Editorial Evaluation Essay 1

Editorial Evaluation Essay

Nguyen Khanh Linh

BC301

Carla Weaver
Editorial Evaluation Essay 2

Sandra Levy’s article “Is Too Much Homework Bad for Kids’ Health?” will be analyzed

in this essay. This piece of article published recently has captured the attention of many parents

and their school-aged children. In her article, Sandra Levy’s main regard is to point out to the

reader the excessive amount of homework students received and the negative effect it had on

their social and family life. Levy also gave us specific data to raise people’s awareness that how

too much homework can do and gave us some suggestion to how to tackle this issue.

In the first part of her article, Levy bring up the issue after doing some research and

point out that students are having much more homework than they should have received. The

author also gave specific data in accordance to the standard supported by National Education

Association and the National PTA. According to this standard, the amount of time a student

should be spending on their homework should be 10 minutes per grade level. However, the

conducted research show that kids in early elementary school received about three times the

amount of homework recommended. More than 1,100 family with school aged students from

Rhode Island were surveyed which reveal that first and second graders - students in early years

of education - were tasked with the amount of work exceeding the given standard. Levy also

point out that, excessive amount of homework is also a indirect cause to family stress. She also

briefly state the issue that most family stress resulted indirectly from too much homework are

family with limited education. Expert position about this problem that over homework can be

detrimental to children’s attitude about school, their grades, their self-confidence, their social

skills, and their quality of life are also cited carefully by Levy to support her statement.
Editorial Evaluation Essay 3

Levy subsequently go deeper into how students are negatively affected by over

homework especially High school students. In this part, the main focus of the author is on the

health aspect. High school students who are over burdened with homework experience more

stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance in their lives, and alienation from society.

Data are also collected and based on the survey, more than 70 percent of students said they were

“often or always stressed over schoolwork,” with 56 percent listing homework as a primary

stressor. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor. More than 80

percent of students reported having at least one stress-related symptom, and 44 percent said they

had experienced three or more symptoms. These finding are controversial since it goes directly

against the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good. Levy even go further by

comparing the amount of work student has with that of an adult. Survey found that many

students felt they were being asked to work as hard as adults, and noted that their workload

seemed inappropriate for their development level. They reported having little time for relaxing or

creative activities. Some of them even choose use drug to relieve stress.

Lastly, Levy gave us recommendations on how to tackle this problem but didn’t forget to

cite other expert opinion on how homework should be beneficial and effective. She also shows

us how less homework can improve a student life quality through collected data.

Overall, Levy did a great job in writing this article. She properly raised the problem and

other problem that emerge from it. All specific data are collected to support the topic. Last but

not least, the recommendation to solving this problem are also well done.
Editorial Evaluation Essay 4

References

Levy, Sandra. (2017, April 11), “Is Too Much Homework Bad for Kids' Health?”.

Healthline. Retrieved from: http://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-more-homework-

means-more-stress-031114#1