High Life / A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Homework Time Cited in Surveys

Despite notions that high school students care more about hanging out than getting good grades, an annual survey of students in the Anaheim Union High School District indicated that teen-agers study diligently after school.

The results of the survey, released by district Supt. Cynthia Grennan, show that 80% of the district’s 19,000 junior and senior high school students say they spent two or more hours a day doing homework.

Among high school students, the survey reported, about 57% of the teen-agers worked on homework at least 14 hours during a week, and 23% said they did more than 21 hours of homework each week.

It appears to be a different story, however, when only seniors take part in similar polls.

The Times Orange County Edition recently conducted a poll of seniors at Newport Harbor, Santa Ana, Woodbridge of Irvine and Troy of Fullerton.

A total of 604 students returned their surveys, which showed that 11% spent from 11 to 20 hours on homework or studying during a typical week, and 4% said they did more than 20 hours of homework or studying each week.

Compare these figures to those recently released by the Ronkin Educational Group poll and USA Today, as reported in NEA Today, the newspaper of the National Education Assn.

In that survey of 940 high school seniors across the country, 12% spent from 11 to 15 hours of studying outside the classroom each week, and 11% spent 16 or more hours per week on homework.

The nation’s neglect of music in school is dehumanizing children, the 60-member National Commission on Music Education told Congress recently, according to a recent issue of NEA Today.

What’s more, the commission reported, statistics show that children who take arts courses get higher scores on college entrance examinations than those who don’t. The commission is sponsored by organizations dealing with music and music education.

Only 29 states require music instruction for graduation, the report noted. And the number of music teachers is far from adequate. In California, for instance, there’s just one music teacher for every 1,535 students. Even in South Dakota, which has the highest teacher-student ratio, there’s still only one for every 151 students.

How much better do kids who take music in school do on college entrance exams? The College Entrance Examination Board says those who take more than four years of arts (such as music) score 34 points higher on the verbal portion of the SAT and 18 points higher on the math portion than those who take less than a year.

“Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.”

--Billie Holiday (1915-1959)