For many schools, assigning homework to children is an important element of the educational process. Most teachers believe that out-of-class activities help kids deepen their knowledge, practice skills, and develop good study habits. Doubtless, doing homework has many benefits and it makes sense at first blush.
But more often than not, teachers assign too much homework. According to homework statistics, children spend up to 17.5 hours each week on studies out-of-class. School, college, and university students continue spending much time doing their homework to get a good grade which leads to study-life imbalance.
Simply put, having many assignments is a violation of student rights in schools as children don’t have time to spend with their friends and family. What is more, researchers claim that significant student workload affects kids and leads to significant stress. In other words, it’s the first sign of mental health disorders.
Let’s find out why is homework bad for mental health and how can parents and teachers help children prevent the negative consequences of working much on assignments.
Top 5 Reasons Why Homework is Bad for Mental Health
If you want to understand why homework is bad and whether students should have it or not, take a look at the following mental disorders that can be caused in students because of working hard (and much) on completing assignments.
Anxiety
No matter whether you’re a school or university student, it’s more likely you aim for better grades and higher test scores. The youth is often worried about parental approval and their future career, so it’s no wonder they are focused on getting good grades as they are the measure of academic accomplishment. When it comes to homework (especially if you want to become an IT specialist), many people study hard and they face various problems like lack of knowledge, poor time management skills, or bad subject understanding that lead to anxiety. It happens even more often when students face difficulties with biochemistry homework or simply don’t know how to complete their philosophy assignments.
The solution: To prevent anxiety in students, parents and teachers should provide kids with support and mentoring.
Bullying
The concept of bullying in school isn’t new. Doubtless, bullying has life-long negative psychological effects on personality and violates children’s rights. Although children always find reasons to laugh at other peers, there’s no doubt that homework is bad for students who want to get a good grade and improve academic performance. Why? Children treat nerds so badly in college or university, and when A+ students don’t help other peers cheat, it becomes the main reason for bullying.
The solution: It’s important to give students individual home tasks to avoid cheating and therefore bullying.
Burnout
Over the last few years, it has been proved that young people spend much time learning in school: They attend lectures, read books and materials, work on projects, solve geometry problems, and write essays. Doubtless, studies take much time, so learners need to prioritize their activities and they often sacrifice personal life to complete their assignments on a good level. When people are too focused on doing some tasks hard, they lose motivation with time. All in all, it leads to burnout which also prevents them from achieving success.
The solution: It’s important to assign interesting and engaging tasks that boost creativity.
Depression
Researchers claim that home assignments cause depression and 39% of college students feel depressed from time to time. When children can’t achieve their goals, whether they want to get a better grade or receive positive feedback from teachers, they fail to meet their developmental needs or cultivate other critical life skills. All these factors can negatively affect overall well-being and academic performance.
The solution: Parents should know what helps to get motivated to do homework and teachers should master the art of teaching with SCDL.
Stress
For a variety of reasons, modern students spend much time working on out-of-class assignments. Many kids claim that they don’t know how to complete the task on a good level and they don’t have a mentor to reach out to. No matter what type of assignments you work on, whether algebra assignments, business reports, or thesis, it can cause stress if you lack knowledge. As a result, they are stressing out. In fact, 70% of students admit being often or always stressed because of workload, statistics about homework says. It’s no secret that stress negatively affects mental and physical well-being, so it’s highly important to reduce stress levels. In other words, students should get less homework.
The solution: Make sure learners understand the task completely or organize student groups on social media to provide them with support.
In Short
Since homework leads to various mental health problems in students, a logical question appears: Should homework be banned or not? While it’s nearly impossible to prohibit out-of-class activities, parents and teachers should respect school rights and help to work on their homework assignments if needed.
After all, being mentally healthy is the number one goal in raising well-rounded and happy kids. Thus, it’s important to know why homework can be bad and find actionable ways to deal with it.