Dear Future President,

I believe that our generation is spending too much time on homework. In the last century, there has been a dramatic increase in homework. Grades starting even as young as kindergarten are receiving homework assignments. In grades 3-12, 45% of students are spending over an hour on homework each night. If we add in the time spent in an extra-curricular activity, we see that there is little time left for family, proper sleep, and meals.

For example, I have a friend that has skating from 5 in the morning until 7:30 in the morning. Then she has school from 8:30 until 3:15 in the afternoon. After, she has track from 3:30 until 5:30. Then she goes back to skating until almost 10 at night. Are you exhausted yet? Do you see any time within that schedule where she can include an hours worth of homework?

Homework can also be very stressful, on both students and teachers! It can be stressful on teachers if they hand out a lot of homework since they also have to correct all of those papers. 88% of students reported having a stress related symptom from homework. 44% of those students reported having 3 to 5 stress related symptoms related to homework. Have you ever tried to teach stressed out teenagers before?

Homework can also cause conflict between kids and their parents. Some parents get worried that they won’t have the mental capacity to help their kids with their homework assignments. Some subjects being taught these days may not have been taught when they were in school. For example, my parents can’t help me with my algebra 1 homework because they were never taught those things school. Fights between families are 200% more likely to occur when their parents have not received a college degree.

So, future president, I would like the amount of homework cut down. I'm not saying homework is bad. It just needs to be reduced. Because if I were the president I sure wouldn’t want the future generations of America to be stressed out and panicking to finish homework assignments, which could lead to cheating. I would want them to be focusing on their futures!

Yours truly,

Emma G