Homework should be banned or at least shortened.

Everyone has experienced it. It is the ruiner of plans and the father of boredom. When a student first walks into a classroom in the morning, he"s happy to be there and see his friends. Yet, when the final bell tolls, to go home, the student has his face down. What causes a student to feel as if he is walking to prison after school? The reason is one word - homework. Every student is always on a personal daydream, wondering and remembering what homework they have, how much time will they complete it in, and if they will have any free time. This shouldn"t be the case. After school, a student should transform into a kid, and continue living their innocent lives. It seems that kids have lost their innocence since they first started school and suddenly of had become grown up men, ready for work. These kids don"t need to become adults yet, and have tensions flowing all around them. It is like the childhoods of kids are being thrown away. With all these tensions of homework in mind, studies have proven that kid can suffer from mental distress, and with that problem lie many more severe problems provided by homework. Having homework banned for schools or at least shortened should be a major priority and taken into consideration as soon as possible! Along with the students, their parents probably know that their child is going crazy with homework. Even those parents have complained, but their thoughts haven"t been considered yet. Along with the practice it provides, there are tons of down sides on homework. One of them include the cause of mental distress and physical problems. When a student is under mental distress, he or she undergoes various inner emotions that may cause problems by the way they think, feel, or behave. Also, they might feel physical depression. After doing research, Pope, a researcher and college lecturer, and her colleague had found that out that homework is really harmful and can cause severe forms of depression. "excess homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive" (http://www.healthline.com...). This is a very major issue that must be noted down and considered amongst teachers. Sometimes, there are points in your life when your mind goes blank and doesn"t know how to respond. There is a very good explanation for those happenings. Right before a test, a student feels very nervous, which is a result of anxiety. Sometimes, when a student has too much anxiety, they might have a feeling that they are going to pass out or throw up. They might have a stomachache or a headache. Studies have proven that these high levels of anxiety are caused by no other, but too much stress! "All anxiety is a reaction to anticipating something stressful. Like other anxiety reactions, test anxiety affects the body and the mind" (http://kidshealth.org...). There are many causes stress, including homework. When there are plethora amounts of homework, a student seems to feel tensed and stressful causing high levels of anxiety. Anxiety can lead to something as small as the mind going blank to something very severe like passing out. Another issue caused by homework includes physical problems. The physical problems are very severe and cause many issues as well. "Students who did more hours of homework experienced greater behavioral engagement in school, but they also experienced also more academic stress, physical health problems, and lack of balance in their lives" (http://www.healthline.com...). It has been proven that homework has provided students with many symptoms that have major effects on students" daily lives. "Research showed that excessive homework is associated with high stress levels, physical health problems and lack of balance in children's lives; 56% of the students in the study cited homework as a primary stressor in their lives" (http://www.cnn.com...). The average time of homework for students is 3 hours, but that is not the case for everyone. Sometimes, the homework time can extend to over 5 hours. This is extremely harmful to a kid considering that their hours of homework might increase as they go into higher grades. Along with mental distress and physical problems, a child might undergo emotional issues as well. With the emotional issues, there can be a critical impact on a student"s life which can cause an encounterance at the parent"s tension point. Being a middle schooler, my homework time can reach 4-5 hours, which is way past the time limit of an average middle schooler. "In high school, nothing over two hours. In middle school, no more than 90 minutes" (http://www.cnn.com...). Homework is huge issue mainly because of the stress that it presents to people. Stress is sometimes minor and doesn"t do much damage to a person, but other times stress is very impactful on a person"s life and can cause loads of problems. "But when stress becomes overwhelming, it can damage your health, mood, relationships, and quality of life" (http://www.helpguide.org...). These large amounts of homework can harass a person with tremendous effects in their minds, giving them constant headaches. We don"t want this happening our younger generations. Instead, we want them to live a stress-free life, but that cannot happen unless some action is taken against homework. Also, with stress building up gradually, student"s test scores can drop rapidly. Homework is meant to give practice to a child and help them understand and get familiar with topics so that they can succeed in learning, but it is doing the opposite. "According to Richard Walker, an educational psychologist at Sydney University, data shows that in countries where more time is spent on homework, students score lower on a standardized test called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA" This type of remedial homework tends to produce marginally lower test scores compared with children who are not given the work" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com...). At first in 1095, when the idea of homework was first innovated, the time that homework took was nowhere near how much homework that teachers give today. Therefore, there was no stress and homework was actually helpful, unlike what we have in the United States today. The homework that is given should have a reason. Most of the homework that is given these days is pointless because kids already do so much work at school, and I am sure that they understand what they are learning. If you ask any kid if they like school and if no, then why, their answer is going to be the same - No and Homework. "It"s likely that most students would agree that homework is one of the biggest downfalls to going to school" (http://neomam.com...). The main reason is because homework is pointless and is just given by teachers because it is mandatory. This pointless homework wastes students" time and after, they aren"t able to spend time with their family. It isn"t just a coincidence that some of the smartest countries aren"t given homework. For instance, Finland is given no homework, giving kids more time to play and study at home. Therefore, when they enter school, they will be fresh and pass their tests with flying results since they will have more time to study than to waste their time on pointless homework. Also, in Finland, teachers give 75 minutes of recess and make sure that kids are relaxed and have enough fun, leading them to stress-free lives. The people in Finland are on the same page as their students (no homework + more fun = less stress = better test grades) and so, their students are passing their tests with amazing grades. In Finland, the people are also much smarter because of this minor change. "In Canada, the high school graduation rate is around 78 per cent and in America it comes in at around 75 per cent. Now, consider the fact that the graduation rate for students in Finland comes in at 93 per cent " showing a massive comparison between the countries. Finland also happens to have the high