opinion writing #2

1. write about something that you're passionate about
2. details draw the reader in
3. take your ideas from wherever you can, make connections, watch your construction

story:

Homework

Many students from all around the country are sent home every night with homework that can range from taking up a half an hour to 4 hours of their time. I believe that this is wrong. I don’t go to work every day as a waitress to be sent home and roll silverware and take orders.

We go to school for 8 hours a day just to be sent home with packets and notes to take at home. That’s not how school is supposed to work, in my opinion.

In Finland, students go to school for 5 hours a day and are sent home with minimal homework, where they ranked in 2012 the 6th highest in reading and 12th highest in math on the OECD’s international test, while the US is the in the most homework-intensive countries and students go to school for 8 hours a day, ranked 22nd in reading and 32nd in math. That is so embarrassing.

1 in 4 high school students ages 16 and over have a job. That means right after school, just like me, we walk or drive to work and are usually out until 9 or 10pm. While everyone is getting ready for bed, we are just getting home and starting the hours of homework we were sent home with.

Although, I know there are some teachers and students who say, “they have a choice to have a job or not,” some of us don’t. Some of our paychecks go to rent or a family car, even weekly groceries.

We need the money to support our families and ourselves. Also, taking on the responsibility of having a job is a big deal. It requires maturity and time-management skills.

Becoming an employee of any business requires applications and orientations, even training, which also takes up more of student’s time and stress. Homework also plays into this.

One of the dilemmas I always have at work is to either work more hours because I need the pay or ask to go home earlier because I’m worried about how the later the night becomes, the longer I will be up drawing a political map of Europe, decoding DNA into mRNA or finding the area of the bases on a Trapezoidal Prism.

I can see where homework may be necessary to students who did not finish their work in class, but when everyone student has, why are they doing work outside of class? That makes absolutely no sense to me. We come to school to learn, not to learn at home. There’s a version of that, it’s called online school.