Students have too much Homework in Schools

Students Today have too much Homework

Students today are being overwhelmed by homework. Homework used to be an activity for review with the occasional project, but now it has just become busy work that drills information into a student's mind. This may help kids remember certain formulas in math or rules in literature, but it doesn't help them fully understand it. It is subtracting time from a student's day and adding stress to a student's life.

According to an article by Tim Herloff in a "Time For Kids Magazine", students ranging from eleven to thirteen years old got about two hours of homework a week in 1981. By 1997 that time almost doubled to three hours and forty minutes per week, and in 1999 its about five hours of weekly homework. However, according to a poll of public teachers in the article, "About 3.5 hours of homework a day for high schoolers? That's to much" by Karin Klein, high school students get about seventeen hours of homework each week and three and a half hours of homework each day.

These statistics show two things, one students now get to much homework, and two, the rate at which this homework level increased was exponential. Students get a lot more homework than their parents did, even if I am comparing middle school homework to middle school homework levels, the difference is still enormous.  Also, keep in mind that this was only about 33 years ago. This means if students get about three and a half hours of homework a day, that is more than their parents got in a week on average. Also, if you include the homework, students in high school work about one and a half hours longer, on average, than an adult working as a full time employee.

However, is important, and a study from the article by Tim Herloff states that students who do just fifteen minutes of homework score 65% better than kids who don't do any homework. On the contrary, many parents interviewed in Tim Herloff's article state that their children often seem stressed about their levels of homework, sometimes to the point of being sick. 

Homework is important, and will never go away, but there should be less of it. When students are becoming ill due to the stress caused by large amounts of homework, the homework levels need to drop. Part of being a kid is being social and having fun, but when all of their time is spent doing homework, students can't enjoy their childhood as much.

Biases in the workplace

          In the article "NYTimes: Exposing Hidden Biases at Google to Improve Diversity"  the topic is about how biased a workplace, like Google, is. However, Google has realized this fact and is beginning to work towards a solution. It is shown by statistics in the article that most technologically based workplaces are 60%, or more, male, and only 40%, or less, female. This problem will take years to solve, as explained in the article, but can have fantastic results. For example, it is scientifically proven that a more diverse office or workplace will be more creative than a office dominated by a single race or sex. This links with racial bias because sexism and racism are based on similar beliefs, discrimination and prejudice, but are about two different things, race and sex.
       
          Racial and sexual discrimination have been a problem for thousands of years, from the first civilizations to now. However, now we are trying to change our ways and become as equal as possible, even if the change may be slow. It is clear that Google as well as other companies and workplaces are trying to develop a more equal environment for both men and women of all races, but their adjustment will take time. However, there is no need to be disappointing in how slow things are moving forward, because even if it is slow, it shows in everyday life. For example, today about 40% of the employees at Google are women, but about 100 to 200 years ago the number only about 10% of women or less worked for large companies like Google. Not to mention the fact that women probably had very few high ranked jobs, but now it is not uncommon for a woman to be a manager, a boss, or another high ranking employee.
       
          Again, the key to success when it comes to almost anything is time. Most illnesses are cured with time, many of the greatest ideas took time to develop, as well as the best books of all time. The point is, equal rights for all people are just as great if not better than the things listed above, so even if these rights take 10 years, 100 years, or even 1000 years to take full effect, the results will be revolutionary. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are perfectly equal rights that are accepted by the majority, if not all, of people.