There has been tons of debate over the past decade about whether or not homework is necessary or beneficial. Schools say it’s essential in getting students to learn how to work independently, while students, and even some teachers believe it is a waste of time.
Children, teens and young adults are so busy after class with sports, clubs and extra curricular activities such as voluntary work that it is unfair to assign more work then they already completely in seven hours of their school day. If a student cannot learn what is needed of them to be learned within that school day, then the expectations for the average student are too high.
Besides the fact that studying and homework are bombarding students, what about those students that grew up with a single parent and have to work after school? Or, how about families with low-income that can’t afford to feed their children, for that matter. Is it fair to give wealthier students the same amount of homework as students struggling to get dinner each night? There are more important things in life than reading a history textbook after school.
On another note, homework tends to de-motivate kids. While it is important to study for tests and work hard in school, it is useless for teachers to give “busy work.” Busy work is unnecessary homework that teachers give to students just because teachers are supposed to give a certain amount of work each week. However, this kind of homework makes kids spite school and want to rebel. This is how some students become “those kids” that don’t do their work and fail tests. Homework kills the desire to want to learn.
Instead of giving written homework and essays, teachers should put more emphasis on the thought that learning can happen naturally. Teachers should be explaining to students how to use their brain in order to question the world instead of following a a boring lesson plan day in and day out.
Sources:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/10/is_homework_necessary.html
http://www.livescience.com/19379-homework-bad-kids.html
I think it’s pretty obvious that “busy work” homework does nothing for kids intelligence or learning, but I think the removal of homework entirely is especially detrimetnal to a child’s learning. Now, I’m not saying that homework is necessary every single night in every sort of class, but I think from experience I’ve learned that I tend to do better in subjects like math or science when I am forced to go home and review what I’ve learned, or get extra practice on something I was unsure about in school. As studies say, repeating something later on in the day over a long course of time is better for learning that doing something once and revisiting or cramming.
I agree that the “busy work” is unnecessary. Some teachers provide homework just to say they did. There were so many times that I have done homework assignments that were irrelevant to the class lesson or not beneficial to me. In my opinion, I do not think homework should be completely eliminated, but I think it should be given when it is necessary. Teachers should be giving assignments if it helps the students with a lesson they may have been having trouble with or a long lesson so they don’t forget it when they go home. I think its necessary to enforce certain things learned just in case it will be on an exam or extremely important to the course. Some subjects it is more necessary than others. In this article it also discusses how homework shows no direct benefit, but in some subjects such as math it does.
I agree with the argument that homework tends to de-motivate students. More often than not homework given to kids is mostly busy work or just too much to handle with all the other activities and responsibilities that they have. Because of this students become more concerned with simply getting the right answer just to have the assignment complete than actually learning the material. This causes students to resent homework. Despite all this, I don’t believe that homework is unnecessary. I believe that applying what you learn in the classroom outside of class is important in helping it become a truly learned concept. That doesn’t mean teachers should assign hours upon hours of homework each night. Instead, maybe teachers should provide students with opportunities to apply what they have learned in ways that allow them to process material more effectively. For example, this blog is technically “homework,” but its not a right or wrong answer system. We get to express our own thoughts and opinions while applying research and critical thinking skills. And at the end of it all we are graded on how well we applied those skills with a chance to improve. I don’t know about you, but I personally am more willing to put in time and effort when there are opportunities for me to improve without permanently hurting my grades.
I completely agree with your argument, but I also see the educator’s side of the argument. As the oldest child in a single-parent family, it was extremely difficult to complete all of my assignments because family responsibilities always came first. Picking up my siblings and taking them to various activities, while managing my own, was very time consuming on its own. So, there was not much time left for additional studies. But when I got to college, and was no longer responsible for my siblings during the week, I found that homework was meant to help me, not hurt my grade. I had the time to complete my assignments while feeling much more prepared for my exams. Homework is extremely beneficial to the learning process of students. Do certain circumstances get in the way? Yes, but teachers are willing to help if you just talk to them. They don’t want to see you fail either.
I think you guys are being to harsh on Home-works. They’re effective in a ways you don’t even realize. For example, doing the blog is a Home-work and most of you are writing, researching and expressing your opinions on this very Home-work. I’ll be honest, I’ve looked up some home-work problems when I was in high school and even that helped me develop my researching skills. Real world experience? You can have that in college or maybe when you graduate, but Home-work shows the teacher who cares enough to take some time to either actually do the home-work or cheat and do the home-work. As long as they cared enough to put effort no matter how wrong it is, it shows something about the effectiveness of Home-work and how people who participate in it will go far in the real world.
I’m a little bit shaky with your proposal to eliminate homework. The main purpose of homework is not to “bombard” students with work or to make their lives harder. The purpose of homework is to give students a good review on what they just learned in class. Think about it, how many teenage students do you think pay attention to every single word, letter, and sound that a teacher says. It is extremely easy to miss something important that a teacher said in class because a student was dozing off or not paying attention. Homework is used for those purposes to give a student another chance to learn that material back at home. The worst thing that could happen is that they don’t understand the material and then they ask about it in class the next day to receive the correct answer. It’s a strong tool to strengthen the learning process. From personal experience, I had an Economics class which gave out homework once a week and a Math class which gave out homework everyday. I’ll admit, it was nice having Economics homework once a week, but by the time finals came along it was not so nice… Turns out that I got a 56 on my Economics final and a 93 on my Math final. These were my results because I got constant review in Math which was pounded into my head every single night, while in Economics I barely got any review of the material. On the Math final, I recognized certain questions which led me to the right answers because I did the homework, meanwhile in Economics everything looked brand new to me since my homework was so limited. Homework is such a critical tool that needs to be enforced at all levels of schooling.
For further information, please check out this article: http://www.schoolfamily.com/school-family-articles/article/10658-homework-why-it-matters
Don’t you think a better use of our time would be to get some real world experience? Teachers need to realize that if we want to learn the information, we will and busy work is not going to help expand our minds. Instead I could be using that time working and making money to spend. It has even been shown that teens who have a part time job do better later in life!
I completely agree! From personal experience I can tell you that homework isn’t about the student going home and really studying from a textbook and further learning the information. Most kids who do their homework are just searching for the answer quickly without absorbing the information they are reading. It is no longer a process of learning, but a process of getting the correct answer. Many times homework is done quickly or not at all and without thought because of other commitments in students lives. Schools tell us to get involved, join a sports team or club. They also recommend at the high school level of getting a job so that students can experience the work force and life out of school. With these other commitments made by students, homework is no longer a priority. Not to mention have the time, class time is used going over the previous nights homework. Why not just not have homework and teach the lessons fully and straight through. Give the kids more hands on and real life examples of why what they are learning is important. I personally believe that homework is a complete waste of time. The students are not benefitting from the additional assignments. More effort should be put into what goes on inside the classroom.