Homework: we need fewer distractions

In recent studies of the relationship between homework and anxiety, Stanford University education scholar, Denise Pope, found that too much homework leads to an increase in stress, physical health problems, and a deprivation of human contact.  However if students didn’t have the distractions that they do, they would have an easier time balancing their homework load, thus eliminating the stress caused by too much work.For many students, managing their time while doing homework or studying is a constant struggle due to the temptations of technology and social media.  Almost 90 percent of high school students have admitted that they use their phones during homework whether it’s for texting, snapchatting, listening to music or another form of social media.  Thus prolonging the time they’re spending on homework and studying.In another study, researchers found that students who text while studying receive lower test scores than those who don’t, supporting the idea that multitasking while doing homework or studying negatively affects a student's ability to complete an assignment and retain its information.  In addition, they also found that students who did not text while studying could remember the information better than those who were.  Further backing the idea that as temptations distract students, it can decrease the amount of time they have to spend doing their homework efficiently and increase their probability of becoming stressed out due to the lack of time they have left to finish their assignments.At Samo, according to the binder reminder, teachers are only allowed to assign 30 minutes of homework per class per night.  Which to most students seems like too much because on average they would spending three hours doing homework each night.  However, homework has been proven to help students achieve higher test scores and improve study habits.  In 35 separate studies on the link between homework and achievement, 77 percent of people found that homework positively affects achievement in school. Furthermore, students with good study habits tend to score higher on tests at the end of long units, reinforcing the idea that if students focus more on their educational assignments, they will do better in school, and get things done more efficiently. Thus leaving them more time to finish assignments, decreasing the amount of stress students feel while cramming.Where 30 minutes may still seem like a lot, if you subtract the distractions most students have, they are more likely to do better in school and feel less stress while trying to complete their assignments. While eliminating the new technology continuously being invented is somewhat unrealistic, if students found a good system for doing homework that worked with their busy schedules, the rate of stress in students would go down and the need for less homework would become irrelevant.