High school is supposed to be the last four years when students can truly be kids, the years are meant to be fun and lighthearted before the stress of post high school life and adulting comes into the equation.
Teachers encourage students to go out, have fun and live their lives, but every year it gets increasingly harder to do so.
Students today go to school for seven and a half hours a day, maybe more, then go home to continue their education with an average of 2.7 to 3.1 hours of homework each night, according to an article by Standford Graduate School of Education. Additionally, many students today are also student-athletes or are involved with extracurricular activities that meet after school multiple times a week.
Those who are taking harder classes like Honors or Advanced Placement classes are looking at an hour of homework for each class they are taking at that level. That can be up to three to four hours of just core class homework a night.
Athletes in Omaha Public Schools practice for about two hours after school each day, meaning they don’t leave their respective sports’ practice until 5:30 each night. If they were to start their homework for that night the minute, they got home they still would not be done until around 8 p.m. each night.
For 63% of high school students, they plan on seeking a post-high school education, more and more of those are in a rat race to get into the top schools. According to an analysis from Spark Admissions, 26 out of the top 50 universities in the United States have seen their admissions rates fall anywhere from 3.2% to 40% from 2019 to 2022.
Because of this, students are starting to take more challenging classes and loading their extracurricular activities to become more appealing to these schools. At the end of the day the reality is you are getting a similar education no matter where you go and coming out of it with a degree. It boils down to the connections you are making.
This college admissions rat race is starting to take a toll on many students. In an article from KVC Health Systems, academic stress can reduce motivation, restrict academic achievement and negatively affect mental health, with feelings of decreased well-being, and an increased likelihood of developing anxiety or depression.
At the end of the day, this leaves little time during the week to engage with friends outside of school and truly have the fun that high school is supposed to be.
It forces students to stay at home to do their homework in order to maintain the grades they desire. The opposite of what the high school experience is supposed to be, full of football games, friends, and enjoying the time you have left as a kid.
While there is an understanding that there is a set amount of curriculum that teachers need to get through each year, we need to get more time back as students. It seems as if in the last several years it has been harder for teachers to get through the curriculum. It has even gotten to a point where in some classes like AP Biology, students are required to self-teach units before coming to school in the fall.
We need to find a way to get through the same amount of curriculum while decreasing the homework load so that students who are in sports and extracurricular activities can still have a social life especially when this is students’ “last ride” before adulthood truly starts.
