It’s no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas over workloads? Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework. TikTok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn’t assign it because the “whole premise of homework is flawed.” He says he can’t grade work on “even playing fields” when students’ home environments differ vastly.
“Even students who go home to a peaceful house do they want to spend their time on busywork? Because typically that’s what a lot of homework is, it’s busywork,” he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. “You only get one year to be 7; you only got one year to be 10; you only get one year to be 16, 18.” Mental health experts agree heavy workloads can do more harm than good for students, especially when considering the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework.
Emmy Kang, the mental health counselor at Humantold, says that heavy workloads can be “detrimental” for students and cause a “big impact on their mental, physical, and emotional health.” “More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies,” she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion. Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace, says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.
And for all the distress homework causes, it’s not as helpful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery Treatment Center. “The research shows that there’s a minimal benefit of homework for elementary-age students, that the school work should be contained in the classroom,” he says. For older students, Kang says homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night. “Most students, especially at these high-achieving schools, are doing a minimum of three hours, and it’s taking away time from their friends from their families and extracurricular activities. And these are all essential things for a person’s mental and emotional health.”
Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she’s seen the positive effects of a no-homework policy while working with students abroad. “Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools because that was helping the students to have time off and disconnect from school,” she says.
The answer may not be to eliminate homework but to be more mindful of the type of work students go home with, suggests Kang, a high-school teacher for ten years. “I don’t think (we) should scrap homework; we should scrap meaningless, purposeless, busy work-type homework. That needs to be scrapped entirely,” she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider how long it would take for students to complete assignments.
The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial. Mindfulness surrounding assignments is critical in the context of the last two years. Many students will struggle with mental health issues brought on or worsened by the pandemic, making heavy workloads harder to balance. “COVID was just a disaster regarding the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated,” Kardaras says, pointing to increased cognitive issues and decreased attention spans among students. “School is an anchor for many children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared.”
But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits. “We’ve seen adults struggling to return to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have fewer resources to cope with those transitions than adults,” he explains.
