OPINION: Stop hurting yourself over homework

Kids in college, high school, middle school and even elementary school are given too much homework and it is causing some to get sick or severely stressed. (Nick Nenad/Lariat)

Stop choosing school over your life. People these days, especially teenagers, are picking homework over everything. It seems like every person in high school, college or even middle school can’t ever do anything because they have “too much homework” or they “have to study.”

I am not advocating not doing your homework or not studying, I am just saying chill out, relax and stop acting like if you miss one assignment it is the end of the world. If you have to study—study, but don’t put off a family dinner or your brothers championship football game for one test.

Even more serious then my opinion on homework, are the real health risks that studying all night can cause you.

In an article by CNN, a study was done on 4,300 students from 10 high schools in California, that tried to discover whether doing hours of homework a day was causing people to get sick. Well, the results were horrifying.

The study showed that kids were experiencing high levels of stress and physical health problems from doing too much homework. Is homework worth that?

My brother is a great example. He has school from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., and then he has football practice from 5:30 p.m. until around 8:15 p.m. By the time he has eaten dinner, it is almost 9 o’clock before he can start his homework.

When he finally starts it, he asks everybody how to do it, because he was too tired and out of it during class, because he was up late doing homework the night before. 

He wastes his entire day doing school work and is sleep-deprived most nights. His personality has changed a little bit too and he is often on edge. Is that really how a kid should be living? No, it isn’t.

Another study by CNN showed that families will often fight over homework and kids in first grade—yes first freaking grade, have too much homework.

I think we should do what Elsa-Brandstrom High School in Germany did, which is ban homework. I get that it is “practice”, but if kids really want to succeed, they can study on their own time.

Homework is hurting people, figuratively and literally. Either school needs to be shorter or teachers and administrators need to figure out a way to help kids out, because the current way of doing things is not right.

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