School all day for seven hours. Sports practices or club meetings after school. Dinner with the family, then finally time for homework.
If you’re lucky, you can go to bed before midnight. If you’re not, you choose between a few hours of sleep or finishing your homework.
Homework is reasonable if it doesn’t take too long, but now, it’s just too time consuming.
According to USA Today, 27 percent of teens across the United States said they feel “extreme stress” during the school year. This level of stress, if not managed correctly, puts students at risk for mental and physical illnesses.
According to The Learning Network, homework doesn’t even improve school performance. Students’ nightly piles of homework are leading nowhere. All it’s doing is burning out students before they’ve even graduated high school.
They are turning to drastic measures to get good grades — some have gone as far as drug use. The drug Adderall is being illegally used more and more as a study drug because it makes it easier to focus.
According to Behavioral Health, in 2005, 6.9 percent of college students said they use the drug, or similar drugs, without a prescription.
The drug can keep students up all night, which sounds like a downside, but that’s actually a big reason why they take Adderall.
Students resorting to drugs to get by in school demonstrates a problem.
Change must happen before students’ stress levels rise any higher.