Dear President,

I may be far from voting age, but I still notice a big issue of our school systems in today’s society. Homework in all grades has become way too much for children and young adults to handle. I hope this letter can help change the way things are and prompt teachers to give out less work. This is a problem that affects me on a daily basis and would like to see a change soon.

I started school ten years ago and first attended Apple Pie Ridge elementary school. As soon as I got into the third grade I started to notice a significant increase in the work I had to do outside of school. This took away time from activities with my family, sports outside of school, and leisure time. Ever since then I had to spend way too much time working on school work outside of school. At this age I Usually spend two to three hours each day on homework. I often notice this problem around me when I hear my friends talking about how they're going to finish all of their homework. Especially when we have extracurricular activities after school is over. For instance I run cross country, track, and play basketball. These three sports a year take significant time out of each day. Combining this with homework causes me extra stress that I don’t need.

I’ve looked over some sights and saw the same argument that homework takes their child’s time away from their parents and siblings. Kids who play sports or participate in activities in their school have increasingly less time to do things like spend time at the dinner table, socialize with peers, or get enough sleep. A chart showed that around 40% of high school students spend six or more hours on homework each week. Considering your kid wants to get into a good college and takes honors or AP classes. He or she will definitely spend more time on homework than most other activities. Why should these kids including me spend so much extra time outside of school doing school work?

Some sources even say that homework isn’t beneficial at all. Officials said that homework barely leads to any academic success at all. All it does is deprived teens and children of sleep and leisure. Kids are grinding out six hours a day at school in the first place. The fact that we have to spend another two to three hours outside of school is unreasonable. Students that go to bed around 9:30 or 10:00 o’clock to get their preferred eight hours of sleep get around four hours of leisure time ( considering the two hours of homework given each night). Now take into consideration if you played a sport. I get home at 5:30 each day of the week from cross country practice. Other sites say the average length of a high school practice last two hours. The amount of homework students receive gives them two hours each day to shower, eat, socialize with friends, spend time with family, drive home, watch tv, and do any other activity before they should go to bed and get their eight hours of sleep. A valuable source (cnn) even has a say on the issue. They stated that “first graders have three times as much homework than there suppose to.”(Kelly Wallace). At that young of an age they already have an ridiculous amount of homework. Imagine how much we high school students have because the levels of homework only goes up as you advance grades.

Now President of the United States you know that is too little time each week to complete each of those task. We can’t have kids not communicating with their own family and friends. It’s crazy to think that just to get a good grade for a good education in the future, which grants us a good job, that we have to take away time from our families. A couple months ago I can recall my little sister saying that she misses me because I don’t have time to spend with her or anyone else. It’s your job to let these teachers know that we have a life outside of school and we don’t have time for extra work. You don’t want future parents being used to not spending time with their own family do you? It’s up to you to make sure these levels of homework decrease as soon as possible and that we can live stress free.

Sincerely, Kevin K

Sources

By Addressing Homework Problems Early, You Prevent Them from Mushrooming. "Stop Homework Struggles." Scholastic.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2016.

"Infobase Learning - Login." Infobase Learning - Login. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.

Wallace, Kelly. "Kids Have Three times Too Much Homework, Study Finds."CNN. Cable News Network, 12 Aug. 2015. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.