Should Homework Be Taught In Schools

How does homework affect students in academic and nonacademic ways? Both educators and students ask this infamous question throughout the course of their education tracks. Teachers and administrators often believe that homework is necessary; whereas, students often question the legitimacy of homework. However, due to new studies and research about homework, it has been proven to be insignificant, oppressive and pernicious to the student's wellness and success.

Everyday, when the school day is over, students are most likely to get homework to do when they get home. This can be a lot or a little amount of homework, but it can still effect the students the way they are. These effects can be good, bad, or nothing, so today, we take a look whether homework should be assigned or not.

Students should get homework because they learn key morals from it that they should learn. In the article “The Importance of Homework and Studying”, the author Diane Ravitch supports homework, saying that “they provide an opportunity for children to develop self-discipline, study habits, and time management skills.”. These skills will help the students further in the future, and also “Children can set homework goals and enjoy a feeling of accomplishment when the goals are met.”. This will make the student feel more responsible and confident in them.

Homework has been an area of discussion for teachers, students, and even psychologists. It’s been a practice which has been used throughout the United States to help students learn material, reinforce their day’s lesson, or just as busy work to improve a student’s work ethic. Several people view homework as useless, or just plainly unhelpful; this view has been demonstrated ever since the early twentieth century, where many authors and politicians were vehemently against homework, going as far as to write whole books and draft legislation (legislation which had passed the Californian government and had been law) against homework. This opposition has ever since faded, but is now seeing a new movement around America, and there are reasons as to why that is. In an article from CNN, they quote a study from another article published by The American Journal of Family Therapy which states that: “students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended”, and, as such, students are raised within a state of stress from the first grade. Several other studies also find that homework is very hurtful; the Journal of Experimental Education published an article which had made a study that found that the average amount of time students spend on homework each night had been 3.1 hours from a sample of high-performing schools in California, when the recommended time on homework is, at most, one hour each night. Homework has been mandated work for students all around the country, and several others, and the workload seems to only be increasing, and so, how might this workload affect a student’s ability to live a healthy life, a teacher’s work plan, and a psychologist’s view of an enormous workload on a student?

On average, American high school teachers assign approximately 3.5 hours of homework each week, meaning that teens with multiple classes spend around 17.5 hours a week working on these assignments. In only 13 years, the percentage of teens that claim they spend an hour on homework each day has increased to 45%, from the 39% in 1994 (Bidwell). Parents and students across the country are beginning to spot the flaws in these homework methods, however, claiming that academics are merely being memorized instead of thoroughly taught. Is homework truly helping America’s students? To the majority of high schoolers, the answer is clear: homework is unnecessary for academic development.

The driving force behind homework is to reinforce taught concepts from classroom instruction. Homework provides students opportunity to practice targeted skills without taking up valuable classroom instructional time. Students benefit from the routine homework establishes and the responsibility it promotes in children at a young age. This helps develop essential practices in turn setting them up to become lifelong learners. Beyond the academic opportunity homework provides, it additionally encourages positive long-lasting lessons for future success in life. Homework supports students to develop responsibility through managing materials, prioritizing tasks, and balancing time management of assignments.

There are many key components of every student’s high school experience: classes, social events, planning for the future, and, of course, homework. Some get more assignments than others depending on the rigor of one’s courses, but everyone is bound to be assigned homework in high school; in some cases, it can make or break students’ GPAs. Despite its appearances in nearly every high school across the country and the world, homework has become a hotly debated topic as of late due to increasing quantities of assignments and the immense pressure put on students to complete them. Some feel that it’s the natural course of the education system, while some believe that it’s all becoming nearly uncontrollable. The different perspectives on this issue have put teachers, parents, students, and

In summation, homework provides students with the capacity to allow them to succeed on their day to day lives when it is not on excess. There is, of course, some questioning on whether homework directly helps student have a better academic performance. However, it is clear that homework guides children to the necessary developmental growth needed to succeed. Additionally, it contributes to a healthier parent-teacher and student-parent relationships in order to provide students with the necessary atmosphere to grow full

Many teachers in today's schools give homework out on a daily basis, and teachers assume that it is helping students learn the information taught in the classroom. However it is doing quite the opposite causing many problems for students. There are three major impacts that homework has on students, it causes more stress, it affects the student's family, lastly it affects grades and test scores as a whole. Homework has many more negative affects on students, families, grades, and goals. However, even with the facts teachers still continue to assign busy work which is potentially dragging students down rather than helping them.

Homework can be an important factor in helping students achieves and in helping them develop effective work habits. Other researchers state that homework helps students develop responsibility and life skills and the ability to manage tasks and that it provides experiential learning, increased motivation, opportunities to learn to cope with difficulties and distractions, and academic benefits (Corno and Xu 2004; Coutts 2004; Xu and Corno 1998). Responsibility and accountability are essential in everyone’s life. I believe that students need to have the responsibility of completing homework outside of class time.

In order for students to solidify their core understanding of certain topics, homework must be used because it allows students to recall what they have learned outside of school and learning skills can be improved. “For example, Harris Cooper summarizes many of the positive outcomes that homework has on a student’s life. Cooper categorizes these outcomes into four different sections: immediate achievement and learning, long-term academic benefits, nonacademic benefits, and greater parental appreciation of and involvement in school. Under the first section, Cooper explains that one’s learning can progress rapidly because there will be an increased understanding, better critical thinking, greater concept formation, information processing, curriculum enrichment, and better retention of factual knowledge for a student in the learning process. In terms of long-term academic benefits, homework allows students to learn anything they want in their leisure time, an improved attitude toward school can be observed, and new study habits can be formed to finish homework can classwork in more efficient timing. However, Cooper’s third category is considered one of the more important ones because it shows how homework is not only limited in the life of an academic enthusiast, but also for others, who do not focus on studying academic-related subjects. For instance, according to Cooper’s studies, he has found that self-direction,

“Thirty-eight percent of parents--more than one in three-- say their kids are getting too much homework. Twenty-six percent say they’re not getting enough, while 36 percent say it’s just right” (Luke, 2015, p.2). Not all students enjoy homework or retain much from doing it, yet we still have it. Having homework has lead to two sides, let’s take a bigger look at both sides of homework. Students and parents of different communities are coming together to question this topic on whether or not there is benefits and what teachers can do better. Some of the benefits to having homework is that it encourages responsibility and higher academic achievements, but that together leads to a con of homework. Homework affects kids health by causing stress, anxiety, and depression. Health issues are not positive resulting in kids not wanting to learn anything, they naturally turn it off. Whether homework is a good thing or not it allows parents and teachers to see progress within and individual. Along with all these pros and cons there are a few things that meant in the middle. Homework needs to show a students achievement and be manageable for them. When homework is manageable it give students motivation to achieve everything they originally set out to do. Although homework has its goods and bads it can meet in the middle to see both sides. Some believe homework encourages responsibility, higher academic achievement and allows parents to monitor students; others believe it creates stress

Homework is assigned everywhere across the world. Many schools/teachers assign homework on a daily basis and assign a lot - sometimes too much for students. The real question is is homework effective? The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement. Students who did their homework often performed better in school than those who rarely do it. The study showed that in 7-12th grades, the correlation was higher than those in younger grades. In younger grades, homework is shown not to be effective in school performance (Reilly). Is homework really

When the twentieth century began, we viewed the mind as a muscle that could be strengthened through mental exercise. Since this exercise was done at home, homework was viewed favorably. During the 1940s, the emphasis in education shifted from drills to problem solving. Currently, homework is required by all that leads to academic success. Required. That word seems to scare many and stress all. There is nothing worse than watching a child struggle to accomplish a task that is required for completion. Stress will overcome them, and the depression overwhelms their body, causing them to stop trying and experience anxiety. It is difficult to help students who have this problem. They feel as though giving up is all they can do, and they can accept the poor grade. Furthermore, there is a limit on everything; however, homework is breaking through those limits. Homework for elementary school students is higher than ever. Teachers should be teaching children to have a balance of play and school, but it is becoming harder to balance this because of all of this schoolwork. Even for the people participating in sports, it is hard to have that balance of school, work, sports, and family time. Learning what benefits a student in school should be a priority; however, this is not being brought to teachers’ attention. Although teachers believe homework benefits students, it denies them from expanding their academic abilities as it impacts the amount of time spent participating in activities

Many people believe that homework is beneficial. They believe that it teaches responsibility and helps with the over all education of students. However, the negative effects of homework are so large in number that the benefits become negligible.