Most high school students spend at least thirty hours a week in school. This seems pretty fair for a that age group, but after adding the average hours of homework for each night, the total hours spent by students on school related issues rose up to forty seven and a half hours of work each day. How much is enough?

Having a lot of homework in one class is one thing, but if you can picture twenty to thirty minutes of work per class, and multiply for seven classes. This amounts to between two and four hours of homework each night. This may not be terrible for people with lots of free time on their hands, but consider someone who does many after school activities/sports. It is not unusual to have practice sessions from right after school, too late into the evening. If this person is exhausted from a full day of school, and practice, the last thing that they would want to do when they get home is to do homework. This also applies to people with part time jobs. It isn’t out of the ordinary for students to work hours as early as 4:00 pm until as late as 10:00 pm. It would be near impossible to finish all of the assigned homework for the day into that one free hour the person might have before their shift begins. The situation does not get any better, because after a long day of work and school, the student would still have to do homework. It is easy to see how hard it is for certain students to get each homework assignment done, especially if it is a long one.

Senior Steve Fummiati says, “I can’t finish all of this work, it’s too much to handle for one night.” Steve is one of the many students who have to deal with the many hours of homework, along with his job, and other activities. Senior Chris Mountain says, “How much is enough? I just want time to cool down when I get home after a long day of school?” Statistics show that the average American high school student receives three and a half hours of homework each night (http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/01/news/la-ol-too-much-homework-20140228).

Students are always telling of how their parents do not approve of their kids carrying such heavy backpacks every day. For the majority of the time, the backpacks are filled with the heavy textbooks that the students have to bring home to do their homework with. Local senior John Bongo says, “My back is just about shot from carrying about five to seven textbooks home each night for all of my homework.” The backpack is not the only physical downside of homework. The lack of sleep also comes into play. Many students at Xavier have had to work late nights at getting homework done, and the late hours staying awake might not be just about time, but it could also be a result of the stress that the student had to go through not knowing how to do one particular assignment. This amount of work clashes with the statistic that shows that only fifteen percent of students get their required amount of sleep each night (https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep). The stress caused by their work and the amount of work in general take their tolls on the average student. Maybe this is why they fall asleep in class sometimes.

Senior Andrew Bishop says, “Having a lot of homework overall seems to be a pain for students, but if the amount of work cannot change, then maybe a bone could be thrown to the students during class time.” It is possibility that, maybe students should be allowed a set time in each class to do each assignment.

Homework doesn’t just concern students, it teachers are also a part of the homework scenario. Spanish teacher Mr. Jaskot says, “Teachers give out homework because working on assignments at home helps the students fully absorb the information that they are being taught in class. Doing homework is a big part of the learning process, and by doing, the student becomes that much more knowledgeable in that subject.” Senior Josh Bouchard says, “As much as I hate doing homework, I know the teachers are only trying to prepare me for the tests and quizzes that we have in class. I know that homework is really meant to help the students, rather than to punish them.”

So, how much homework is enough? Is it when students start losing the necessary amount of sleep they need, or when their grades start to suffer because they cannot finish all of the work, or is it the stress caused by the long hours of doing homework? Or, maybe students should receive more homework to feed the thirst of knowledge that everyone is born with. Maybe in the near future, a compromise can be made that would satisfy both sides of the spectrum.