Ban Homework

Written by Kevin Bauman 

Ban Home Work

            Let’s face it no one likes to take home work. Whether its school or actual work, at the end of the day we want to go home and not worry about any of it. Ask any adult if they liked doing home work and the answer will be the same as if you asked kids of today’s generation. Not only is homework a pain to deal with when most students in high school play sports and work, but is also ineffective for students making it just busy work. In my honest opinion, homework should be banned from schools for good because there really is no point to giving assignments that don’t have an impact on the education of students.

            Many students find that home work is boring, tiring, and in some cases very stressful.  According to BBC News, teachers often underestimate the time it will likely take a student to complete the task that they have been given. This in turn makes children develop a resistance to school. As Dr. Mary Boustad says “Children should be able to explore experiment and enjoy their learning without feeling pressured”.  When you make something short and fun, you make it appealing to younger children and by making it seem appealing to them you build lifelong habits of enjoying learning.

            Looking at the concept of Homework, some may say that it is solely focused on a student doing well on a certain test, but what about the life skills necessary to support them throughout life and in the work place? This question has been debated over other things as well such as standardized testing like the ACT and SAT and other state standardized tests. After these tests The government compares the results and punishes the underachieving schools. As Johanna Sorention points out in an article for education.com titled The Homework Debate, “Because schools and teachers are therefore scared about their students doing poorly, they give them more homework, not in the hope they learn more but simply to do better on the tests”. Also one of her key interviewees, author Alfie Kohn, says “no study has ever found the corolation between homework and academic achievement in elementary school and there probably is none in high school”. The basic theory here is that home work isn’t helping a student learn new things while retaining the old information, it’s simply helping them do better on a specific test, almost like a football team prepares for their opponent, you teach them this weeks game plan and they forget about last weeks.

            Finally, let’s not forget that these kids have lives too. Many of them in high school may have jobs and many kids today are involved in some sort of after school activity such as sports and clubs or any other teams that their school offers and on top of it everyone has their own family to think about as well. Giving them home work that has been classified by many as just “busy work” is not only a waste of time but it is also contributing to the stress levels of these kids. Many mothers were interviewed by NBCnews.com and all of which had agreed that children deserve to live like children, “they don’t need the stress created by homework”. Some mom’s have even told their childs teacher right out “my son won’t be doing any home work”. Duke Universities psychology professor, Harris Cooper, was the creator of the “10 minute rule” that was encouraged by schools after the sputnik launch in 1957. That meant that students would spend 10 minutes studying for each graded class they had. What he didn’t account for was the increase in the schedule for students  but also the growth in the amount of home work given today. IN this same article on NBC news he said “ if a student is doing home work effectively, but it seems to be taking them too long, then the parents need to confront the teachers in a non- aggressive manner”.

            Home work is one of the many ineffective ways that our education system attempts to enhance the education process for many children today. Home work is not something that encourages kids to want to learn, it makes them resent learning and resent going to school at a young age because of it lack the appeal to a younger student. We start these habits out early and they continue to escalate. Also, home work doesn’t help a student retain and learn information. It’s like prepare for a game, you learn one game plan and win and the next week you learn a new game plan, and you forgot the previous weeks. IN other words, home work puts a specific focus on a single test, not contributing to the overall education of kids. Last we see that home work is cutting into the time that kids have to do other things like being a kid, enjoying time with their friends and having tim e to spend with their families. When that starts to cut into a belief that this country was built on, the idea of being with you family, then it’s time we rethink our approach towards home work.

Works cited

·                     "The Homework Debate | Education.com." Education.com | An Education & Child Development Site for Parents | Parenting & Educational Resource. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. <http://www.education.com/magazine/article/The_Homework_Debate/>.

·                     "BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Teachers call for ban on homework." BBC News - Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2013. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7287962.stm>.