Luke Schroeder Source 2

Documentation

For this journal what I am wondering is, what comes from the stress of the student? Could stress determine the quality of students work, is stress linked to the large broad band homework amounts?

Works Cited

Galloway, Mollie. "Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework." Stanford University. N.p., 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

Goldberg, Joseph, MD. "The Effects of Stress on Your Body." WebMD. WebMD, 24 June 2014. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

Exploration

Part 1

A Stanford researcher found that students who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, and separation from people and society. It was concluded that perhaps more than two hours of homework a night may just be counterproductive.

Some keys points were that

·         * Too much homework can negatively affect kids

·        * Students in schools today average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

·         *56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress.

·        * Reductions in health, specifically sleep deprivation, headaches, exhaustion, and weight loss were some factors many students believed were in correlation with the amount of homework they received and the stress it put on them.

·         *By spending too much time on homework meant that students were not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills, according to the researchers.

Part 2

The first point that I want to bring up is about the students who were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills.” This to me is very important. My dad gave me some advice that I try really hard to stick by—make school a job. Work really hard from 9 until 5. Study and read and do homework during your classes. Take a break here and there, sure, but don’t forget the job at hand. Then when your studies are complete, relax. Take that time to rejuvenate, pause. How can it be fair that someone who goes from a set agenda in High School have all of life be thrown at him? Yes that’s a problem that everyone who has ever gone to college has dealt with. But the key difference between my generation and the graduation class from say 10 years ago is the massive spike in homework. Everyone talks about how College is supposed to be stressful and that parts of high school should be stressful as students prepare to go to college. But what the heck?! Why should students go into middle school or those who are entering any new level of school, i.e. middle school to high school or high school to college, have to endure the hell that a senior of the school should endure? People are forced, due to the loads of homework poured upon them, to give up their fun, their time to mingle. This is wrong. We have warped our minds into thinking all work and no play is good for us. No! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. People have to know that! That line is so true! The overkill of class work and homework may be too much for a student to endure that the homework may be the true reason for failure. Not the lack of studying but the overkill of studying.

Pope's study found that too much homework is is connected with the growing stress that they endure. The study showed that nearly 56% of the students considered homework the reason for their stress while 43% viewed tests as a the reason for their stress. All of this is linked. Mom always said that if you had a paper or a test in a few days that that counted as homework. Now being older I absolutely believe it especially when looking at the ridiculousness of papers that I get in this class alone.  **Side note, I hear two other English 1000 have only written one paper since class started. They could be lying, but who knows** I see that I cannot but point that stress is most certainly correlated with homework and homework performance. Yes, teachers and administration may think that the lack of homework completion is because the student was lazy or what not. But I believe, and as the surveys have shown, that homework itself—the fact that so much is assigned, has caused great depreciation from homework completion and its understanding. Now, yes, these are student surveys so the self-reporting method that has gauged the student concerns about homework may view this as a simple opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining,” but I don’t think so. I see it all around. Students talk about what is stressing them out and it’s usually related to school and the huge amounts of homework they have to do.

According to WebMD, “stress becomes negative when a person faces continuous challenges without relief or relaxation between challenges.” If that continues without relief, it can lead to a condition which can lead to physical symptoms including headaches, upset stomach, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, and problems sleeping. This is called distress. Curiously enough, stress can bring upon more stress if not controlled and it can bring on or worsen other symptoms or diseases. This is some pretty crazy stuff. I think if teachers looked at what it can do to the students and they truly cared about those that they taught, they may begin to at least consider how homework may play out with the growing student-stress problem we face.

Part 3

The source for today brings up a point relating to journal 1. As I asked in Journal 1, if a middle school “major” or a “student study emphasis” could be a way to inspire students to better grasp material more so than large sums of homework, I must think I was indirectly wondering if this would solve the stress problem we students face. I do believe that a “middle school major” would solve a lot of stress. I do believe it could better inspire young students to learn and learn more than a fine stretch of different subjects due to less stress on just getting points or trying to maintain their grade rather than delving deeper into understanding. It is in direct correlation. Like one foot and the other for balance. Stress and frequency is the whole point of my paper, my exploration. I ask, does frequency of homework and stress drive the quality of students work? Yes I believe it does. Stress comes from the amount of work needed to be done and I believe that frequency of homework especially as there is more of it causes greater stress the more homework is assigned.

Part 4

                 I guess this leads me to ask, where has the increase in homework load come from? What has caused the need to study more and why is this found to better improve our society’s education? I know how stress plays a part in society, especially to the student, and I know that our current style of education and homework is failing. So my next direction is to learn about the history of homework. Many people scoff at history but history has all the answers because, quite frankly, something like this has happened before…somewhere, and I need, no, we need to find out where so that we can learn from it.