After hours and hours and hours of doing homework a student starts crying. He hits his head on the wall, knowing that he won’t solve the math problem, knowing that he won’t be able to finish his homework for his other classes the next day. So many students suffer every day from doing homework. Should it be acceptable for students to be experiencing this? No, definitely not. Students in grades K-8 should not be experiencing this, not until high school.
There is no academic benefit to homework in grades K-8. According to Alfie Kohn "… No study has ever demonstrated any academic benefit to assigning homework before children are in high school” (Edutopia). Osiris Contreras from Centennial Middle School said, “I think there shouldn’t be homework. I waste more time doing it, and I don’t see any benefits”. She thinks she is wasting her time on homework.
Homework also negatively affects students’ health. Students get stressed from homework. Their head hurts, they don’t want to hear anything, and they start hitting themselves. Students can actually get sick from homework. No one has gone as far as the American Child Association did in the 1930s when it pinned homework and child labor as leading killers of children who contracted tuberculosis and heart disease (The Washington Post). Students need to play to be healthy. According to Alfie Kohn, play is so important to optimal child development that it has been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child. Homework can affect kids’ health by turning them into “couch potatoes” as they spend more time studying than playing outside. Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers), said “I think a lot of homework is a waste of time. It puts a huge amount of stress particularly on disadvantaged children from disadvantaged homes”.