All students will say that they would be happier if they did not have to do homework everyday after school. But is laziness the only reason? What are the effects of giving a student too much homework each night? Besides the most common academic effect of a better understanding of the material, which is not always the case. Nonacademic effects of too much homework can have detrimental physical, mental, and social impacts on a student. I read a study done about the subject that shows the nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools.

The authors Mollie Galloway, Lewis & Clark College’s Graduate School of Education and Counseling, Jerusha Conner, Villanova University, and Denise Pope, Stanford University, used data from online and paper surveys of 4,317 students at 10 high-performing high schools in communities with a median household income of more than $90,000 per year. The researchers found that the more homework given, students are more inclined to “stress, physical distress, inability to find time for friends and family, and likelihood of dropping one or more activities.” The study also notes that beyond two hours of homework a night may have “detrimental achievement effects.”

I read an article that explains alternate methods to after-school learning.  These methods can replace the normal way we do homework. Spaced repetition is one example of the kind of evidence-based technique that researchers have found has a positive impact on students’ learning.  Spaced repetition works by giving smaller doses of information from various topics throughout the semester, instead of learning one topic at a time. The example the article used was in a history course. Students were given questions on readings about the Civil War and Reconstruction in brief sessions spread out over a longer period of time. Researchers from the University of California-San Diego in 2007 reported, “With this approach, students would be re-exposed to information about the Civil War and Reconstruction in their homework a number of times during the semester. Eighth grade history students who tried a spaced approach to learning had nearly double the retention rate of students who studied the same material in a consolidated unit.”

In 2010, a study published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology asked fourth-graders to work on solving four types of math problems, and then to take a test evaluating how well the had learned. “The scores of those whose practice problems were mixed up were more than double the scores of those students who had practiced one kind of problem at a time.” This shows how homework can greatly improve while not increasing the amount of time spent each night.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2012.745469

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1598/abstract

Since the 1980s, in an effort to fight the war on drugs, the United States government has implemented the use of anti-illicit-drug public-service announcements (PSAs). The “Just Say No” advertisement was a campaign that taught children various ways to say no to engaging in illegal recreational drug use. It also taught student skills in resisting peer-pressure and other influences. But how effective are these anti-drug campaigns?

As a young lad, I remember watching these anti-drug PSAs with my friends and laughing at them. I specifically remember an MTV “Above The Influence” commercial with a dog and a girl. The dog was telling the girl that he didn’t like it when she smoked pot and the girl said she could stop anytime she wanted. The dog said how bout right now? And she said maybe tomorrow, or something along those lines. My friends and I were about 15 or 16 and we thought it was the stupidest commercial we’d ever seen. It didn’t make us want to never smoke pot at all, and I’m sure many American teenagers felt the same way. This is a classic anti-drug PSA, “This is your brain on drugs.” (http://youtu.be/ub_a2t0ZfTs) It shows a man in a kitchen. He holds up an egg and says, “This is your brain,” then he shows the frying pan, “This is drugs.” He then cracks the egg onto the frying pan and says, “This is your brain on drugs,” while the egg cooks. In my honest opinion that is the most ridiculous analogy, and it DOES NOT deter kids from doing drugs.

In February, 2002, an observational study was done to determine the relative perceived effectiveness of 30 antidrug PSAs. 3,608 students in grades 5 through 12 in 10 schools were used for this study. Students in 5 experimental conditions filled out 6 questionnaires after viewing sets of 6 antidrug PSAs. The control group filled out questionnaires after viewing non-drug-related PSAs. The results varied greatly. Compared to the control group, “16 were rated as significantly more effective, and 6 were as significantly less effective” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447050/). In conclusion to this study, there are anti-drug PSAs that show an effect opposite to the one initially intended, therefore should not be shown at all.

Instead of showing lame analogies about the effects of illegal recreation drug use, PSAs should show actual negative consequences to engaging in the activity. For example, the anti-cigarette campaign shows disgusting pictures of shriveled up, tar-filled lungs. That, in my opinion, is an effective deterrent of adolescent cigarette smoking.

At some point or another, each and every one of us has obliviously believed in a double standard. If you don’t know, a double standard is when one situation has two different sets of principles for different groups of gender, race, religion, etc. There are so many different forms double standards can take, and if asked, most of us would say they are wrong and unethical. So why do we practice them?

When the term “double standard” comes up in conversation, most people will think of double standards most commonly faced by women. For example: the sexual double standard. A guy can have sex with 3 girls in one day and be considered “the man”, while a girl who has sex with 3 guys in one day is labeled “slut” or “whore”? As everybody’s favorite double standard, it has been known for a very long time, and it doesn’t look very promising for society to change that view anytime soon. It is portrayed in movies, books, TV, and life. Then why is it that the girls end up on the losing team of this double standard?

I think a very simple way of answering this is to analyze the outcomes of having sex for both the guy and the girl. For one, sex results in sexual satisfaction for both parties (usually); good for everyone. What about pregnancy? This may be a blessing for parents who are ready to bring a child into the world, but an utter nightmare for those who are not, i.e. teenagers and college undergrads. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a total of 329,797 babies were born to women aged 15-19 years. While it takes a guy and a girl to conceive, who ultimately “suffers” the consequences? You could argue the guy, if he stays to raise the child. But he won’t gain 25-35 pounds in 9 months. When society sees a pregnant, unwed, teenage girl, and is very quick to judge. So realistically speaking, it’s the girl who takes the short end of the stick, not the guy. Although unfair, girls have the most to lose from having sex.

Another form of double standards in the same area is a father’s view on his child having sex.  Last time I was home, I visited with my old boss from my high school job and the conversation of birth control came up. He explained to me that he had recently bought birth control for his 17 year old daughter, and that he cried in bed at the thought of his daughter being sexually active. While I could see where he was coming from, I asked him if he thought he’d be this upset if it were his son asking for condoms? His response was, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be upset.” He went on to say that his feelings regarding sexuality stems from our biology. He agreed that because a woman can get pregnant, we expect women’s sexuality to be much more stringent. I asked him if he didn’t want his daughter to be sexually active, why buy her the contraceptive? His reason was he had to overlook his own ingrained views in order to prevent something far worse, a teenage pregnancy. 

There are many forms of double standards that we as a society accept. But in many cases, it would be unfair to give the same standards to two groups of people. For example, you wouldn’t hold a high school hockey team to the same standards of the New York Rangers (go blue shirts). But a man slapping a woman as hard as his palms can slap for cheating on him is viewed as abuse, while its normal, even expected, for a girl to do the same to a guy. 

http://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/aboutteenpreg.htm

Throughout our lives, scientists have told us smoking tobacco is damaging to our health.  Cigarettes lead to variations of cancer, lung, heart, gum, and many other diseases; but can it also affect a smoker’s IQ? From 1947 to 2002, Dr. Lawrence Whalley, a professor of mental health in the University of Aberdeen, conducted a study in which that question might be answered. Dr. Whalley and his researchers tested 465 people at age 11 on mental abilities, such as, “non-verbal reasoning, memory and learning, how quickly they processed information, decisions about how to act in particular circumstances and construction tasks” (bbc news). The test subjects were then tested again in 2002, in which the results showed smokers performing “significantly worse in five separate tests” (bbc news).  Even when important factors such as “childhood IQ, education, occupation and alcohol consumption were taken into account”, the smokers were found to perform worse than non-smokers.

Dr. Whalley suggests that the reason smokers have brain-aging issues is that smoking affects the oxidation process in the brain, the process where cells obtain energy from oxygen. Research shows that smoking cigarettes clogs airways to vital organs in your body, including the brain, (UMPC) and a lack of oxygen to the brain can result in disorientation, signs of dementia, and other types of brain damage.