End of the week has reached end of the line

Remember the good old days, when there was no homework on the weekends?

The weekend was the time to have fun, to relax, to catch up on sleep. It was the time to spend with family and friends. We could work hard all week, knowing that we would have some peace and quiet over the weekend to wind down.

Students and teachers, pay attention, in the wake of last year’s switch to block scheduling something horrible has happened.

We have lost that which is most beautiful and dear – our weekend.

Why? It is because teachers give us too much homework due Monday.

The student body is calling for a change. We need changes in the current Monday schedule or we need to decrease the weekend workloads.

While complaints about homework are common, this is different.

Some teachers agree. Here’s what one of our most respected teachers, Elisabeth Klein said, “The whole homework setup is the reason I am against the block [...] Too much homework is due on Monday to go over it.”

This weekend work also causes stress, prevents us from making up sleep, and halts relaxation.

The overwhelming pressure and volume of work encourages cheating. Cheating has become routine for many students, and copying is not seen as wrong, but as a way to go to sleep before midnight. The quality of work decreases because assignments are rushed.

Now, we have twice the work assigned each day in class, but half as many classes each day (assuming a person has six classes), so it all should even out. That is the logic of the block. Too bad our Monday schedule completely defeats this logic in every way shape and form.

In the days before block, we had normal, one-day assignments due Monday. But now over the weekend, we not only have our Block A homework, but also our Block B homework. All assignments are due Monday, when we have all our classes. That is not twice the work, and half the classes; that is twice the work, and ALL the classes. Can’t you see the problem?

And as if that wasn’t enough, teachers feel obligated to give us extra work over the weekend because we “have more time,” or because we “have to make up for time lost through the block.”

If this hasn’t blown your mind already, consider that many teachers have also decided that Monday is a good day to schedule tests and quizzes.

Besides claiming that the short period is a good length for a test, teachers also tell us that “we have the weekend to study.”

But the misconception is that we do not actually have “the weekend to study,” because we have so much other work to do. This is even worse when we have more than one Monday test. It is a choice between two evils: a pile of tests, or a mountain of homework.

Very often, we get both.