothing fatal but this is a lot of pressure. I am a very stressed out kid and my parents agree i should relax. They stopped helping me with homewrok years ago when it got to hard. I can't stop stressing when i think i might ge! t a C- in french and english or worse... ( english got pretty difficult this year 12 projects in a year no big right? ) On average a 8th grader should not be getting this much homework I hope this problem is fixed before i have a job and kids myself or i am going to cause some serious problems with how the school runs. "

"I am in 8th grade. I have never got below a B- on a progress report or a report card in my life. I'm a honor roll student and i got my 1st C this year. Ok one C its not fatal. But now im probably going to get a C- in english and french thanks to the 5-8 hours of homework i get. My parants stopped helping me with homework at 3rd grade because it was to hard for them -_- I stress out about school way to much my parents even agree that i should relax but i just can't with the feeling of getting these bad grades. I just can't handle it they need to fix this problem soon or it wont be hard to make this a problem when i'm older with other parents trying to help our kids. "

"I am in 8th grade. Today I have about an hour of Religion homework, about 45 minutes of preparing for an important math test, a large history assignment that takes about 2 hours, drawing an alpine biome on a large poster paper, a science worksheet, and two poems. All of that chalks up to me working through the night, getting to sleep past 11, having to wake up at 5, barely being able to stay awake during the next school day, being exhausted all week, then sleeping half the day on the weekend to regain my energy. Also, from hunching over my desk all these hours and all the heavy textbooks, which often pushes my backpack's weight over 50 lbs., causes me back pain. "

"I am in 8th grade. Today I have 30 minutes of math homework which is usually about 1 hours. 1 hour of french and then another 1-2 hours to study for a test tomorrow. 1 hour of science and 1 and a half hours of social studies. I also have 3 hours of english homework and ANOTHER 1-2 hours to study for a major english test... yay. Even without tests or quizes we are "suppose to" study every night which for a hour in every subject. So on average i have like 5-8 hours of homework per DAY. Teacher's give us homework like we have no lives, kids get a 0 if they dont have time to complete it because they have hockey or dance that day and teacher's say school 1st. This is pathetic really. On average a 8th grader should not be getting this much homework i hope this problem is fixed before i have a job and kids myself. "

"I am in 7th grade. Every night I get 3-4 hours of homework. I am doing a 3 page essay for language arts about kids getting too much homework. My teacher didn't assign the topic, I chose it. I have no life and have very low self esteem. My teachers say we(our advanced class) get more homework than everyone else because we are advanced. I hate this. My grades are going way down even though I study with my parents for hours on weekends. This is a great article. Interesting "

"i agree "

"My daughter just started middle school and has tons of homework that she constantly gets headaches from not getting enough sleep. These teachers should really notice how much work they give! "

"students have way too much homework!!!!! :) "

"My Daughter is 11 years old and her teacher give alot of homework and sometimes she stays up until 2am. I also think this is getting out of hand. Its alot of pressure for these students. Sometimes my child doesnt even want to go to school anymore I have to push her to it. Would you believe this? Just the other day I had to make a meeting with the Principal and the teachers of my daughter because they had her reading, that i believe it was alot of pages, 2600 a night. Which I believe was not right if I recieved a News Letter from the Teachers and it said 100 pages per WEEk. My child wasnt there at the beginning of the school year (August 2011) she started in November of 2011. If you times 4 (for months that she was there) by 4 (for weeks that are in a month)= 16 weeks that she was there. Now divide 100 (pages per week that shes supposed to read) by 16 (for the weeks she was there)= 1600 what shes supposed to REALLY NEEDED to read. How about that. The teachers supposably have ! her on an IEP to help her not put pressure and stress on her. I believe that these teachers need to give notes to their students for they can understand alittle more and make sure that the students write it down. Not just for the students to understand also for the Parents that dont understand because sometimes I dont understand my childs homework or what she really needs to do on her assignment. "

"My Grandson is only Nine years old and his Teacher gives him so much Homework that he is up very late every night then in the Moring Hes so darn tired from doing homework all night long that he gives his Mom a very hard time. I strongly think that all Teachers should put a limit on the amount they send home because this is getting way out of hand for my grandson whos only Nine years old for Gods sake. Please something or Someone needs to put a STOP to this Crazyness of going Over Board on HomeWork for these young kids. GL "

"students shouldn't even have any homework at all its way to much for us to handle "

"I am 15 and in the ninth grade. I understand that homework can help us to commit concepts to memory and help teach us responsibility, but enough is enough! For the past two weeks, I've done this every school day: Come home, eat a snack, do homework until dinner, eat dinner, then do homework until about 12:30 a.m. I usually don't finish it all, so then I have to come to school extra early to finish it in the hallways. I'm in all honors classes, but we really don't get that much more homework than the regular classes. It's just way too much! I barely have enough time to do the basics like eating, sleeping, and showering- let alone spend time with friends and family! I haven't gotten to socialize with family for a really long time. I miss being able to play games and watch American Idol with my parents at night. Now I have to work half the night. I think that teachers should meet at the beginning of every week to plan out their homework assignments so that we don't get swamped ! with huge projects or assignments from every teacher, which happens a lot. I think they should try to put a limit on how many minutes of homework each teacher can give for a night, or at least give us a period of work time. I don't want to get rid homework. I believe that homework really does benefit our education. I just believe in homework within reason. "

"My daughter who is in the 2nd grade has a required science fair project (just like last year). The school does not expect much less from the younger kids than the older ones. Typical Tri-fold board etc. The school says the children should do all of the work... So, basically the parents do the majority of the work. What the heck??? 1st and 2nd grade??? "

"I'm in 7th grade and I personally think that homework should be limited to 3 easy assignments in a week and 1 larger assignment to be due at the end of each month. It would make everything easier and give kids enough time to be kids. "

"all i do know is that in tx the ecucators quit teaching the basics (RRR) when the Taks tests came out and they were under the microsope as teachers and couldn't teach anything else but how to pass the test!!! So Can we have traditional teaching back in the classroom????? "

"I am in 9th grade and I was just assigned from ONE CLASS to watch a video that is TWO HOURS long and take a page of notes on it that all DUE THE NEXT DAY. I am also getting graded on how good the notes are. Is this too much homework FROM ONE CLASS. "

"This was very helpful to my research paper on "how much pressure should be put on 8th graders?" Thank you a lot for THE HELP!!! :) "

"My brothers and sisters go to a private school and they usually spend 3-4 hours on homework! Sometimes, they have to finish it early in the morning! This audience is unbelievable!! My brother and sisters are gonna get wrinkles by the time they're 18 at this stressing rate! Kids get wayyyy too much homework! It'd be better with just more tests and less homework!!!!! "

"Who is the audience of this article? "

"What kind of schools are these kids going to that give that much homework? I'm in grade 10 with mid 80 grades and the most homework I ever have to do in a night is 20-30 minutes. I guarantee that if I ever have start getting 2 hours of homework consistently I won't do it. "

"My school is all about getting 60 minutes of active time everyday. But then they load us down with tons of unnecessary homework and I never get to go outside. I used to love to spend time with neighbors playing sports until called into dinner. But since the smallest of us are in 5th grade, we are all shut up in our houses working on time consuming activities called homework. Not to mention the fact that we do have families, live, ect. REALITY CHECK FOR TEACHERS: 1. How would you like it if you had to come home from a tiring day of school drama and hard work only to spend hours working on that set of 60 math problems and huge social studies project, plus read the article and summarize it? 2. Why don't we give you the same amount of homework and then wonder why our entire population is obese? 3. Need to cook dinner after school? We need to do chores and homework. Plus, kids like me with divorced parents have to pack up what they are working on and move to the next house. 4. Think we need to be creative? Gee.... wonder why we aren't..... GET REAL PEOPLE. HOMEWORK IS HELPING NOBODY "

"This Article has som good points but the only 19% parents thinks there is too much is a lie i think its more like 19% think there isnt enough. my home work is like a full time job i wake up get ready for school in the car i do HOMEWORK at school the periods are spent explaining the HOMEWORK at home i grab a snck do HOME WORK till 6pm then eat a FAST dinner then do HOMEWORK till 11pm at least on good days 10pm and all weekend i spend it doing HOMEWORK students probably work more than the average adult ioh yeah im in grade 8. so tell me is that humane is it fair for us to cry almost everynight from the sheer pressure of all the homework to do and to come. each teacher thinks that if they dont assign a projecvt or home work each night thyre not a good teacher as the article says the parents suffer to we never have family time we barly have enough time to sleep and i conclude with: we in modern day schools do not have school work we only have HOMEWORK. "

"That part about high school students only doing for hours a week is insane. I am a senior and I have two week stretches where I literally don nothing else but school, homework, debate practice and whatever else is basically necessary for life. I'm not even exaggerating here (except for personal grooming which is, I guess, technically not necessary to sustain life.) I can't even remember the last time I watched TV, read a book for fun, or did something with friends. "

"I really do think Schools give students way too much homework that are due the very next day! My daughter from middle school 7th grade has more homework than her high school brothers who are seniors. She gets out of school at 2:30pm, gets home usally at 3:04 pm eats dinner, cleans do chores takes her about 1 hour and 30 mins, so it's about 4:30 does her homework which takes about 5 hours (her bedtime is 9:00pm) so by the time shes finished with her homework she has to go to sleep! "

"I am in 8th grade I attend a public school the pressure is emmense right before high school struggling to get the best grades that I can comes with consequences such as giving up social time and sleep. My back pack which I weighed was 40 pounds! unbelivable and my back is suffering to when I went to my check up they studided my back and I actually do have a small spinal disfiguration from all of the weight That is putting pressure on my back. I get a maximum of 7 hours of sleep which is not nearly enough if I want to be ready to get dressed, breakfast and other essentials. The homework I am getting are basic stuff which will help me in the feature but Is it really needed to put that much pressure on? as you can see it is effecting my life at home. And for those students who are struggling at home with family issues may not get there homework done on time struggling with things in there personal life that could effect their grades to all teachers out there this needs to come! to an end if you want us to do better in school homework is part of the solution but piling it on is rediculous and irrational. "

"Hah I think the part about high school students doing four hours a week is pretty funny. Who in the world told you that ?! I am a high school student and my home work time ranges around three hours a night!!! And no I am not doing facebook while doing homework! "

"we het home work because it tack too much time ok?........ "

"I WISH i was up til only ten pm doing hw. more like six hours later! "

"Often missed in the debate over homework policy is the fact that, among the minority of parents who say their kids get too much homework, are a substantial number of parents who are seeing their children seriously harmed by the homework system. To them, it does not matter that homework may be popular with teachers and with other parents, when they helplessly flail about every night trying to get their children to do the work. These children are misperceived as unmotivated and bad when, in fact, they have "under the radar" learning disabilities which are not severe enough to be classified (nor should they be classified) but have a specific impact on homework-doing skills, differently from the way it affects classroom skills. Their parents are rendered middle managers for their own children, with responsibility to make them do their assignments, yet without the authority to use their judgment to modify the requirement and lessen the penalties. I call this phenomenon the hom! ework trap, and believe it affects no less than 10% of all children, possibly as much as 25% of them. The solutions are simple and they call for a redefinition of the meaning of time (what does ten minutes of homework time mean?), a lowering of the weight homework has in the grades, and a willingness to waive penalties for work not done. Kenneth Goldberg, author of The Homework Trap. www.thehomeworktrap.com. "

"This is horrible! I'm in the sixth grade and I get about five hours a night on homework not to mention the four days worth a weekends. It's like we don't even have a life. I would say more but I have to get back to homework. "

"im a seventh grader and i once had to read and make a book report for a book the teacher gave us just that very day.i stayed up until 2am that day.she also gave us a pop quiz on that book.the book was 234 pages long. "

"Yeah.... I'm a middle school student in 7th grade. I have no social life. I sit home all day doing my homework. That's why I'm a straight A student. I'm always fusturated with this because right when I get home after 15 minutes I have to start my homework! It's like the children want a break?! Oh no, us teachers must assign them a ten page essay on the leader of sweden. THEN, we must give them 3 pages of complicated math homework! WAIT! Thats not enough! Write a well thought out poem about your life while doing this page of science homework! Oh, yeah... STUDY FOR THESE 4 TEST TOMORROW TOO! I think these teachers should be smart, and schedule tests and homework together so we don't get overwhelmed! In 6th grade, I had a test in every single subject except chorus. I had a nervous break down in the car... yeah... the teachers need to do something about this! Some people I know do not even do the homework not because they do not want to or they are lazy. It's because they have t! o do basketball (my sister) or singing lessons (me). I had to quit singing lessons because I no time to study music with all this homework :( 4 WORDS FOR THE SCHOOLS OUT THERE, DO SOMETHING ABOUT HOMEWORK! Thank you for listening...ugh time for homework :( :( :( "

"i am right now shopping for a new school for next fall in part because of the amount of homework my kindergartener was assigned. There is so much data that says that too much homework does more harm than good and if a school district is going to completely throw out good data because "parents expect a lot of homework" well, that's not a district I want my daughter to attend. "

"As a gymnast, carrying loads in my backpack is a pain... on the shoulder. You must be thinking, "You're a gymnast, toughen up." Well, because of the load, it causes excruciating pain on the tendon and once my tendon did get stretched too much... boy did it hurt. "

"This a most interesting article and quite intriguing. "

"homework can be boring and take forever but u should ask for help if u dont get it and itll pay off once u get ur good classes and a wonderfull job "

"i think that homework is good so dont complain if u want a good job "

"On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, i have marching band rehearsals for two hours. from 3 to 5. i come home at about 5:30 and start my homework. On Tuesdays, i have a bible class from 6:30 to 8:30. So on Tuesdays, I'm usually up until 1 or 2am. On Mondays i have marching band rehearsals from 6 to 9 and i get home usually around 9:30. Teachers need to know that students have lives. We don't always have time for homework. We're busy. I don't appreciate how they assume that we have time for hours and hours of homework. "

"I have a first grader.She has 2 hours or more of HW a night! 1 Lesson Supplment section in the math book(on average 5 pages front and back),a supplied book to read and do 3 WS's on,4 pages from the penmenship book,3 pages from the spelling book not to mention the weekly "History in The Making"and "Our Country's Past booklets(5 pages each),the weekly "Super Science" lesson(5 pages) and a biweekly book report! The other 1st grade teachers assign a math sheet, a penemenship page and a spelling sheet with a biweekly book report. Abagail ends in tears every night! What makes everything worse she says that they do very little in school, they go over the homework,do the math lesson and play.Her friends are jelous of her because she does less work but she is jelous of them because they do most of what she does for homework in school "

"Ok so I'm in eighth grade and I have 3-4 hours of homework a night, so I don't know what these parents are complaining about. Next year, at my high school I WILL have more. It's a fact. I play field hockey (2 hour mandatory practice everyday), take a piano lesson once a week (1/2 hour), and take 3 forty five minute dance classes a week. My sister and I also go to hot yoga classes. She is younger, but does the same activities as me. I always get all my homework done (algebra, English, Latin, Spanish, social studies, science, science research group, and graded art sketches) and ace all my tests. So don't complain that your poor kid has 1 hour of homework a night that some parents (not all) practically do for them. When I get to college I will breeze through (hopefully Harvard law) while other kids will be overwhelmed with work. "

"Just the right amount?? Are you kidding me? I'm only 11 and have at least 5-6 hours of homework every night. Added on to gymnastics practices, I usually end up staying up till 12. Even my mom thinks it's a ridiculous amount. "

"Staying up till 10 PM? 1 to 2 hours of homework a night? As if. I've stayed up till 2 in the morning doing homework on occasion, and then often still don't have it all done. Teachers need to understand that I'm not going to value their class above everything else. Their class is just one of MANY in which all the teachers assign too much homework, assuming I'm just going to do it because they think to themselves, "Oh, this shouldn't take more than an hour." Well guess what? That doesn't mean I'm spending an hour on homework. That means I'm spending an hour PER CLASS on homework, because many teachers seem to assume that their class is higher on our list of priorities than anything else, including other classes. So when each teacher assigns one hour of homework (a pretty average amount), that ends up being ~5 hours of homework. Not only this, but I'm on the soccer team, which practices every day, cutting out a huge chunk of time, and also we all are human beings, not just stud! ents. We have personal, social lives, and we have to keep those up just like everyone else. It just becomes too hard to balance all your classes, sports, and life at the same time without slipping in/straining each of them, and teachers need to realize this. "

"Yesterday I had to stay up WAY past my bedtime finishing my homework. I'm in 7th grade. I technically stayed up until today before I was done with the things that were due today. I'm using this website for my persuasive essay in English! "

"I go to school from 7am until 2pm, and then come home and do homework for at least 4 hours per night if not more. Yes, it is partially my fault for taking honors/AP classes, but I've found that during the school day, in class, we learn absolutely nothing! The teachers rant and rave about their personal lives or the economy, and then give us so many hours of homework that it is unbearable. I literally have pulled all-nighters the last two nights just to get things done. I've skipped school to stay home and finish homework. Usually, kids skip school to do fun things, but my life is no Ferris Beuhler's Day Off. Anyway, I think what teachers should do is stop wasting class time disussing their lives with us and actually teach us the subject, and then make homework, most of which is utterly useless, optional. I've seriously had nervous breakdowns this year because on top of homework, there is also SAT testing and other responsibilities at home. I think teachers forget that we are! not robots, but human beings, and that there is more to OUR lives than school. We should have time to pursue our interests, not just do work that the school imposes on us. "

"Recently in a class, my teacher mentioned to the boys who are on the basketball team that she had seen their rival team that morning, working out in the gym at 6 AM. "You guys need to get with it!" she said. They all rolled their eyes. "SF High doesn't assign homework. If we didn't have homework, then we would be there at 6 AM, too." And this is the crucial moment, when my teacher said something that we all recognized to be the utmost lie, something that she didn't even seem to believe herself: "Just think of how much more you are learning than them." Honestly, there have been very few homework assignments, throughout the entire course of my education, that I have learned anything substantial from. I side with John Holt on this one, and he said that you only learn what YOU determine to be important, what YOU are passionate about and interested in. I don't know a single high schooler who, after a long day at school, is excited or passionate about the hours of homework that they have to do upon returning home. I don't have a social life. I get almost straight A+s, but I don't get to do anything fun until summer. At least one day of my weekend (if not more) is always entirely devoted to homework. The amount per night varies, but it is almost always more than two hours, and when all of the assignments that are due on the same day (from different classes) approach their deadline, I am lucky to get to bed before 1 AM. I know that a lot of high schoolers have it even worse than that, and quite frankly, the schools should be more! concerned with how much sleep we are getting. It is hypocritical for them to teach us the sleep guidelines in nutrition class (at least 9 hours for high schoolers) and then assign so much homework that reaching that guideline is impossible. To make matters worse, teachers have the attitude that if a student doesn't turn in his homework, he must have been playing video games instead. In reality, if a student doesn't do his homework, he probably just decided to go to sleep before midnight. The bottom line is, even ten minutes per grade level a night is too much when a student reaches high school age. We would learn more from reading the books that we want to read, talking to our parents about the things that interest us, walking around downtown with our friends, watching movies, reading articles, etc. than we learn from all of those hours wasted on homework. Is there any "benefit" worth the price of making children hate learning? "

"I'm in seventh grade, and i get home at 3:30, and then work on multiple challenging homework assignments until 7:00. Thats ridiculous. it isnt helping me. infact, its causing me to do bad in school. last year i had only 20-40 minutes a night and i did perfectly. i am really unhappy now and i have been worked to the point that my brain cant function anymore. seventh graders do not enjoy calculus!! im supposed to have prealgebra, not calculus. And then i have other things to do. cleaning up, eating dinner, showering, and then studying. by the time im done its already 11pm and i have to go to sleep so i can get up at 5am the next morning and do it all again. "

"I'm spending 4 hours a night doing math homework alone now. 6am to 4pm AT LEAST is taken up by math, gods help me if I procrastinate. Not that I can find a job anyway, but anything other than a weekend job will leave me with no time for anything outside school/work, and life isn't about doing homework. "

"I was going to elementary/high school in the 80ies and half of 90ies. My homework was about 3.5-4 hrs per night plus half Sunday. I never cried it was too much. My kid however does NOT get homework at all! She is in 4th grade and she gets 2 work sheets per week and one COLORING page. That's one of the reasons we are moving out of this state and I hope I get her to a private school where she can actually learn something. "

"It's not overdoing it. I'm in 9th grade, have 6-7 tests a week with 4 hours of work per night, I'm not required to work that much, but if you want to be successful... "

"I am an 8th Grade Male. (that sounds wierd) But i come home with 3 hours+ a night and Its taken such a great toll on me... 3 years ago I had much better Grades. I do 3 hours or more a night of homework, its gotten to the point were im just doing it just to get it done, not focus on it and actually learn something. Something that really bums me out is that i do sports that require much practice all the time.. so homework can really get in my way or my plans... "

"I don't care what "studies", "polls", or what any "senior SOCIAL scientist" has to say about excessive amounts of homework. Apparently, the "small proportion of children" who ~are~ forced to spend an enormous amount of time on homework, simply do not matter to anyone? The situation ~is~ indeed a "crisis" in so many homes. It should be considered cruel and unusual punishment as that is exactly what it is...not only tho the children but to the entire family. I once mentioned this exact point to one of my son's teachers. She told me that she only assigned approximately one hour of homework per evening. True, she did...but when ~all~ of his teachers, from every single class, assign the same amount of homework, it makes life miserable. Many children end up wanting to quit school and do exactly that. I asked this teacher how she would feel if she had to get up each morning, attend school all day, rush home and immediately begin doing homework, and not finish until well after bedtime. Most nights, not having time for dinner, alittle relaxation, and barely time for even a shower before being forced to go to bed so that they could begin the torture again the next day. The teacher said she had never thought about it like this. She stopped being thoughtless and held a meeting at school to discuss this with the entire staff. This is exactly the problem...they do not consider the harm they are doing to the child and the entire family. If they do realize this, they simply do not care about the welfare of the child. Any child who does not get a break of some sort, will certainly not want to attend school, much less college. Nobody can do their best work if never given a break and time to be a normal person. Think about it. Please. If you care at all, do something about allowing the kids alittle break. If you don't care...you should not be teaching at all. Yes, I realize that teachers must spend time doing lesson plans, etc. But it was their choice to become a teacher and they knew that was part of the territory and apparently didn't mind. I don't know of any teacher who works non-stop until they fall into bed, only to begin again the next day. thank you "

"Before the cry goes too far out to reduce homework, check to see the effectiveness of a child to manage time. Poor time management ( inability to stay on track) can be indicative of other problems in the child's education. Sit with your child and observe how they do homework; are there other distractions? Phone calls? Sibling interference? Day Dreaming? Learn your child's habits. "

"I am a senior in high-school (but I am taking six years for health reasons)... does this mean I am going to have to follow the ten minute rule and add on 20 extra minutes? I already have enough work to do. I get angry at my teachers for giving me so much work because they slack off during class. They give it to us for us to learn AND so they can make up for lost time. I get good grades... honors and most recently high honors, but I have NO LIFE!!! They should teach prioritization skills, because I suck at prioritizing my time. Not only that, I have A.D.D. So my homework takes even longer! Screw the 10 minute rule, it's more like 20 for me :(.... so If I am 12th grade.. 20 x 12 ... 10 x 22 is 120 x 2 = 240 divided by 60 = 4 hours. OH! I thought that was going to be way worse!! Oh wait. That's already what I spend. I feel like I have to make a decision!! Good Grades Vs. Personal Life.... which one do I choose, which one do I choose. Grades obviously, but I wish they would teac! h balancing skills!! "

"I graduated from Korean high school and went to Korean college. My English isn't very good and I am still learning because English is my second language. Anyways, Korean schools are worse than the US so many times. High school is 6:30 to 8:30. A lot of people go to after school after class because they need to be ahead and not behind. I can tell you right now that it is not easy in Korea. It's not usually like here that parents take you to school, we have to either walk or take the bus. On top of that, teachers there hit you for everything. 10:30 - 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning (Homework). Wake up at 6:45 and go to school. The last year is the worst. We have the take the an equivalent test to go to college. IT IS NOTHING LIKE THE SATS! We are forced to test about 8 subjects. So many suicides occur. If you do really bad on it, you are basically done. That one score will determine your future. Please don't complain about here because the environment is so much better and it is s! o much easier. As for tests, we don't just have it every one or two weeks, but we have them every single day. Every subject. "

"As a student here, I was born and raised in Taiwan. I moved here when I was in 8th grade. Currently, I'm a 10th grader going to high school now. By the way, I took English while I was in Taiwan. American kids here have so much less homework than we did back in Taiwan. This is basically the schedule: 6:30: Wake up, usually morning activities, then either take the bus or walk to school. 7:30 : School starts, you have homeroom. One class is usually about an hour and thirty minutes long. Take a 5 minute break and classes until 12:30, lunch. 30 minutes, back to class. Get off school at 5:30. Sometimes you have to clean the classroom or the bathrooms. Afterwards, you got to go to tutoring. Get off at 8:30, go home, 9:45. Homework, after school homework, studying for tests EVERYDAY, and then extra practice so you don't fall behind. Finish around 4 am. Once your last year of middle school, take an equivalent test to enter a good high school. Last year of high school, you get no slee! p. Test to college, you bomb it, you're done. They test you on eight different subjects. Doesn't sound so bad anymore huh? "

"It's as simple as this pay attention in class and do the homework when you feel that what you are learning is hard or you just don't get it. If you understand the current item 100% then don't even attempt to do the homework forget about it and have fun, release stress, hang with friends. Why? Because sadly unless you are going to an ivy league school truthfully you are going with people that had D's and F's that are in college thanks to sports and just plain good impression/social skills. Heck! My friend did about a couple thousand hours of community service got B's and got a full ride to UNC (University of North Carolina) "

"I am in 8th grade in a private school. I completely agree with the teachers not coordinating. My math teacher assigned a 1000 word essay to be completed in one night on homework. Then my world geography teacher assigned us an assignment where we have to outline a 15 page chapter and then 40 note cards and at least 2 tests and 6 quizzes a week and thats considered a good week and i fall asleep at 1 and wake up at 5 45 to restart it:/ "

"I'm in 8th grade at a private school doing 9th grade math and 10th grade spanish and I am doing homework from my morning classes at lunch and study hall, homework from afternoon classes at home and getting to bed at 11:30, waking up at 5:45, leaving for school at 7:15 and repeat. I do my projects on weekends PLUS extracurriculars from 3-7:00 on Monday and Thursday, 3-4:30 Friday and volleyball or soccer everywhere else. I don't even like soccer! The coach makes me play! Teachers are loading on too much homework. Last night I drank 2 whole pots of tea. Tea is what makes me not completely stressed (for the majority of the time). I have exams this week which is no homework (woot!) but that means i will be up to 11:00 STUDYING!!! AAAAHHHHHH!!!! 4 hours I WISH. thank you for letting me rant :) "

"I am a high school student in NYC, currently a junior. Parents and teachers wishes to put their kids in the top universities that they've completely forgotten about the kids feeling, the kid's desire to have "fun". My teacher each assigns home work that are at least twenty minutes long, the home work is some times so challenging that I have to spend another half hours or so reading text books and receive youtube lessons before I understand what I am suppose to do. I assure you that I am not one of those kid who don't pay attention in class, and I frequently ask questions when ever I get confuse. But the difficulty of the home work is just beyond that. Another thing is that once a while one of my teacher is going to assign a project that takes at least two hours, teachers do not co-operate with each other. Each teacher is giving kids their own assignments ignoring all the other things the kid have to do. "

"YES!! our kids have too much homework! i have been reading others comments and i personally am in 8th grade i regually stay up til two and wake up at six also and i am a complete wreck! were supposed to be kids! were supposed to have a life!! the sad part is this is supposed to be the best part of my life! christ! all i am asking for is a little sleep!! "

"This is ridiculous!!!!!! I'm in 8th grade and I receive, at least, 2 and a half hours of homework a night I mean come on I'm 13!!!!! I have a test per week, a book report every 2 weeks, projects, readings, and on top of that all my regular homework. Teachers think that their class is the only one you have and that their class is the most important so they assign a lot of homework. What they don't realize is that their class is not the only one we have and that their class is just as important as the others. Please all teachers, listen, stop giving us so much homework. "

"I just wonder what do they do in class all day for the need to give homework, my kids come home and tell me that they don't go over the homework that the teacher just looks to see if you did it, my question is what are they learning? If the teachers don't go over the work how do they know they did it right or wrong? How is that learning, then you have a test and half the time the tests are given back a week later and you have already moved onto something new, how do the teaches know if the child actuallly understood the work if they don't go over the papers? "

"I think it's crazy teachers haven't learned how to communicate with each other enough to realize that if each of them is following that PTA 10 minutes of homework per grade each night, then by 3rd grade you could have a kid with four homework assignments each a half hour long! That was very magnanimous of them to consider giving shorter assignments, but when you've got 2 hours of homework a night in 3rd grade you're starting to lose time with family because the child is so busy stressing out over homework at 9 years old! Losing time with family directly coorelates to struggles in other areas-like drug abuse and suicide. So, great, you're a thoughtful teacher who assigns 30 minutes of homework a night, 1-Schools have no right to intrude on family time. They pretty much own children from 8-3, after that, they belong to their families. 2-Did you ever stop to think that if even a few other teachers are doing this it's going to quickly add up? It's absurd that so much stres! s is placed on these young chlidren. When they grow up and leave work, they are leaving work. When they're kids who leave school for home, they're bringing school with them. How is this supposed to prepare them for the real world? 3-Placing so much strain on children is bad for their emotional, mental, and physical health. Schools ought to be ashamed of themselves for not coming up with something better than force feeding education to overstuffed students. Teach them, don't overtax them. "

"I would love for four hours of homework a week! i just did 2 hours of memorization for part of one homework-i am still not done. my mother made me take a break because i was about to fall asleep. i am in 6th grade and it is the weekend! i think most students-if not all would agree that we have too much homework. i personally cant wait for university because my dad says that even at the toughest you get 5-6 hours a night. "

"I would have to agree with all of this. I'm only a middle school student and I go to bed at midnight at least more than 2 times a week, sometimes later. Then I have to get up at 6 and it just starts again. I don't even procrastinate. The other Tuesday, I stayed up to finish 2 projects due Friday thinking that I would be able to have free time the rest of the week. Guess what happened: I had to stay up another night until 12:00 and the rest of the week I went to bed at 11 (which to me isn't that bad, but I've gotten accustomed and you also have to realize that that's only 7 hours of sleep. Plus, by the ten minute rule I should be done at 4:20. How pathetic). I was lucky this week too because i sacrificed my break to finish upcoming homework (reading logs, they might sound familiar). If I hadn't done them, I would have had to do one every night resulting in a regular midnight schedule and a 1:00 in the morning day. On jam-packed weeks, I regularly stay up until 2 in the mornin! g or even 4. And have had to do 2 all-nighters for one semester. It's ridiculous. Now I am a sort of an overachiever with straight A's and all honors classes, but just because I want a successful education doesn't mean I want to be some mindless robot. I mean seriously, this stuff makes me go insane. I cry over it; I don't get why schools haven't thought about changing their policies with so much people complaining. My mom has a really bad leg problem too and she has sleeping problems. Rushing into her room to print everything I need to late at night is something which doesn't help her. We even have to deal with bad economic problems-- her job is not high-paying. I can't take it anymore. Please somebody help us. How many more people have to cry about homework before somebody listens. I even joke about having no life, but actually it's true. There's no time to spend at all with anybody nor is there even an extra half an hour to play some game or something. How is it even hea! lthy. My friends literally laugh at me because I slouch with m! y backpack. I always say "yeah, whatever" but I know they're right. Truly, I dread the upcoming years. How can I keep up, I'll never sleep. I used to like school but now I COMPLETELY HATE IT! It's eating me up: my life, my family, my philosophy, everything. I don't even feel like a person anymore, it's like we're stupid little lab rats who have no spirit at all. We need to end it! "

"I go to highschool and I do so much homework from around 5 pm to midnight. I sometimes even have to go to bed at 1 or 2 am. I don't mind having homework but when I have to spend my whole entire weekend doing homework for most of my classes I feel very stressed and worrisome about going to school the upcoming week. But I doubt that homework will be cut down and that makes me upset... "

"So? I just did 9 straight hours of homework after going to school for eight. Now it's 12:00 and I have 5 hours of sleep before I have to do it all over again. 10th grade, by the way. "

"This article actually frustrates me quite a bit. I'm a Sophomore, and I will admit that homework CAN be effective. My mother is a sixth grade teacher, and the teachers are under a stress of their own. Their core has increased so much over the past few years, that there is no way to get everything in during a school day. However, I will concede that homework (especially after you hit your Freshman year) is ridiculous. When you have multiple teachers, they tend to think their class should come first, occasionally you get lucky and get the 1 in a 100 teacher that realizes you might have other things going on your life and that you have 7 other classes besides theirs and give you a small break; but those teachers are rare. But, what I get a real "kick" out of; is the 20 minutes we waste in our school day with "mentor" using upper-class-men to force "study habits" and "presentation tips" down our throats. It's horrid. I would love having those 20 minutes for homework. This year h! as already been a bad year for me grade wise, and I do contribute it to the fact that more than 60% of your grade is the homework you complete, and the homework amount and expectation of quality and correctness increase this year has almost killed me. I haven't had this bad of grades since I was a 7th grader; and it make me disappointed in myself, leading me to feel a bit hopeless. It would be lovely if all teachers coordinated OUTSIDE of their team mates that share the subjects they teach, (because chances are, we're only taking one of that class) and talked to with representatives or just the entire faculty about what they were teaching. Most students share a lot of their core classes, at least with the honors course. Out of my 4 core classes, 3 of them are honors and one is AP. Every Sophomore in that AP class is also in my other core classes. I will be honest, my AP class does give the largest and most stressful amount of homework, and I did sign up for it; but when you! add it up with an Honors Chemistry class right before the AP ! class.. it turns bad. Especially since they tend to assign homework on the same days, due the same days. Both have a large amount of work required. Though, again, our time is short, and especially in my Chemistry class, there are kids that are still lazy, goof off's, or still trying to care about school. Now, I would probably be able to handle my homework, but I don't have the weekend catch up time like most do. See, I'm one of those high-schoolers that wants to be able to support their self, and has a job. I will say that I absolutely love me work, and it's given me a lot of volunteer hours for scholarships, but due to distance, I only work on weekends.. Fridays and Saturdays to be exact. Luckily (again with the distance) we host Overnight Camps for our campers and the staff is allowed to stay the night as well. This leaves me at the place of my work for 24-28 hours from Friday to Saturday. I love that I spend this time there, and I am not always working, well.. working on! work there. My time off up there, has recently been filled with AP text book reading or Chemistry reading. Seeing as my job is actually a stress reliever I hate that I contaminate the break with homework; but if I want the future my parents and I have envisioned, it has to be done. Of course, I also have other extracirriculars on the weekdays. Like Improv twice a week and MESA once a week. Seeing as I leave for work quickly after school on Fridays, I have Thursdays after school, which are spent on all the housework that's fallen behind over the week. As an honors high school student, I would get on my knees and beg to have the "Ten minute Rule" implemented. When half the class is losing sleep and making themselves sick to try to keep up with school, and life; something has to change. There needs to be allowance for things that get in the way. Especially medically. I've had my Wisdom Teeth removed this year and gotten sick to the point where my mom's forbade me to go to sch! ool 3 times this year. Compared to the 0 of 9th grade and 1 of 8th grad! e. Every time there has been no allowance on homework. I often got the excuse of "what did you do that entire time you were home if you were sick?" The answer? Try to get better so that I didn't miss any important concepts, and didn't die under the homework load, but unfortunately one day is enough to do that. If there are teachers reading this, I beg you to try to talk to the teachers that you know most of your kids have and try to stagger projects and things like that. I hope that you want them to be succesful, but all that's happening right now, is the youth of my age digging themselves into the ground burning out and giving up. I used to love school, but now I find myself caring less and less. Please please, if you can do something, do it. "

"Yep !! students have alot of homeworks !!!! we students are pressurised and thought to be like a robo "

"Teachers have said so themseleves. Homework is NOT studying. Those two pages in that 50 year old textbook are NOT going to come up on my next quiz or exam! 95% of all homework assignments are irrelevant and inconsequential. If we were able to use that time to study we'd be MUCH better off when it comes to tests, quizzes, in-class assignments and overall understanding of the material. Not only is the homework unhelpful but it's time consuming. I have 6 hours of school, 8 hours to sleep (well I'm supposed to sleep for 8 hours), 4 hours of studying, 2 hours of preparing for upcoming projects and papers, plus 2-3 hours of maintaining a social/family life, don't forget time to eat, shower and just breathe. There aren't enough hours in the day for this inane crap! "

"I agree on the fact of too much homework. Schools need to learn that kids have co-curricular activities and sometimes part-time jobs. Students are being pushed harder just because of the academic competition in the world. Life is not about being the smartest person person in the world, its about enjoying the things around you. Kids in high school, and I am speaking for the honors students, are being stripped away from their childhood. 4-8 hours of homework a night is just overwhelming, stressing, and frustrating. Kids have rights, such as rights to have a life. I want to enjoy life in high school and not spend my whole time doing homework. I believe there should be restrictions to how much homework a school can assign a night. Every kid in the United States has the right of the pursuit of happiness. Kids are becoming less happy more depressed. In conclusion, kids have rights to have a life, they don't need 4-8 hours of homework a night, and certainly kids should be able to e! njoy life when they are young. Homework is just becoming too much for students "

"I'm in tenth grade and to be honest I would rather have an extra hour of school. It's easier to focus at school, but a lot of things come up at home. "

"I started reading this article then I saw the words "median of 4 hours a week" if that was true I would be in heaven. We have a new administration this year not to mention it's junior year. I get on average 4 hours a night!!! I have 7 classes a day that's 7 hours of school plus 2-3 hours of sport practice. I come home I just want to eat but I cant, let alone sleep... I get so much homework it has become a normal thing for me to come home start homework and somewhere in between start crying because of the stress... Now someone who thinks we get the right amount or need more, come and say that to my face! "

"I don't want to offend anyone, but you have to admit that two people can take completely different amounts of time to complete something. Besides procrastinating through Facebook and such, some people just take longer, just like in tests. Some people can just zoom right through an assignment, while others take three times as long. Take my friend for example. In math class we get a (very) little amount of time to work on our homework, and I'll be 12 problems ahead of her. I was blessed with the ability to zoom through work, but many others aren't so lucky. Our teachers need to account for everyone. (I'm in 8th grade by the way, in a private school) Also, you cannot blame procrastinating on your teachers. I understand that a lot of people aren't like that and still take ages, but others just like to avoid homework at all costs, even if they don't realize it. My friend mentioned earlier told me today that she was up doing homework until 10pm. I finished my homework after gettin! g home at 5pm from auditions, then finished by 6:30 so I could go to youthgroup. My friend went to auditions also, but she didn't go to youthgroup. She even admits she's always on Facebook. I told her to just not use it until she's done but she said it's impossible. This goes to show that you can't blame ALL your sleepless nights on your teachers' assignments. "

"This week I was lucky enough to have homework in only 2-3 of my classes. However the assignments take about 1-2 hours to complete D: I think it's ridiculous to have 6-7 hours of school (depending on where you go) then go home and have 4-8 more hours of work! Who would enjoy having more work after a day of work? My math teacher really piled it on last night that I just didn't do it. He gave us 35 problems and I still do not understand how to find the square root of a non-perfect square without a calculator (which we are not allowed to use). This is not medieval times, we have calculators, why not take advantage of the technology we have? "

"For the past month ive been staying up past 2 AM and waking up at 6 AM to go to school. Im a mess!!! How am I supposed to learn in school when im assigned all this busywork that I go home and work through like a zombie!? Teachers need to know these three important words... Quality Over Quantity... Students will learn better when they have to use critical thinking to solve a problem or answer a question, but no student will learn when there asked 30+ questions that they can mindlessly answer by just skimming through their textbook. "

"Some teachers are crazy with how much homework they give. I have several times before, stayed up until around 4 AM doing homework, then I had to get up at 6 AM to get ready for school. It was killing me, I even ended up in the hospital from passing out because of exhaustion. It's just not right. i think kids should get homework but not TOO much like that. There is a limit to how much kids can take. People need to remember that! "

"I'm about to just stop doing homework altogether. I just had so much homework last night that I wasn't in bed until 1 AM. I think 10 hours for homework is too much. Soon enough the world will be a bunch of antisocial freaks because all we do in life is homework. "

"i dont get 4 hours a week maybe 4 hours a night. It annoys me when they say they give us 30 minutes of homework when it probably takes 45 minutes to an hour to do. we also get so much summer homework. Its ridiculous! "

"I have two projects and a test along with reading for English and other homework to do this weekend and the projects and the test are on Thursday or due on Thursday. I feel like quitting right now. "

"(i went to disneyworld) right now im working on homework i have about 32 math journal pages plus about 5 studylinks. +4 stuff to do in socil studys and its all dew....TOMRROW "

"Are you serious? I'm in seventh grade ,all PRE-AP classes. Mostly all the work I do ends up as homework.Than if I don't finish it ,I wait the next day to do it,and so on. My pile gets bigger and bigger each day,so on the weekends I spend the whole day doing it,and if I can't...Well, I'M SCREWED! Teachers try their best and all but they should still not just rely on worksheets and homework to actually TEACH us! I mean, c'mon with this much homework and unfinished work, I practically screwed up my grades. I'm Asian so getting below an A, it will be judgment day for me! Asia has the highest amount of suicide rates. Mostly from brilliant students,just because of a small slump in their grades...Oh,what the world has come to...Darn...Tomorrow's Sunday,better get the 2 lbs of homework done...I'm so switching to regulars next year... (-.-)I spent 9 hours getting 1 project done...Can you believe that?! "

"I have 5 AP classes (and one weighted) and homework actually fluctuates for me. Some weeks I'll have NOTHING and other weeks I'll have so much that I have to skip school in the morning because I can't stay awake ! Also, in reference to the title, 10 pm I think is early for most high schoolers. "

"we should just stop doing homework. What is the worst that can happen. take away your video games? take away your phone? Stop taking you out to social evints? face it, they really don't have anything to hold against you. they cant legaly MAKE you do anything.(if they do, you can call Children Protection Agency) :) we need to fight, stand up for ourselves. Hell, all we have to do is stop tourchuring ourselvesevery night! "

"haha! 4 hours? maybe for a 1st grader! I'm in eight grade and takeing 2 high school courses already so i MIGHT be able to graduate early. I wake up at 6am and do my homework for an hour until 7 when i get ready for school.(somedays i sleep right through my alarm cuz im so damn tired) then go to school from 9.15 to 3.15 ride the bus home and get home like 4.10 then i do the dishes and take a shower then do my homework at like 5.oo do my hw for almost 6 hours a night then eat dinner at 11.00 and go to bed to do it all over again the next day so 4 hours a week is such a lie "

"This is ridiculous. Four hours a week my butt. I got assigned four presentations and two of them were in the same class. The outlines I receive in AP amount to about an extra 3+ hours of work. The homework from my classes gets in the way of band. In fact, I have a concert tonight and I've been at this one....ONE homework assignment since I've gotten home at 3:30. Teachers should be aware of the amount of homework they give us and not overload us. We get less sleep trying to finish the work and don't learn anything in class the next day. "

"the way i see it we have 2 days a week to fit in all the fun and after school activities that we couldn't fit in the weekdays. on top of that we have homework every night and the teachers seem to give us even MORE on the weekend! durrring the week we have sports, clubs, projects, and the unavoidable homework. yet my parents expect me to get all As, never miss an assingment, and just keep working. on top of that, video games and other electronics are the number one stress reliever for kids, but to punish us they take them away and expect even MORE from us. l adoults are stupid. "

"4 hours a week???? I don't care how credible that guy appears to be, if he really believes that's all kids get he has to be on drugs. I'm a jr. in high school and my Precalc alone can take up to 2 hours per night. And adults also have to remember that students, especially high schoolers, are doing all this homework on top of extracurriculars, sports, and work. Some of these things are for fun, but it's also in part preparing to pay for college. Scholarships are competetive these days, you really need to do a LOT to stand apart on them. I work every day except Tuesday and Sunday, and am also in Art Club, 4-H, Speech, Book Club, Teen Advisory Group, Teen Court, and Culture Club. I enjoy all these things and truly want to keep doing them! Obviously each of these aren't every night, but if you add up them + homework + work, it gets EXTREMELY stressful. I'm not saying schools should abolish homework completely - to a certain extent, it is necessary - but teachers definitely ne! ed to coordinate with each other and plan out homework assignments accordingly. Sorry I got long-winded, but I really feel it's important that adults understand students' situations! :) "

"I'm a senior in high school and today I woke up at 6am, went to to school from 7:30-2:30, went to my job from 3:00-6:30, and I have been doing homework since I got home and I probably won't sleep until 11 or 12. THAT'S AN 18 HOUR WORK DAY. The only break I get is sleep, which I don't get much of.. "

"Moar caffine plz. "

"4 hours?! I haven't had four hours a week since I was in elementary school (I'd say 2nd grade). I'm a junior in high school and stay up till 2am every night (morning?). This week alone I have 70 pgs of Gov reading (which takes 8 hrs), along with 40 pgs of history, an entire book and 6 journal entries, Spanish, math, 4 tests, an essay,a project, and chemistry homework, all due by next Monday, when finals start. There is no 4 hours. There isn't even 4 hours a night. There is too much homework. Everyone I know stays up past midnight every night. We talk in school, and kids in my honors and AP classes no longer do homework (and they're the best students out of the entire school) because they don't have the time. There's just too much. I know none of my teachers talk to each other about homework because when we mention what we have in other classes, they have no idea what we're talking about. They'll tell us over the weekend or holidays that they want us to have fun, but then ass! ign an essay, two books, and a project due the Monday we get back (and that's every class). There aren't enough hours in a day. Now, if you don't mind, I have to go write an essay due tomorrow and hopefully start my reading. "

"I do think that there is a lot of homework. Actually, I agree. BUT, what INFURIATES me, is that in some of- no, ALL of my honors classes, the kids in there are LAZY AS HECK!!! I try my best, and when the teacher gets angry, IT'S THE WHOLE DARN CLASS' FAULT!!!! Yes, I do spend quite a lot of time on my homework's. But that's because I either DON'T understand what the heck the teacher explained, or I'M TOO LAZY TO FINISH FAST. I am in eighth grade, and through out my years of education, I've seen some amazing kids and their grades. It's amazing how kids pile up their homework till it's LITERALLY, TOO LATE. It's SO SAD!!! ANYWAYS, my other point is that(FOR SOME REASON)the "there's TOO MUCH HOMEWORK" thing isn't true. There actually ARE A LOT of lazy kids. I'm sorry if you disagree, I completely understand. But when you go to school(or work, whatever you do with your life), think about it, "are there REALLY lazy kids in my class?" "

"I start homework at 3:00 work until 11:00, go to bed, get up at 5:00 finish homework at like 7:40 leaving 20 minutes to get ready and go to school and then get study hall for being late, and I'm only in sixth grade!!!!! "

"Four hours a week?! I'd KILL for that. On average, I do AT LEAST four hours a night! My weekends tire me out more than the week itself, I have had to get up at unreasonable times during the weekends, and STILL stay up until 11, 12 or sometimes even longer. Just for the record, I'm a freshman. "

" The NAEP tests kids in 4th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade. Gill said that the mode amount of time it took kids to do homework was 4 hours a week. I would believe that... if he said that was the mode for only the 4TH GRADERS. On the other hand, you don't know what schools the NAEP was testing. I took the math NAEP test for 8th grade last week. One of the questions was something like "394-273=". I was like, are you kidding? I could have passed that test in 2nd grade! None of the test asked me ANYTHING I learned from middle school. My point is, if the questions are that easy for an 8th grade test, they must be testing some really bad schools. We all know that really bad schools don't get a lot of homework anyway... By the way, if you’re going to comment on this, you should probably watch your grammar and punctuation. Honestly, if English teachers see these comments, they’re about to give us even more homework… "

"I would pay good money to stay up until only 10 pm. With each teacher of my six classes a day, seven classes total schedule assigning homework like there is no tomorrow, I get around 9-10 hours per night. This is no exaggeration. From 8-3 I'm in school with no study halls at any point in the week, then I work on homework in the car, then I work from around 4 or 4:30 PM to roughly 2:00 AM. My latest bedtime is 4:15 AM (3 times this year). Then I get up at 6 AM and do it all over again. This is junior year in high school... Lucky, lucky, lucky ten-o'clockers! I have got to bed before 11:30 just once (even on weekends) since the school year began. Oh, by the way, none of our teachers think we spend enough time on our work. The tell us their classes are supposed to be "time intensive", and that we blow them off instead. Some other unfortunate people at my school have caught only 40 minutes of sleep repeatedly. So...I am very opinionated when it comes to homework. There is one very effective solution. TEACHERS NEED TO COORDINATE WITH EACH OTHER! EVERY ONE BELIEVES HIS/HER CLASS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT IN THE WORLD. THEY NEED TO WORK TOGETHER TO EVENLY SCHEDULE HOMEWORK AT A HEALTHY PACE. Only by communication can any excess of assignments and lack of awareness be addressed! This communication must also include the parents and the students. Otherwise, each teacher lives in his/her own little world in which the are the sole rulers of the subjects of Pre-Calcland, Physicsland..etc. With no student input, no one knows anything is wrong. With no parental input, there are no mediators. Everyone needs to be involved, in some capacity, in the educational system if the system is to be effective, healthy and beneficial. "

"I would be ecstatic if I finished my assignments by 10 pm (BTW I'm not a procrastinator) "

"I'm in Grade 11. I did 6 hours of homework on Monday. And still didn't finish. I average at least 3 hours a night, on a good day. This article is a joke. "

"I'm a freshman in high school and i am taking 3 honors courses. I made the decision to take these classes with full knowledge that i would be receiving harder assignments and more of them but i did not expect to be getting 4-5 hours of homework each night. The part that is the worst is my two math courses. It seems that math teachers think that you have to be able to do 25-40 problems each night or else you won't understand the material. This is not true. I had a mth teacher last year that believed that you only need to do 5-10 problems, if that many, to understand it, but if you still have trouble it's your own responsibility to practice more. I could not agree with that philosophy more. I believe that homework should take only 1-2 hours of time after spending 7 hours at school and the homework should actually have real potential for helping the student, not just mindless answers on a worksheet. "

"4 hours a week? What kind of dumb researcher is he? Brian Gill is a COMPLETE idiot. People do homework for four hours a DAY. Who has he got to do his stupid surveys? He's a SOCIAL scientist for God's sake. He never had to take uni-level biology, chemistry, physics - nor high school courses like these. He's a dummmy who clearly does not know what students who take REAL science courses do in school..its literally hours and hours of learning in ONE day. So shut up Brian Gill, you amatuer senior social scientist at the Rand Corporation, "

"This is a good thought! I love how it had amazing facts and statements "

"Teachers don't understand that the more homework a class has, the less kids enjoy that class. Homework is not gonna make kids learn any better. "

"I'm in 9th grade and the amount of homework I recieve is astonishing. I have all Honors classes, which has resulted in the deterioration of my grades; as well as other things such as my enthusiasm and interest for school. Now, as for the majority of parents who want more homework I'll tell you this: your attempts to increase the amount of homework so we can supposedly improve our test grades is nothing but futile. By your logic, if you give a plant more water, it grows faster. As I hope you know, this is far from the truth. If you give a plant too much water, it dies. Which is what will happen to our childhood and tolerance to school if you continue this pointless attempt to improve our performance in academic exams. "

"Teachers need to understand that students receive work from other classes, too. I'm a high school freshman and I have a little under four hours of homework a day. In order to get sleep and save another hour of work, a couple of my friends and I copy leftover homework from each other using a complex system of paper exchange during the school day. I am in the marching band which takes up twenty hours a week and an orchestra which is another three hours. There is such a big stress on taking AP and honors courses but there is no way to get sleep and do extracurricular activities while still having time to be a kid. Due to lack of sleep, I sleep during lessons I think (or hope) that I can miss and understand the material later. Also, out of exhaustion, it is required for students to prioritize homework, not even looking at homework if it is from a class I have an "A" in or if the assignment is of little point value. Studying for tests is almost out of the question. I will study o! nly if I have little homework (rare)or if I am running a "C" or lower in the class. But of course, sleep deprivation affects the ability of things like writing, reading, concentration, memory, and basic computation; these are things all necessary for test-taking. A good example of this is a couple weeks ago when I "procrastinated" for three weeks (procrastinated is quotes because I didn't have time to do anything, let alone goof off). The assignment took me eleven hours. At 2:45 AM I was getting ready for bed, having done only that one assignment and ignoring everything else I was supposed to do. That day, I had a test soley on what my homework covered. I got a 72%. This proves that work should be assigned as "quality over quantity". "

"hey..... ;o i have had 13 bits of homework from just this week and it is taking me ages... whenever i come home from school i always go and do it. before i got this much i would always get the homework from that day done that night, but this week i still have about 7 bits left to do today and tomorro... "

"This is so helpful. I cited so much info from here! :) "

"Something sad is that I read the first line about "staying up until 10 doing homework" and laughed. I am a high school student and have not gone to bed that early once this year on a school night! With sports added to the hours of homework, I am lucky to get to bed by 1 and don't have any social time. And weekends? sure, i get a few more hours of sleep but I don't even see much of my family anymore! "

"this is so helpful "

"HEY i figured out why they give us so much homework! They want to turn us into mindless, spiritless creatures who do whatever they are told! Perfect government super soldiers! "

"I get hours of homework everyday, and right now im pulling an all nighter on SATURDAY trying to finish at least ONE of my projects, my Social homework, and im going to leave my LA essey, math project, and math study for unit exam for tomorrow. I just never have any time for myself anymore :( ~there went my weekend~ "

"lol, are they kidding?!! we do NOT get 4 hours of homework each week. we get AT LEAST 4 hours EACH NITE! plus, on top of homework we having studying for tests and classes. i personally think that teachers shouldn't give us so much much homework unless the homework is actually helping us significantly and is helping us actually learn/study for that class. i mean without so much homework, we'll have more sleep, more time to study everyday instead of cramming and then better test grades. Plus, i think ill actually understand the material more. Students these days especially those who have ap classes barely have any free time if they think about it. cuz u wake up at aroun 6:00 am and then get to school around 8:00. then school ends at 3:00 and then u have extra curricular actives or volunteer work or some sort of program. so by the time kids get home it's like 4:00 to 6:00. and then theres like 5 hours of homework since theres at least 1 hour of homework for each class and often! , projects to work on. so after 5 hours its like 8:00-11:00. and then ON TOP OF THAT, kids have to study for their classes or tests. my science teacher told me that to get a decent grade on his test, at least a total of 4 hours of studying and preperation must be made for his test. what about the other subjects?? and then on top of that, i know kids who don't even have thier weekends off because of taking extra prep classes on saturdays or weeknights. or they have to do community service or work. so basically, we barely have any leisure time and too much lack of sleep... how do we survive trying to balance all the subjects out and good grades in each? sorry for my rant... but its really too much homework. i wish they'd cut down a little... maybe give homework every two days?... or cut down? "

"4 hours a week Please. For me it's more like 6 hours a day. I get homework in every subject evryday and don't get me started on summer homework. I haven't relaxed since June of 2011 "

"Dear God, if I have to write another essay in german I am going to blow my freaking brains out. 12th grade. 3 AP classes + calc. I wake up at 5am, go through the testing at school for 7 hours, get home and rest for 1 hour, and then do homework until I pass out at around 9 or 10. The pressure is killing me. The acne is killing me. My day is only 1 hour long. I only dream about school. I hear college is much easier than this prison "

"HELP ME. There is SO much homework. I am in grade seven, and OFTEN have nervous panic attacks. I have CONSTANT stomach aches when I am doing my homework or THINKING about my homework. I have about an hour PLUS daily of homework, and I have to practice Violin, and juggle my grades. (I got a B- on a test I spend about 2 hours studying for.) PLEASE if you are an education leader AT ALL--HELP!! PLEASE Put an END to this madness! And Im not just some slacker child, I have straight A's, but now, I have several B's, due to my lack of attention, due to my lack of sleep. I don't think your se "

" I agree with how absolutely OUTRAGEOUS homework is nowadays. I am in grade 7, and liturally have about 2 or 3 hours of homework. I have had about 5 nervous breakdowns in the past 2 years. I dont understand a thing on the sheets, and I end up in tears. CONSTANTLY. "

"I think there is a rule of thumb of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. But i never heard what grade the student will get from that. I'm in 9 th grade and to get A's i need to work 5 + hours. The rule of thumb may be for B's, C's, D's, or even F's, but I don't know. I think A's good and B's are horrible, so if the rule was for F's then I must be working normal. I enjoy school so i can spend much longer on it, but what is keeping me back is the fact that I need 12 hours of sleep to function at my best. "

"Teacher gives all this class work expects us to do it ten minutes but most of us end up taking it home plus the homework I hate school now 6 th graderr "

"As a high school student in a college-prep Catholic high school, it makes sense why I'm getting hours and hours of homework a night. But all of the students would agree with me when I say that we have way too much. A bunch of my friends have about the same amount--or an even greater amount, for my AP American History or Honors Pre-Calc friends--of homework that I do. Sure, I'm taking a few honors classes and I'm a year ahead in math. That means nothing. Aside from accelerated math, I was in NO honors classes last year, but I still had around the same amount of homework last year as I do this year. I have spent the past few weekends isolated in my room, tending to mountains of homework as if I was its slave. Ever since I began high school, I've been getting sick more often. Last year, I was out 8 times--one more and I would've become Ferris Bueler (minus the fact that I was genuinely sick all of those times). I've had friends leave my school because of the workload. However, it's not just my school; my best friend, who is in a local public school, is suffering as well. It seems like, unless you're in remedial classes (although sometimes students in these classes can still have mounds of homework), students in any class, regardless of the difficulty level of it, have too much on their plates. The weight of the homework load is too much, and it needs to be reduced, no questions. One of my teachers has realized our pain. To all of her honors classes, she spent the end of the period talking to each section about how we do have too much homework, and that it's a problem. It was the first time any teacher had openly expressed detest against homework. I feel like this says that a lot of the teachers don't want to give us homework, but they have to as part of the curriculum or something like that. Today, another one of my teachers asked my class if he gives us too much work. Honestly, it's the only class where I don't get a lot of work. We all agreed that he didn't. He was happy with our response. It said in the article that the Japanese get less homework than we do. Why is that? Because, for the most part, Japanese students actually enjoy school. Their teachers prepare them well during school, and the students usually are okay with it. I'm pretty sure that their school hours are longer than ours, too. Some students are even willing to put more effort into studying for acceptance into college placement exam schools, and those who are accepted are willing to put in the effort to study. And they all usually have time to enjoy life. I feel like if we followed their example, then our country would actually be ranking better in education. Come on, American educational system. Use your head. It's obvious that the existing conditions in our educational system aren't helping students do better in the long run, so doesn't that mean we should change something? Start with the homework and work from there. Please. "

"Well, im up past midnight again doing homework, what a surprise. Im practically dead these days and the lack of sleep is starting to effect my performance in the thing I actually enjoy, basketball. I no longer have any time whatsoever to brush up on my skills and tryouts are next week. I get so much homework I literally just want to die but I cant let myself not do it. I think something needs to be done about the amount of homework given by classes but i know that nothing will be done. Im off to finish my research paper now... "

"ok i just got in high school with good grades and now im failing 5 out of my 7 classes and i. hate my school i have two pre-ap classes and im getting better in those but my problem is band i have to miss band and its activites all the time because of homework its keeping me from every thing. i had to get out of my other pre-ap classes because of my homework in pre-ap classes i haven't got to much sleep and i also need to get up a five every morning then it got worse because i had been sleeping in class and apparently talking even though i know nobody there and now i have to write a 10 page essay on why i sleep in class and why am i distracting students with a rough draft a final draft and a typed copy "

"I am in enriched 7th grade classes, and the amount of homework I have is horrendous. I never have any more free time and I never get what I want to have done finished. Depending on if I have band or not, I will either work from 4:00-7:30 or from 5:30-9:00 on homework. Two weeks ago, only a month into school, this is all the work I had: An English project, french worksheets, a french project, a math project, math worksheets, a math test to study for, geography worksheets, a history project, a history test to study for, a HUGE science project, a science lab to finish, a science test to study for, an ethics project, a P.E. assignment and I had to practice my instrument for band! I could not complete the latter things as well as I would have wanted to because there was no time. My parents have had to force me to go to bed, since they had to go to bed also. The teachers just don't seem to realize how bad it is. I have cried so much and I know this cycle will not stop for the next! five years of my life (besides summers!). I don't enjoy school as much as i used to, and I feel that I have lost my determination and I don't put as much effort into things any more. Please if someone with power over school boards is reading this, HELP! "

"I'm so exhausted from doing all of the homework that my teachers are piling on, that I forget what I'm actually studying. I have bad health and I'm in pre-professional dance training, and often I choose to get 8 hours of sleep rather than finish my homework because if I don't, I get REALLY sick and can't dance. I have made dancing my priority and the school system can just deal with it. i would love to do well in school, but I would rather be healthy. "

"By the time I get home from school, eat, and finish my homework, it's already 9 or 10pm... and that's if I do PART of it!!! Kids go home and instead of getting to talk and enjoy time with their family and friends, the only interaction they get with their parents is talking about how to do the homework problems.All I do after I get home is eat, do my homework, and then, MAYBE if I'm lucky, I can squeeze in some time to watch an episode or two of 30Rock before I go to bed. It can't go on like this. "

"As a sophmore in highschool, I find a tremendous amount of homework. I'm not involved in the sports at school and don't understand how you can do anything besides homework in the evenings. I get home around three, take a short nap less then and hour so I can think. Normally I have about 5 hrs of homework because I take AP and advanced classes. Sometimes I will be up till' 2am & can't think the next day. It's been making me sick. The homework has to stop. "

"Could you use words that people can eaily understand and make the article shorter? This makes kids be able to understand this article and find what's wrong by themselves. "

"I really dont like the way the school system is nowadays. Teachers are not building skills for life, they are not teaching so that the child can learn something new, they are teaching so that the child can pass the test. They are not building skills for life, but building skills for test taking. How is anyone supposed to learn when it comes to this? This is the reason why teachers give so much homework, because the district or state has certain matirial that must be taught to the children by the end of the semester or year. Its either that or competition, schools and districts and states, even our country (US) is also trying to excel the education for competition against other areas for the top spot in the education field. Which then leads to more work and more homework. It is wrong, and needs to be changed! "

"Weekends are made for a break for people from work, and school to attend to our own lives instead of only work, but for some teachers, it is a time to assign a project or something to give your child more education and work. That is just wrong. "

"THERE IS TO MUCH. I come home with hours of work ahead of me all the time. Its just that there are some teachers who forget that we have 7 or 6 other classes to deal with, and just throw everything at us. lately, my friends in my neighborhood have been getting mad at me, because i have been getting loads of homework, and has not been able to go outside, to the movies or something and actually have a life. Do teachers forget that we have a life of our own? or is this to make it even between us? i have heard many teachers before complain saying things like "You think what you have to go through is alot, i have to go home and grade 180 students papers" It gets me aggrivated to hear such a thing. Heres a solution, give less work, then you get less work. It works for both sides. Anyways, you should EXPECT having to grade alot of papers if your going to be a teacher, so why complain? Teachers expect us to come to school the next day with a wide smile on our face, clean looking, an! d ready to learn. Kinda hard when your staying up till eleven every night though dont ya think? Also, some things are pointless, my teacher gives us a map every week that goes with the lesson plan. We use it for the warm-up everyday. And we have to turn it in on friday, but usually, the directions are simple, color the water and the land, or name the members of so-and-so's union. Is there really a point for that? NO, that is 10 minutes that i can use to at least walk out of my room, and have a nice conversation with my parents, or play with my baby sisters. Point is, there is to much homework. There are things that dont have to be given out such as the map i described, pointless assignments that we are expexted to complete. Some teachers seem to forget that we children have a life to attend to, not just work all the time. And anyways, most of these "reaserchers" who say that the amount of homework is not a problem, hasnt been in a class room, with actuall kids, doing actual! l school work in the past 5-30 years. So how would they be abl! e to determine what us teens and children feel? Please, I would love to have my teenage life back. Oh yeah, Happy Halloween! Guess what I say when people ask me what i was for Halloween and how much candy i got, and if i even went trick-or-treating? My reply is "For Halloween, I was a caveman/schollar boy in his cave/workroom, I got a good amount of "candy" done and is ready to turn in. And if you consider staying in your room almost all night doing homework trick-or-treating, then i guess you could say i did go. "

"High school is supposed to be the best 4 years of your life, right? Not for me. I just started high school, and I'm only about 2 months in, and I already hate it. Why? THE HOMEWORK! I have about two AP classes, but that gives no right to throw a bunch of homework at us. I've struggled all my life with the amount of homework I have, but now I'm starting to think; is it even worth it? Why go through this torture? Every night I'm doing homework for a MINIMUM of 7 hours a day, while my brothers have either about an hour or less a day, or even none. It's not fair. I always have to sacrifice my weekends for homework. I never even get to spend time with my friends or family anymore! My family call us in to snuggle up and watch a movie together, but then of course I come and say, "but I have to do homework." So they don't get to watch it because of that. One time I had so much homework, that I started at 5 pm and finished at 8 am the next day, with NO SLEEP. I had to skip the first ! two classes of school that day JUST to finish my homework. Right now it is 10 pm, which is pretty early for me. My bedtime is always past midnight now because of homework. Then I have to wake up at 6 am. I get like, what, 2-4 hours a sleep on average? Teenagers are supposed to get 8 hours of sleep, not 2! It's bad for our health! I've become so stressed that I've been showing symptoms of mini strokes and I'm only 14! Do teachers forget that we have OTHER classes BESIDES them? I should be doing my homework right now but I am so fed up with this that I want the world to hear. I don't think this will make any difference, but it's time for the government to make it a law that homework can maximum be 3 hours. I'm not kidding. "

"Kids have no freedom. :C "

"i dont sleep "

"I attend a private school in the Caribbean and homework is practically dragging us away from having any social activities. I can no longer do any daily activities that require more than thirty minutes of time. I go to school for 7 hours and do homework for 3-6 hours everyday. It is not exaggeration. We highschoolers have from 6 to 8 classes a day and get an average of homework for 4 to 6 classes. Today, I have to go home and do the following: - Read chapters 18-20 - Write an essay for Spanish - Write an essay for English - Write a 2 page summary about World War I - Answer Chemistry queston 19-29 - Do math problems 1a-10f And I also have to go to dancing class. "

"homework is unesssery!!!!!1 "

"Yes WE DO have way too much homework we need this to stop we can get all of our grades IN CLASS teachers dont understand that us kids have other activitys also,homework gives teachers more things to grade. - 7th grade student "

"homework isnt cool "

"The research on past homework vs today's homework and concluding that it's the same is not true. We all went to school and we all know the amount of homework we did and how long it took. It was nowhere near the amount kids are getting today. 2 to 3 hours per homework per night is what we did in college. It is unhealthy for kids to be doing 12 hour shifts. It also serves no purpose since the studies I have read conclude that that excessive homework actually hurts students learning and does nothing to make them smarter. See racetonowhere.com for more on this topic. Parents are starting to finally wake up and schools are just beginning to understand the damage done. "

"My homework load is about 4 hours every night (I am only a sophmore in high school) and I take no AP or Honors classes. Along with this I take dance classes I am in plays and I volunteer regularly. The teachers are crazy if they honestly expect us students to finish all of this, sleep for 8 hours and come to school bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to learn "

"I am thirteen and get homework in every class every night. Our teachers have us do a tun of work at school and then do the same exact stuff at home but more. A lot of times my parents get mad because I'm staying up to late doing homework. In the end i get up to like 3-4 hours of homework a night and i do sports and chores what about my life!? "

"Wake up 5:00 am every day. Get to school at 6:30 am. Try to stay awake until 1:47 Get home after about 2 hours of extracurricular activities. The time is 4:00. Spend about 30 minutes eating. Start on Hw. Finish hw past eleven. If theres a test, an additional 2 more hours of work. Brain is swishing around in my head. slowly dribbling out of my ears. Finally, close/past midnight, go to sleep. BAM. Its already 5:00 am. I don't know how I'm still alive. Maybe I died and left my body behind like Professor Binns from Harry Potter without realizing that I'm dead. "

"I spent 7 hours studying for my chemistry test last night because my teacher lacks the characteristics of a quality AP teacher, which says a lot about the school system in America. I'm a senior and I take 5 AP classes. I also play on the varsity tennis team and play all year. I can honestly say that I get a minumum of 4 hours of homework a night. I recently learned in AP psychology that high school students should be getting a minumum of 9 hours of sleep a night to function at their best. How is this possible when we have 4 hours of homework AND extracurricular activities? And on top of it all, teachers complain when we fall asleep in class! Well what are we supposed to do? It's all a vicious cycle that must be addressed because it is absurd to spen almost 7 hours in school, and then have to go home and do another 4 or more hours of work. At this point, homework has become counterproductive. I'm sorry, just because 'the average' student gets 'an average' of 4 hours A WEEK,! doesn't mean everyone does. This is the exact reason why the school system is failing in the US. They don't take everything into consideration. More homework doesn't mean better grades. It has to be efficient and quality work. There's no reason a student should be getting 50 calculus problems a night. I think a possible solution for this would be mandatory block scheduling in all high schools. At least we would have more time to do our work, and possibly free periods during the school day. I could go on and on about this, because this article was extremely upsetting for me to read. I find it offensive that someone can just brush of the grueling curriculum of high level students. We can accomplish the same level without all the work. As they say, it's quality, not quantity. "

"Well I just started highschool as a freshie and i'm having issues with homework..to the point where im lucky to get a 8 hours of sleep. i'm the stereotypical 'straight a' over-achiever but honest to god, when i get home I don't want to stare at papers for ANOTHER 8 hours and miss out on track, xc, fta, key-club, the sisterhood, history day, horseback riding, football games and self-learning the guitar. So, i just don't do it unless I have to. Just another annoying burden. "

"My daughter recently move form elementary to middle school. The jump in the level of homework is astonishing. Minimum 2 hours/night after school. While she is very bright and able to do it, I can see it taking from her relaxation and play time. It's also keeping her indoors most of the day, which is not great. I do not feel this is a good education. Education needs to nurture your spirit and give you room to grow, not kill it with over work. Leads to good scores for the school but not well-educated students. All for aligning the two. "

"My daughter just started kindergarten this year and we have spent an average of 2 hours per NIGHT on her homework. This isn't the typical worksheet homework that my child is bringing home, no - it's writing full setences out (she can barely write her name!!!) and reading them to me (how can she read when she can barely write her own name?!). Not only that, but I spend a good hour or two myself going through the MANY pages that she is sent home with. Her teacher actually has the nerve to send home her test results saying that she is failing her writing assignments. Well, no shit! She CAN'T write! Other then that, I HAVE sat in on her class (btw it's not mandatory to go to kindergarten in this state, and I might just home school her instead) and the teacher ONLY does fun things with the class. Yesterday, they painted pumpkins. Her homework assignment last night? To write out 15 halloween words on a sheet (amongst the other papers we got to fill out). Are you kidding ! me?! Why am I stuck doing her job for her? It's one thing to be a parent to your child, it's another to be doing the teacher's job for them! "

"I'm a Sophmore in highschool and I arrive at home around 3pm and usually I go to bed at 12, If I'm lucky. I haven't really had that much of a problem with homework until this year. I find that the later I stay up, the harder it is for me to focus the next day, the later I stay up doing homework. I can definently tell that my mental health is going down the drain. It is madness. When will it end? "

"As a sophomore in High School, I average about 4-5 hours of sleep a day. I participate in my school's marching band, which practices 3 hours Tuesday and Thursday, 4 hours Wednesday, and 9 hours Saturday. I take all the honor/AP classes possible and I skipped one year in Math. In school, I constantly feel tired and make stupid mistakes. From my observations, homework seems to give diminishing returns. I found that, sometimes, it would have been more beneficial to me to sleep than to do the hours of mindless homework. By depriving myself of sleep, I feel tired in class. By feeling tired in class, I have a lessened understanding of the material. By having a lessened understanding of the material, I take longer to do my homework. By taking longer to do more homework, I get less sleep. "

"They Say: "One of the surprising findings of their research was that more homework does not correlate with higher test scores. LeTendre notes: "That really flummoxes people because they say, 'Doesn't doing more homework mean getting better scores?' The answer quite simply is no." No is right, I'm a high school student and I do homework from 4:00pm to 12:00pm or later, and it sucks because I don't even have the time to study for tomorrows test, so they are truly correct there. Also, I'm only in 9th grade now and I truly fear what's yet to come... Also every night as most of you say I get about 4 hours of sleep. "

".. they are preparing you for college.. I don't really see a problem with a lot of homework.. If you think what you have is bad now, wait till you are forced to write 8 pages a week with a full bibliography... Kids these days are so dam spoiled. "

"I am a student and i have way to much homework. I dont have a life outside of school because of it. "

"Do like my sophomore US History teacher did......his entire curriculum consisted of reruns of History Channel specials. "

"I am a 7th grade student and I cry almost everyday with anger and frustration when I am up doing homework until 11 or later. I almost don't look forward to the weekends because I don't wouldn't have time to relax on the weekends because I am so backed up in projects due the next week that I just rather get it over with. I am so stressed I almost blow up when ever someone talks to me. If there is one word to describe how I feel is: outraged, extremely stressed, and angry. "

"I go to an IB World School (Middle School) and I can get anywhere in between no homework or up to 5 hours a night. I am not complaining about the work load, I can handle it, but if it were more spread out then it would be great! For example: last night I had no homework and spent my time studying, but tonight I had 4 hours and I am extremely tired. "

"When I found out about this 10-minute Plan, i was shocked. Wait... you mean I could only have 100 minutes of homework a night? In my dreams. At my school, the standered amount of homework is 20 hours a week, usually more for me since I take honors classes. I wake up early so that I can do the morning school news, I go to class, then I have varsity cheerleading practice from 3:30-6:00, then get home and eat dinner, and then finish my homework around midnight. On game nights (which are around twice a week because we cheer for multiple sports), I don't start my homework until around 8:30. To imagine that I could have four hours of homework a week seems impossible. I haven't had an hour of homework a night since... well, since maybe 2nd grade. In middle school I had around 3 hours a night and it just keeps climbing up. I spend more time at my school than I do at my house, and when I'm at my house, I'm most likley doing homework. Yes, my teachers say that it's only around half an! hour of homework per class per night, but that's how long it took THEM to do it. Not us, the students! Even when schools set limits on how much homework we should get, they never seem to realize that we have lives that aren't completly about homework,a nd taht we don't always have a full afternoon to do the homework they want us to do(by the way, I have not had homework due more than one day later since 6th grade. Gone are the days when I could save my 5 page essay for the next night...) "

"I think that kids do have to much homework. My middle schooler started at 4:30 p.m. And finished at 10:00pm. Then he almost fell asleep in class and got bad grades. This has to stop! "

"I agree with most of these people, I am currently in 9th grade and it sucks! These teachers are already giving too much work and i'm not even in honors(i feel bad for the people that are since they get twice as much work) I agree that teachers sometimes dont even correct the work. This one time in 8th grade our history teacher made us do a paper on George Washinton,in his point of view, and we had to do it in a day. We had to include 9 diffrent events, and even though me and my friend worked together to write it It took us 6 HOURS!!! we wrote a 3 page report and were up until 1:00 P.M trying to finish and then we found out since a lot of the students didnt do it she wasnt going to count it. We were so mad. And I also had this teacher that was the worst he never gave an ACTUAl lesson, you know where the teacher tells you to get a book and he reads the chapter and goes over important facts and words and asks if you have questions. All we ever did was watch super boring videos ! like 30 min long and take notes. Like literally. And when we had science fair we started late and he didnt help AT ALL, we had to do everything at home and gather all the supplies ourselves. Teachers suck and give us too much work, and then they complain on how they have too much work to grade!!! ....4 hours a week wow those kids must get almost no homeowrk at alllllll. I take like 3 hours a night and even longer on weekends when we're given more work. Right noe i have to write a page answer for geography, read, annotate, a ven diagram and a reading log for english, answer questions for science, and read and write words for french.Thats alot of homework if you ask me. "

"I'm an honors-level high school student. You state that the average high schooler's homework load in a week is about four hours, which is the average amount of time I spend doing homework every night. I have teachers who have said that the homework they assign one night shouldn't take less then an hour if done properly. It seems as if they don't understand that yes, even if they have 100 students in a class, that each of us has 6 other classes including the numerous other extracurricular activities that are just as important to our futures and our abilities to get into college. They say that the typical high school student only spends an hour or so on homework a day, but who are they looking at when they say typical? Are they talking about "average C" students, or those of us who are more dedicated to our futures? I'd imagine they speak of the average students, since everyone of my honors-level friends spend about four hours on homework a night. I used to love learn, but now I come home with my assignment book filled, and my stomach starts turning. I eat a bit of dinner, some nights go to tennis practice, and then spend the rest of my night (usually until 10:30 PM) doing my homework. I haven't spent time with my mother on a week night since summer vacation. My stress levels are up, and my face looks like the well-deserved name, Pizza face. Some nights I'll sit at my desk with tears welling up, because I hate my homework so much. It's just so hard on some days, to sit down inside and spend the majority of my day in school only to come home and spend another 4 hours on homework. I've considered becoming a slacker because of all the stress. Some days I just can't eat because I am so stressed. If you're going to discuss homework amounts, you NEED to look at the honors students too! "

"i am only in 7th grade. term 4 just started and i already have 6 projects due and 2 tests. im up every night trying to work on them but i hardly get what half of them are about because of lack of details from my teachers. it makes me want to quit school all together but i obviously cant because of the day and age we live in wehere we need to get a education. the stress of it all is depressing and theres still 5 more years after this one. i used to be happy at school, i do great in tests averaging 80-90%. i just dont understand why teachers give you this all and expect you to finish it in under a week. please can someone give me some advise. "

"Yes as the post on 10/6/2011 states the average High School Student gets very little sleep, also ,especially students in Honors & AP, get a lot of work, usually 7th Grade and So on..., But I'm Generally focusing on high schools and college, it's very Obvious that most of us have between 1-3 hours of work, but as for me i tend to have between 3(if I'm Lucky) and 7 hours because I wish to do good in school and focus on my homework being that all of it very much determines my grade, and I don't understand why teachers give so much. I believe that Schools should just give about a 10 - 30 minute exercise for homework in each class, 6 - 8 classes = 180, 210, 240 mins or just make schools last a bit longer and gives us a review of what we learned in each class each day. Also I really disagree with the fact that we have homework on the weekend. It's bad enough we barely get any sleep during the week as well as the weekend, are you kidding me, I actually want to see my mom, talk to m! y friends, go to my father's but no I don't have time for that because I have to prepare 4 presentations due Monday and study for 3 tests, and while speaking of tests during the week I can barely even study for my tests because by time I finish my it 12:00 to 1 A.M (I start it at 4 P.M. not including the time I spend eat dinner being about an hour...). Overall it's Ridiculous and say that I'm stupid and don't understand society but it just doesn't make sense, homework is a form of studying and learning, but do I learn anything, no I'm practically falling asleep half the time because I don't ever get any anymore, so it really should be something that's voluntary, just give us a break because You and I society both know that it's not like this in the real world outside school when you have a good job, like being a doctor, attorney, etc. that you work like students do, Job = 1 Subject, School = More than 5 (at least). So I ask you this world, do you think we have too much hom! ework, because I do, and I feel that you do too. Remember one ! thing also, what does this do to our health - Stress, Injury, Anxiety. As well as our life, because really half our life is spent in school learning things, some pointless, but good to know, yet never going to be used in society. I just we could all step in each others shoes so I could show why it's pretty hard today, in a technological advanced society, as well as how much pressure is on people now. So, one last thing is, if you read this whole entire thing, then nice job, but you and I both know that if we can get homework to just be lessened it would be great, we just need to do something more about it and save our children's childhoods so maybe they will actually have one rather than sitting at a desk or table and doing nothing but work for the rest of their lives because I really would like to see them happy rather than in my lap crying about how hard everything is, so if you are with me then great help me do something about it, but if you're against me than read this ! again and if your still not with me then I'm sorry that you can't understand my concept rather than your own, so overall everyone in a Student's position, good luck my friend because I know it's hard but just what, one day you get to retire, even though that's not for another 50 years and you will be around 70 years old it's probably one of the easy parts of life, besides the bills. Just Good Luck and Be Safe. - That Guy Who Did That Thing That One Time "

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"Everyday, for the past week, I have had homework. I usually start my homework at 4:00, and then finish by 8:00. CUT BACK ON THE HOMEWORK, DISTRICT 200!!!! "

"Students get too much homework each day. According to the homework rule, one should get 10 times his/her grade level of homework. (e.g. a 1st grader should get 10 minutes of homework, and a 9th grader should get 90 minutes of homework. Studies show that one who receives this amount of homework do better than average on tests, but those who receive MORE than the homework rule actually tend to do WORSE. The brain needs 8 hours of sleep in order to completely process all information and remember what is to be remembered. The average student in high school gets less than six hours of sleep. Teachers are forgetting that most kids have 6-7 classes per day, and are getting homework in all of them. Overall, the homework rule needs to be enforced more. "

"I go to a college prep (all girls) boarding school and the amount of homework I get every night is insane. After dinner I spend the rest of the night, even into the morning, doing homework. My teachers forget that I also have 5 other classes and tend to assign at least an hour or 2 of homework every night. In one of my AP classes our teacher told us that we'll be having homework over every single one of the breaks. I think it is absolutely absurd that I will be doing homework on Thanksgiving and Christmas. My fall break is coming up and I've already been assigned about 5 hours of history homework because "we will have 4 days to do it". I never learn anymore. It's purely memorization. I honestly have no time to spend focusing on retaining any sort of information. "

"I don't know where they get 4 hours per week, that's a joke. My son spends 5-8 hours a day on homework during the week and most of his weekend is spent on homework. Forget about joining clubs or sports, there's no time left. Homework, projects and some of it just plain busywork. Last week he had 3 projects due and 5 quizzes in one day. Absolutely ridiculous and he and us , his parents, are totally fried and stressed. He is not enjoying his education as he has no creativity and no free time. He is in 9th grade. I feel sorry for him as he is going to end up disliking the educational system. "

"I am in the 7th grade and I am still up doing my math homework! It's 11:35 pm mind you and my brain feels fried. Today I had homework in all 6 of my classes. Yes I understand that homework will help you retaint he infomatiob however I don't think the teachers understand that after 6 classes the homework load really piles up. Some teachers also expect too much out of their students, I mean sure, the assignment is easy to do and understand. However, it is EXTREMELY time consuming. In my opinion teachers should only give homework when it's something you don't finish in class. Another thing that bothers me is when adults think they work harder than us, I don't see you doing 3-7 hours of work after your shift is over so how would you know. I'm constantly on the verge of tears when it gets late and I still have a boatload of homework. When I had a terrible cold several weeks ago I still went to school and stayed up all night trying to finish the homework. Now if you are a fellow s! tudent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. "

"What I hate about homework is that sometimes we haven't even done it in class. Which means I have to spend ages trying to figure out what the question is asking me before I can even start. Teachers expect you to do it but I need some kind of explanation otherwise I just sit there getting more and more stressed. I just feel tired and suffer from anxiety from the stress it causes me at night and I am always tired the next day. I think I teachers did a better job in lessons there would be no need for homework because the class would understand the subject better. "

"I think that homework is given out too much for college students especially if it shows that they are struggling in the subject even though the teacher can see it they still give too much for people who do not struggle it lots children these days should be out with their friends and getting exercise not being cooped up in their bedroom writing essays and doing homework "

"I am a freshman in high school,and I am seriously outraged by the amount of homework i get each night.. I get home at around 6 on a good night.. (with added extracurricular activities i get home at around 9)then I am smoldered in piles of homework that i struggle to finish for hours upon hours that I do until I burn out and cannot work any longer. Even sometimes I will flop down and try to do my homework, but I will be so exhausted that I'll fall asleep while in the middle of pulling my books out of my backpack! Teachers expect us to do mounds of homework, get a good night sleep, eat well, and then be focused and ready to learn the next day. Well they can maybe get one or the other, but they probably cannot get all.. The amount of homework that I get is affecting my health. I have been sick for a while now and my homework causes stress. I will sometimes get insomnia from it and I will have panic attacks. The amount of homework i have prevents me from doing the things i want! to do like spending time with friends and family, even on the weekends. I have shed many tears over the amount of homework I have. I mean come on.. Why does homework have to control our lives? I am not the only one who feels this way either. I will show up at school only to see a bunch of exhausted, zombie-like students dragging from class to class with bags under their eyes. Whenever I ask my friends how they are doing, they almost always reply with "tired" or "exhausted" or "stressed". I think I am speaking for most overwhelmed students when I say, PLEASE... CUT BACK ON THE HOMEWORK!! "

"No one probably cares, but I am going to write this anyway. This comment is not about me, it is about my friend. She is a very smart girl, and very athletic. Her parents get very angry with her when she brings home lower than a B- (which is hard to maintain because...): She has track and field practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school until 5:30, is in three AP classes, and on Mondays skips half of her English block because she is at swim meet on Mondays and weekends in the morning! AND they expect her to just get things without a lesson! OUTRAGEOUS. "

"I personally think they should really lighten up on the HW. I'm in 8th grade, and today I had 21 questions in Science, and 80 in english. Today was a good day. I rarely have any time to study, and to do anything needed at home. I recently got a cold, and the doctor said I needed rest. I can't get any rest do to school. "

"I have a daughter in the 7th grade at a private school. She has been coming home with at least 3-4 hours of homework a night for last last few years. After having enough, I approached the teachers for a meeting. Rather than them being willing to help, they tried simply to turn the tables and make it look as though my daughter was simply wasting time or daydreaming. I would like to point out the NONE of her teachers have children or have any clue as to what they do to kids by this amount of homework! "

"I agree- 4 hours a week? I get 5 hours EACH NIGHT. And it's all just a ton of mindless bookwork that doesn't teach me anything. "

"Did they seriously say the median is about 4 hours a week? THATS A JOKE! "

"homework is hard :( "

"My Concern is Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade. My Wife and I live very busy lives, and my Little Girl is in Kindergarten, and at that age the homework isn't for the kid, it is for the parent. Why don't these teachers do there jobs, why send it home for us to do. Its just lazy on there part. "

"With some people on here you can tell they actually need homework and are just in the rebellious stage.Quote,"Omg!""Homework SUCKS!" "how unactractive" It's hurting the cause when the very people that are against homework sometimes sound like they need it. Anyway, I'm only in 9th grade, and I have so much homework that I have no time anymore for extracurriculars, sports, vacations, anything. Teenagers need more sleep than hardly anybody, and this homework dilemma is stopping that from happening. Most of us go to school absolutely burned out and leave with hours of busywork that has already caused more than one suicide here. If it's bad enough where it's stressing kids out so much they kill themselves, then there is a problem. A MASSIVE problem. Kids today never have time to be kids. My little sister is in 4th grade and she can barely cope. Homework from individual classes isn't bad, but it piles up from others to become a gargantuan challenge to tackle nightly. School ends at 3:30. It shouldn't invade your entire existence. "

"Ha! The ten minute real is hilarious. I'm in 11th grade, and the first day of school I had 4-5 hours of homework from 3 APS and 2 honor classes, 2 quizzes and 2 quizzes on the second day of school. Summer homework amounted to 20+ hours or so.Even in 10th grade, usually you finish your homework aruond 11-12 at night. I'm probably going to average out 5-7 hours of homework once we get past the first week of school. Then you add on SAT I, SAT II exams, AP exams, after school UN classes, sports, clubs, volunteering...and there you have it. (Most of my classmates do all of that by the way.) I find it funny how some kids complain about 3 or 4 hours of homework. That's nothing. Academic class level homework is significantly easier than AP + honor level homework. In 6th grade, you study To kill a mocking bird, Agatha Christie, etc,and in 7th grade you analyze Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Animal Farm, etc. As a student, I'm glad that my district has one of my state's top honor class! systems. Sure I get frustrated with school, and I hate studying, writing essays and doing 5-8 pages of math, 3-4 pages of history, and labs every night. But in the end, kids who only do an hour or so of homework each night, have a basic level education, and complain why they have failing test scores, will be working for the top tier students in the end. You can see the divide in a single school. The academic people don't care about school and end up in bad colleges or not going to one at all, while in the AP and honor students at my school are winning national + state law, science, math, government, and sports (yes, we do excel at sports) competitions. Also, we do not do more homework than kids in Japan + Taiwan because in addition to homework, a majority of their students take after school classes, etc, and their school system is much more rote and strict than ours, according to news articles and interviews. So don't shun homework all together. I believe it is an essential part of education. You just cannot learn everything in a school day. You just have to learn to be efficient so you can balance homework/studying, clubs/sports, and leisure. - Sorry, I just had to rant on this as a current high school student. "

"My homework usually consists of skimming over the stuff, and logging onto facebook for three hours and forgetting the stuff I have to do. "

"I believe that homework is a waste of time. Yeah it takes kids away from playing video games and going over stuff that they learned that day, but that is all that it does. Teachers assign it to make kids to get into habits of doing work on time with a time limit. What good does that do with kids, make them frustrated with school and make them hate it even more. "

"The Case Against Homework: http://www.parenting.com/article/too-much-homework-bad-for-kids How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It (out this month from Crown) for parents of kids in grade school on up. Their investigation drew on academic research and inter-views with educators, parents, and kids around the country. Kalish spoke to Parenting about their findings: How can too much homework negatively affect kids? They don't have time to just be kids anymore -- they're so bogged down. And since many of the assignments are simply busywork, learning often becomes a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience. Homework overload is also affecting family life -- a lot of kids can't even make it to dinner, and as a result, the only interaction they have with their parents involves arguments about homework. What are signs that your child might be getting too much? If he starts to hate school, like my daughter did, that might be one, as are nightly hysterics over homework. The National Education Association recommends that kids have a total of ten minutes per grade level of homework per night. Anything above that is excessive. The bottom line is that a child will understand a concept better if he has time to work on five problems, rather than struggling to race through 50. What can parents do? First, talk to your child's teacher, with the assumption that he or she wants what's best for your child. Often teachers are unaware of the havoc that homework is causing. If that doesn't work, talk to the principal about your concerns. She may agree and set policy changes in motion. Or, you may need to involve other parents and go to the school board. It may not be simple to stem the tide of homework, but parents around the country are showing it can be done. "

"As a parent, I'm extremely exhausted. My high school daughter is exhausted! We eat, live and drink homework and the educators do not listen and don't care. They have plenty of book sense and no common sense. Children are not robots. You can feed many variations of numbers, problems, equations, etc. to a calculator, and the calculator can solve it in a split second. You simply CANNOT feed all this crap to a child's brain and expect Einstein! If anything, educators say students don't get enough of homework. My daughter is stressed, depressed, sad, frustrated and has mood swings. She does not eat heartily like she did during the summer. We went on a short vacation to a theme park (I was broke but determined that she have a good time) before school started and had a great time! I wanted her to enjoy herself before the madness began! She takes anxiety medications for stress due to all this nonsense. I'm awaiting a call from her doctor as I type this to see if we need to change he! r meds, or try something new, etc. I'm a single parent with only one child, thank goodness, and she only has 2 more years before she graduates high school. I iron her school clothes, etc. because she sure doesn't have time any more! From now until graduation, I'm trying to keep her motivated! Why does it take so much! Students have 6 to 7 classes a day, (mon-fri, unless you have sat school too) 7:30 or 8 am until about 2:30 or 3 pm and then another 4 hours of homework! Complete foolishness. Since teachers obviously don't know how to minimize homework, they need to eliminate it completely! Homework has consumed our lives in a very negative way! If you're reading this, I know it has consumed yours too. I dread the start of school every year and I don't even go to school! We do homework Saturday and Sunday! My daughter is very smart, gets good grades and teachers have always said she is a pleasure to teach. She takes classes for honor students, and she now wants to take regul! ar classes, which is just fine with me. Her aunt agrees too! I! 'm definitely all for it. In this day and age everybody is stressed out. My heart bleeds for my daughter and others like her. I believe in investing in buying tools to help my daughter excel in school, but give me a break! I just bought an expensive TI84 calculator, subscribed (monthly payment) to a tutorial website to help her, etc. Many people still don't have the internet in their home. You know it's not free! That's another monthly bill. I'm still trying to get together some extra dollars to get a color cartridge for our old printer! Had to go to the public library to use the color printer at a dollar a page! Whatever happened to pencil, paper and 2+2! Most families are struggling to simply find a job or to keep the one they have, and provide food and shelter. Older children are babysitting younger siblings after school in the evenings while parents are at work, and they are yelling at their siblings to stop misbehaving while trying to wade through equations, square r! oots, etc. that don't even make a bit of sense to them! Have you ever picked up a school book and looked at it for a long time and just hoped and prayed that something, anything at all, will jump off the pages, and you'll say, "WOW, I finally got it!" Rarely happens! I believe in education and always will. But above all, my daughter's well-being, state of mind, health, etc. is of the utmost importance! I will do everything in my power to keep her motivated and sane (while also trying to keep myself from going crazy) so she can graduate. If she still wants to go to college after all this madness and mayhem, I will support her 100%. To all of you midnight oil burners, just remember, you are certainly not alone! And yes, go ahead and cry, students and parents! Because we do! You will never hear a child say, "I want to get F's and Fail." Why are WE failing our children? "

"Averages at four hours a week? I'm a sophomore and I have 3-4 hours every school night and about 3 hours on the weekends. Which still isn't much compared to what some of my friends have. "

"If I never sleep(due to the ridiculous amounts of homework),then how can teachers expect me to function right the next day?I've been pulling all-nighters since 4th grade and I've had ENOUGH.I am a student in eighth grade.and I believe that if teachers truly want students to learn then THEY need to improve the quality of the lesson,not pile on hours of homework.I have two younger brothers to take care of because my mom works late.I don't have time to put up with school. "

"I think its wrong that kids have so much homework.I'm saying this as an eighth grader: When I stay up all night doing homework I NEVER get enough sleep.So I regularly wake up exhausted.My health has always been poor because of this.I have to spend MY time doing pointless assignments when I should be resting so I can get rid of my sickness.Of course since I don't get sleep I can't pay attention the nexy day,which makes it so much harder.I have multiple headaches every day,and my back stays sore from carrying a heavy bag.Sadly I don't think my health will improve,because I know if I don't even have time to eat when I get home then I definately don't have time to take medicine or relaxing time. "

"I agree my children get WAY to much homework at night and it's expected to be done by the following day...ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? My son just finished 1st grade and by looking at his homework you would think he was in 4th-5th grade. Because the schools expect so much and obviously my son can't do it himself because it's very difficult I have to spend 2-3 hours helping him when I have things to do like cook dinner for the night and clean-up. I get in bed around 2:00am because of this. Not only does my son get irritable and cranky..so do I!!! Ridiculous. I never had homework like this growing up...so NO it was not always like this!!!!!!There are times when I actually get upset with the school and teachers for giving so much homework....we do have lives ya know..it's not all based on staying up until midnight doing homework. Especially because when my son is doing it for hours he no longer is learning because he's so exhausted that's he's not even paying attention!!! Catch a clue! schools....to much is not always a good thing!!! "

"kids r staying up till 12 o'clock at night and it horrible they need to sleep "

"Homework is not about practice, it's about getting it done for a grade. Its not about learning anymore..."

"I am a sixth grader and i absolutly hate homework. Everday I stay up around midnight or pass it just doing homeowrk. i dont even know why we have home work over the week ends while elementary doesnt. Also it is very common for me to have headach and stress once i even found a WHITE HAIR how unaatractive.Also in my backpack there are so many binders, folder and books if not book then a computer.Really teaxhers that give us homework is just making it harder for themselves because then they have to grade it. Ugh so mad once again i ABSOLUTLY HATE HOMEWORK. hope the teachers and school people are reading this "

"I think homework is a necessity to practice what you learn in class. At my school they are trying to prepare us for college by giving us the same work load, but that doesn't work. They also make it mandatory to have two sport seasons, and do art and preforming electives, which can take out of class time. I spend between 4-6 hours on homework at night, or I'm to tired from sports where I can't manage to do any. With this you get really behind, really quickly. During lax season I get home at 7 then have anther 5 hours of homework, so I'm not even getting to sleep until beyond midnight. Then I wake up at 6:15 the next morning. Throw family dinners out the window. No time to walk the dog, clean my room, or do practically anything besides sitting alone studying. Let alone if we have a biology test, we are expected to study for more than 3 hours for the test, and that makes us have to forget about all of the rest of our homework. The other teachers get very upset with biology because we are spending all of our time doing that. I would say that each teacher in high school should give 15-30 minutes of homework. Unlike my school which gives at least 45 minutes a hour and a half."

"omg i freakin HATE homework. i never get time to be with my family, friends or pets. i personally dont think its a necisity, especialy on the weekends. its suposed to be a time to hav fun and relax and not think about school but this weekend i hav like 10 hours of homework and ill be busy all saturday. i hope a teacher is reading this."

"im a 13 years old and i cant stand homework. insteaad of going outside to play or speding time with friends or family i always have to worry about doing some sort of project or wrksheet and ... i HATE it thats alll i have to say for teachers ... how did you fell when you were younger !!!!!!!!!!"

"I agree with the fact that we have too much homework. I'm in the 6th grade and it's not fair! I'm smart, but doing homework doesn't help me understand it any more. I think I should have 20 minutes of homework. I'm stressed out at least once every week because of the pile of homework our teachers assign. I've been up until 11 doing homework, and then doing more of it in the morning and study hall! Not fair. Homework = Stress = Acne!"

"I am a student in middle school, and I do an average of three to four hours of homework a night. I'm only in sixth grade. I don't care what the statistics are in other parts of the country, but my friends and i have all had many a nervous break-down because of the excess amount of homework. It just isn't right. About once a month, I have eight hours of homework and stay up until midnight. Homework is too stressful and the amount given is virtually impossible to complete. Many students in my school (including me) are failing because we are unable to complete our assignments."

"nowadays, middle schoolers have too much homework, homework should be classwork the kids didn't finish in class. not it's own thing."

"im pretty sure that teachers don't realize that students have lives outside of school. they are piling homework as if school was a job. the most freedom people should have is in their younger years, once you get to your 20s or 30s is when your job becomes your life."

"I'm 11 as well and I have sacrificed all of my weekends and spring and winter breaks to work on homework. Last week I had a test on Monday along with 3 hours of homework due the next day and a long project we need to work on. Tuesday was the same except we had 2 tests on Tuesday. On Wednesday we got 2 more projects and 6 hours of homework to do FOR THURSDAY. On Thursday I had 2 projects due and 4 tests!! And on Friday they gave us more homework for Monday!! I go to a school where different teachers teach all of our different core subjects (math, reading, social studies, and science) and they don't communicate at all, they think they're the only ones giving us homework. I've created a poster board project closet because there are too many to store in the house! I've counted and over the past year in 5th grade I've had over 70 projects!"

"i'm 12 and get 1-3 hours of home work each night.i wake up at 7:15 get dressed and all then i'm at school by 8 and studie for half and hour. Then i get home a 4 i do homework till 5:30 ish have dinner at 6 then i finish off any not done home work then i have a shower and 7:30 then free time then i'm in bed at 8:30 if im sleepy which i always am i go to sleep or i can read a book till 9."

"im 11 and we get like 4 hours of homework every day. my brother just came home recently because he lives in oregon and i either have to do homework the whole time he's here or not do my homework. in my opinion, HOMEWORK SUCKS!"

"im 11 and get 5 hours of homework each night! i never even get to spend time with my family. i am actually getting fat because i never have time to go outside. in my opinion... HOMEWORK SUCKS!!!!"

"The amount of homework high schoolers have is ridiculous. I'm in ninth grade and every day I do homework from 3PM to 9PM. It's so stressful!"

"Eh, it really depends. Sometimes, homework is good at enforcing a lesson learned in class. However, it could go over the limit, especially in Algebra, when a teacher gives too many problems that simply don't all need to be done. I'd say that I get about three hours of homework a night, but it doesn't really interfere with my life. However, many times on the weekend, teachers will give a project due on Monday, which gives students like me no time to do anything when I should have my free time from school."

"Too much hw is bad for you! It stresses you out, causes you to be sleep deprived, ruins your mood, harms ur health, causes u to have less time to spend with ur family, gives u no time to play/have fun. Even weekends are frustrating, because with everything u have planned, u still have to do ur 7 hours of hw! We should have no hw, because it's pointless and a waste of time!"

"My son is in kindergarden in a public school and for a week on a Monday he receives a packet of 16 pages of work that has to be completed by that Friday and turned in and he also has to read for 20 minutes a day is that too much homework. I THINK SO!!!!!! "

"Homework can make you mad and you could blow up in rage at your own parents from all the stress."

"I get four hours of homework NIGHT some weeks, and I am in seventh grade. School would be almost fun if there was no homework."

"i hate homework! especially math, its hard because the teacher isn't their to help you. it is also stressful HATE IT!, im in 8th grade btw."

"wow i totaly agree but some times i dont get that much homework sometimes but sometimes i get like 3-5 hours of homework and im in 6th grade"

"I'm in fifth grade, at an all honors school, and I recieve (literally, I'm not joking here) 4-5 hours of homework each night. I usually stay up until 10 or 11 (it varies on different days do to my afterschool schedule) and everyday after school, I have an afterschool acivity that my parents forced me into for 2 hours! My teachers are also somewhat merciless, even if you're a star student, if you forget an assignment, you get marked down to a C, and you get yelled at in front of the whole class. I live in fear of whether somehow I forgot to do something and I'm going to get yelled at. Honestly, I really think we get to much homework."

"I get enough homework that I am up until 2AM doing homework most days. I can't get a job because I wouldn't have time for it, and since I can't earn money I have no idea how I will pay for college. I sometimes get so exhausted I can't concentrate and fall asleep at the desk a lot. Sometime I cry myself to sleep because I can't finish because my brain won't work anymore, or if I do finish I mess up because I can't think. If I have a lot of homework I'll pull all-nighters. I am a runner but I have to skip practice a lot because I won't get to finish my homework even if I literally stay up all night. I have to catch my bus at 6:30 in the morning so I get up at about 5:30 because I have to make and eat breakfast (which kids don't do anymore, but I do) and shower and such."

"I'm in 7th grade and I go to a lutheran school (not a lutheran) but I have tons after tons of HOMEWORK! I feel like I'm going to drown in it! It's gets so bad that I can't ever play with my 3 year old sister (who gets bored a lot) and barely have time to squeeze in chores (take care of pets, load, unload dishwasher, etc.) I believe homework is a waste of time. It doesn't teach me anything it just confuses me! It is a cause of stress and worry! Tip: recent studies show that kids work better listening to music because it blocks all other worries and problems out, helping you focus on homework ONLY! HURRAY for research I hope it excels to the point where schools find a better way to help kids excel in academic subjects."

"I believe that we should replace homework in schools with exercise homework. We make each child do a hour of exercise(run, walk, play a sport, go to the gym, anything that you must stand up to do). The only thing I think you will disagree with is that I think everyone must read more(1 hour) I think this also keep teachers happy. If you disagree please coment why and any solutions you have. Plus to show you have completed the exercise parents must sign a... planner or chart, each month a new one will be handed out. Every day your homebase( I assume you all have one) will check that your parent has signed or a note saying why you were not able to complete your ... 'homework', if there is no note or signature you will get a warning, after the 2nd warning if you do not have signature or note you will get detention, any time after that you do not exercise and have note note you will lose one percent of your physical education grade. If you have a medical condition and have a note! from the doctor you must read 2 hours instead of 1. That is what I am now trying to do in my school and so should you. If you disagree with any of this coment and explain, thank you and good luck completing your homework that you shouldn't have. My idea would also decrease stress."

"Hey, I'm in middle school, the 6th grade and I am in advanced math, and got a 6 page packet on stuff we already know, and HAD to do it for homework. I say we should have no homework just study, because we don't learn anything form the homework, we learn at school, so we don't need homework!"

"I'm in sixth grade and I get at least 3 and a half hours of homework a night. Tonight I have 6 pages of math homework,10 problems on each page then I have a book report and a chapter summary for English and 3 worksheets for science and have to read 5 chapters of a book. All this homework is making me frustrated and annoyed at school."

"no wonder our kids get home from school so stressed. They come home in a bad mood and then they dont want to do it."

"I have a question. Is about 50 questions in English per night too much?"

"first of all, right there with ya. its just hw is so wheighted on your grade that if you miss it all and get 100s on every test your only hope is. 70 at most :/ oh and I'm here because I have a 20 PG chapter summary journal to write plus 50 matrices related math problems all assigned for the weekend. not the worst night I've had but I don't pln on getting much sleep... "

"'Let me give you an example. Most homework in the fourth grade in the U.S. is worksheets. Fill them out, turn them in, maybe the teacher will check them, maybe not. That is a very ineffective use of homework. An effective use of homework would be the teacher sitting down and thinking 'Elizabeth has trouble with number placement, so I'm going to give her seven problems on number placement.' Then the next day the teacher sits down with Elizabeth and she says, 'Was this hard for you? Where did you have difficulty?' Then she gives Elizabeth either more or less material. As you can imagine, that kind of homework rarely happens.' Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be because the teacher hasn't the time to do this every day for every one of her twenty-six or twenty-eight students?"

"I am in the sixth grade and homework today is ridiculous. Last night I had a 2 page book report, 25 hard math problems, a history essay, a drama project, and studying for a science test all due the next day. And it's not like I do things at the last minute either. I think it should be either: cut back on the amount, give more time, or adjust homework to the student's level. If you are doing well in math, you should get less homework than people who are not and you don't get repetitive hours of the same thing, over and over again. We have lives outside of school, you know. Its called a childhood. I go to school for six and a half hours and they expect me to do three more hours of work when I get home? No way. The punishment is strict but I don't care. I've gotten in trouble numerous times for not finishing homework. But two or three hours is just too much. I mean, I am eleven. I have a LIFE TO LIVE."

"Well I'm glad I'm not the only one with extreme amounts of homework. I only just started year 7 about 2 weeks ago and SHEESH, we get WAY too much homework. I get home at about 4.00... I start my homework at 4.30 and only stop for dinner(sometimes I even have to skip dinner because there is not time)and work until 10.30 or 11.00. Even then I'm not even finished... I end up skipping half my homework!!! Then I have to have a quick shower and go straight to bed. I have no time for anything except homework. Also, I catch the bus home and then have to walk home... all the books in my bag have practically broken my back(and made holes in my back pack). Something really needs to be done this much homework is really not fair!!!"

"I usually stay up until 2 or 3 AM doing homework for high school and even then barely finish. For tonight: 1st period I have a 2 page essay, 2nd period I have a huge test to study for, 3rd I have a 3-page essay, 4th I have to do a critical analysis for a film, 5th I have 43 math problems, 6th I have 3 pages of grammar, and 7th I have to copy approx. 20 pages of notes from a textbook. In addition I'm expected to read 3 chapters from one novel and 4 chapters from another. I'm only a freshman. And that's not enough? Do you want my head to blow up?"

"College definitely does not get an easier. Loads and loads of homework and I feel like I pretty much am teaching myself. I agree with the previous poster about why we pay teachers. It's getting out of hand with the amount of assignments. I also am working full time to pay for college and I have a child to raise. It is very stressful. I'd be more than happy to be tested on what I have LEARNED than given mass amounts of homework that I have to pretty much rush through anyway because there is so much."

"I am a 6th grader, and assigned ALOT of homework. My math teacher always freaks about the state assesments, and we always EVERY Friday get homework (large amounts!) because we are 'behind'. But we don't even get GRADED on these assesments, she does! So it upsets me when this happens. We're obviously 'lying' because when it comes to homework, we obviously will do anything to get out of it. WRONG! Give us some credit. Seriously, if you don't even believe us, get out of school business. Cuz you obviously got some problems."

"I think that we should have 3 pages of homework each night and no homework on weekends. "

"college does not get any easier. 2 hours in class 8 hours of home work. Programs such as TRM and TAA and JTPA give people full loads, nothing under 13 credit hours a semiter and want you to pass them all to stay in the promgram. Home burn me out at the age of 54. My grandkids are stressed out , when is it going to stop. What do we pay teachers, and instructors for if we have got to teach ourselves anyway. "

"i am a highschool student and i do about 4-5 hours of home work everyday except for sundays. i belive it is not only the system but the teachers themselves. Most of my teachers assign 5-6 long assignements for their class only and i have 7 classes that's 35-42 assignments every night. the teachers who teach have it in their heads that their class is the most important class in the world thus making them feel that it is a necessity to do closal ammoutnts of homework every night. also alot of times the homework that is assigned is for a completion grade only, meaning that they only chek to make shure you did it and not the quality of work that you did. to me i find it unfair how we as students spend hours working on the homework and they chek it in two minutes. "

"My daughter is in fifth grade and gets about 2 to 3 hours of homework a night. Plus on top of it she needs to read for her book reports. By the time she is done with homework, she is too tired to read. She is in tears most nights. I find that most of the homework that comes home is a waste of time. The teacher also gives extra math packets that need to be done by the end of the quarter on top of all the homework that is due. I end up helping her more than I should because she would never get it all done. This makes her hate school."

"I get 4 hours of sleep on a good night. How could these writers possibly say that we don't do enough homework? I'm at my high school for 7 in the morning to 7 at night doing Crew Practice which will help me get into college. When i come home i eat my dinner as i do my homework and sit at the dining room table as my family watches the Television. I go to bed at maybe 2 or 3 in the morning, long after all the lights have been shut off in my house. How am i expected to get a high GPA, do crew practice every single day of the week (YES, EVERYDAY), and then come home and do 5 hours of Homework?? Some days i don't eat dinner because I'm so stressed, this is quite unhealthy after burning 700 calories on a rowing machine. During the day i have to eat strong mints and drink cold water to stay awake.. By the way, my grades aren't even amazing! All of this work for B+'s?? This gets me wondering.. why even bother with an education if the men on Jackass make millions for acting like idiots? If you can get straight F's but be a rich rapper? If you can win the lottery? The extreme amount of homework we have every week makes me feel suicidal, exhausted and depressed. "

"I was given 12 pieces of homework one day, 9 expected to be in the day after, In england that is well to much, i was given a detention because i couldn't cope with no sleep, i hope someone can act on it... --Brad, age 12 "

"I am not going to complain about how much work I have or how I budget my time efficiently, but instead attempt to explain its consequences. I witness the toll it takes on me and my classmates. Kids express not enthusiasm over learning, it is now a chore. Depression is becoming more and more prevalent at my high school, and in fact my best friend has been hospitalized for cutting and depression out of stress and putting so much effort into work she gets very little meaning out of. It is unfair as students that are options are so limited. If we want to excel in college or after these pressures and hardships are a test of our endurance and pain becomes strength. On a similar note eating disorders have become out of control. Girls all over my school look like corpses as they walk down the hallway. The pressure to be perfect is out of control and I believe it begins with the hyper- focus on achieving academic excellence at such a young age. Grades have become more important than ! curiosity, innovation, and happiness. "

"To Mr. Brian Gill: I am ACTUALLY in high school. Now, I don't know what schools YOU'RE looking at, but in MY school, I am required to do so much homework that for the past few months, I have been doing homework until at least 3 in the morning. In fact, most times, I'll look at the clock and see it's already time to pack up and go to school. Now, if you want to have COLD, HARD FACTS, live the life of a high school student and see our lives, the dark bags under our eyes that we try so desperately to hide. Why do you think girls have so much make-up? It's to hide the dark circles around our eyes and to hide the wrinkles that are already forming on our faces. It's to hide the tear stains on our cheeks and the bloody cuts in our lips as we maul them with our teeth under stress. We don't play videogames, as you adults so ignorantly think. We don't chat on the phone about nail polish, as you adults assume. We Facebook chat about homework. We chat about homework. We can only do home! work. How do you think we're affected by the teachers telling us to 'eat well' and 'get a good night's sleep?' We're struck speechless by the ignorant attitudes of these abusive dictators taht run the classroom, and I am infuriated that you would even consider our homework to be 'not a tremendous amount.' How dare you even begin to justify your data? Do you honestly think the NAEP tests are reliable? Do you honestly think teachers will mudd their OWN names by giving us a 'normal' amount of homework before we have to answer a question on how much homework we did? They would never risk their own necks like that, but you can bet that when the test is over, we're back to a no-sleep-all-work pattern, so before you support the screwed-up bullshit that is homework, do your research."

"Four hours a week? Is that a joke? I am a junior in high school, taking 3 AP classes, and I almost ALWAYS spend more time on homework each day than there are hours in school (7 hrs). I have gone under a lot of stress because of this over the years, sometimes almost crying myself to sleep.... this is just too much. "

"teachers are nuts!! don't they understand that this is a serious case.what they are doing to try and make kids smarter is only working against them when you don't get enough sleep to actually do the homework correctly there is something seriously wrong!! This craziness must stop!! We can not go on like this please! i urge you take action and stand up to your teachers about this!!if enough students complain to the school about this they will have to change or risk getting fired if the teacher will not listen talk to the principle if the principle doesn't listen (which i'm sure he will)you might have to go to the district and then i asure you this craziness will stop!! "

"I am 13 years old and in the 8th grade. I start my homework around 4pm and end around 2 or 3 in the morning. I use my time wisely and my classmates say they are staying up as late as I am as well. I take my WHOLE locker home and I have homework in EVERY class. The latest that I have stayed up doing homework was 4:30 in the morning. I'm always crying because I can never do after school activities, or eat dinner at the dinner table, sleep, or anything! All of this homework is stealing my life from me and there's nothing I can do about it. I feel like I am never going to be able to have my own life. I am controlled by homework. It is actually making my grades worse because of lack of sleep. Teachers need to lighten up A TON. I want my life and rest back. "

"My daughter is in 8th Grade and has to bring her entire locker home every night for homework. Her backpack weighs more than 25 lbs. and sometimes she has to carry books in her hands because there is no more room in her bag. Every night, she and other classmates are up until 2am doing homework. This is not right. It is an outrage. Parents have complained several times, but to no avail. My daughter's bookbag gives her back pains. She has homework in every class. She starts doing her homework at 3-3:30 and ends around 2am. She has also shed many, many tears because of stress and pure exhaustion. Teachers are giving far too much homework. "

"An hour a day? Only in my dreams. Nothing happens in my life except for creative writing (which I love, and have to do in secret), homework and arguments about school and homework. The researchers don't give a d*mn about what happens to us. If anything, the homework policy will rise to four hours of homework a night. Last year I got some form of insomnia from finals, and I was in SIXTH GRADE. Sure, I go to an advanced school, but that gives them no right to take our lives from us."

"I'm 14, I get so much homework I only see my parents at dinner time because I am doing homework the whole time! My entire weekend I spend doing homework."

"I am 16 and I get so much homework that I stopped doing all of it."

"If students already have 7 hours of school a day for 5 days a week then why should we have homework that could possibly last 2 hours a night?"

"I get about 8 hours of homework on a good day (sometimes I might get 12 hours of homework). I always get less than 8 hours of sleep every day (in fact, I average 4 hours of sleep each day). 8 hours school + 8 hours homework + extracurriculars = No free time and barely enough time for me to sleep. OK, homework can be helpful. Math/science problems reinforce concepts. Practice makes perfect. Yet, too much homework deprives students of sleep. Students should never get more than 3 hours of homework per day (about 30 minutes from each class). In fact, I think that homework should be optional if you understand the material well enough to ace the exams. When I was in 8th grade and only averaged 70 minutes of homework per night, I already thought I was getting too much homework. High school... Oh boy... Those AP classes... Whichever idiot said that students are getting just the right amount of homework needs to get better data. If you collect data from a school with a bunch of idiots who don't care about their grades and who probably will never go to college, then of course, your data will reveal that those students hardly have any homework. Get data from 'good' schools that offer the IB program, AP classes, etc. where students actually care about their grades and their future."

"WOW! I am 13, and, although my school handbook says I should only have 60-90 minutes of homework a night, I ussually have about 5 (hours, that is)!!! Schools aren't preparing kids for the world we live in. They are preparing them for a world where relaxation is outlawed, and sleeping is for wimps. It is JUST NOT RIGHT! Assigning page after page of homework on top of three projects per class is stressing me out. I am not sure what the reasoning is behind not allowing children to sleep at night for fear of failing a class if they don't turn in their homework on time. It's madness!"