Emily Granberg, Julia Rodinec, Ben Ramirez

10/15/2019

Block 1

Should Schools have Homework

We the students of Mater Dei firmly believe that homework should be lessened or

removed because we have suffered greatly in our loss of sleep, our loss of mental wellbeing, and

our loss of free time.

As high school students, we have the right to a proper amount of sleep, happiness, and

time to connect with other people. These are the rights entitled to each and every student. The

tyranny of Mater Dei has infringed on these rights. We stand firm that we hold the right to

overthrow the administration of Mater Dei Catholic High School.

As a community of sleep deprived persons, we believe that we hold the right, nay, the

obligation to overthrow the tyranny of Mater Dei. Us students are collectively having an average

of five to six hours of sleep each night due to the enormous load of homework, as opposed to the

recommended eight hours of sleep for teens. We refuse to accept the partway solutions to our

outcries. An extra hour of sleep on Friday alone will not satisfy our grievances! Many schools

have made the switch to lesser or no homework to improve students sleep schedules and they

have found that there has been no change in their standardized testing scores.

At one school in San Francisco the teachers decided that homework should be

meaningful and not time consuming. They also established that homework should not be given

over a weekend or break. From this they learned that the students were less stressed and able to

improve their participation due to sleeping the allotted amount of hours. We must follow in their

example for the welfare of the students.

 In schools around the nation, the amount of hours of homework and schooling that

elementary students have to do in a given day can be greater than the time that adult work each

day. Due to the immense workload of young students, many teachers have implemented the idea

of a ten-minute rule. The ten-minute rule is where each grade adds on ten minutes of homework,

from ten minutes for first grade up to two hours for High Schoolers. This rule allows for students

to still grow in their education while allowing students to have time to spend with family or do

extracurriculars.

Students throughout our school have lost the ability to enjoy fresh air, sports, and family

time. Many students cannot begin to count the times that they skip out on outings because they

had to do homework or study. This is often the case for many students, even after school they

have to come home and work well past midnight to complete homework, that has been proven

not to help academically.

Therefore, we student body demand sleep! We have proven the injustice of the

administration. If our demands are not met, you may expect that we will retaliate in turn. We

demand these God given rights. We firmly decree that, for the sake of our generation and the

generations of the future, we hold the rights to protest and protect our rights. Should any of our

grievances be ignored, we maintain the power to declare war on the administration.