Does this situation sound familiar? Your parents tell you to go to bed because it is eleven o’clock at night. You tell them you are unable because you are still doing your homework. Homework is supposed to review, but homework instead it makes it worst for middle school students. Homework interferes with after school activities, pulls students grades down, and middle school students do not get enough sleep. Homework should be optional for middle school students.

Some may argue here that homework is effective and does help students get better of what they are doing in school. People are also aware that educators are trying to make homework more meaningful, nevertheless homework takes students’ hours to complete when it’s suppose to take two hours for all six subjects in school. Mr. Larsen stated “Between World Language, Social Studies, Science, Math, and English homework must take two hours at the maximum.” Also daily homework must take two hours, but what about projects and studying. If homework takes forever than students don’t care if it is meaningful. Even if homework is meaningful, most students considered it as busy work.

Middle School is the time people try to find out their likes and dislikes. To do this they do after school activities. Although homework may take two hours to complete, students are incapable to complete their homework in two hours because of afterschool activities. Did you know that 49.1% of students in the grades of sixth through eighth grades do after school activities? That is almost half of the amount of students.
If homework were optional, then students could do the homework they thought they needed to complete. Students could balance how much homework they could complete with their activities.

Have you ever thought how much of homework is worth of your grade? Homework is worth a lot more than most students think. In Mrs. Christiano’s Math class homework is worth 24.9% of their grade. That might seem like a lot, but each marking period is about 46 school days. That means that there are 46 homework assignments and if someone only completes 23 homework students fail homework. If homework were optional students would not have to see their grade drop for no suitable reason. Should homework pull our grades down so drastically?

Although afterschool activities and grade dropping has been affected by homework, sleep has been the most affected. Sleep means a condition of body and mind such as that which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive. Sleep is mandatory for the growing of teens. The body of a teenager needs about eight and half to nine and quarter hours of sleep a night. Only 15% of teens get enough sleep in America and most of the reasons on not getting the right amount of sleep is homework. Homework is making teenager students go without sleep. If homework were optional sleeping would not be as a big deal because students could get plenty of sleep.

As you have observed middle school students need optional homework. Students need homework to be optional because homework has become just-to-get-done work. Teen’s students do not need homework because it is a huge part of the grade. Teens need a good night sleep. Now, some might ask how the homework being optional work would. Well, a teacher says that here is homework if anyone wants the extra practice take it. The next day anyone who completed the work gets an answer key. This does not include projects and studying for quiz and/or tests being optional. Homework’s original purpose was to be done every night, but we are not restricted to the original idea. If we stayed at the original idea of everything we would have the original 1900 car or the original computer. The world is always changing, hopefully improving. Why not make the next about the policy of homework. Now let see how the situation in the beginning changes with the optional homework policy. You tell your parents goodnight at nine o’clock. Your parents ask you why you are going to bed so early. You tell them that because of the new homework being optional policy you can go to your afterschool activities not see your grade drop because of homework, and you can get plenty of sleep. We can all agree this situation sound a lot better than the first.