You get home from a long day of school, you’re tired, hungry, and was looking forward to just lying down and getting on your phone. Then you realize the time and forgot to do homework so doing it all night long really took a hit on you. You wake up, rinse, and repeat.
Every student should know how annoying homework is to do right after a long day of the same thing. According to statistics from College homework-help, teachers assign more assignments than an average student can handle in one night. There are many reasons why homework should be banned since students come back from 8-hours of studying in a class while homework could take up to 2-hours, possibly a minimum.
Homework is meant to help students improve themselves academically. “Homework is an excellent way for students to practice the concepts that we learned in class and make sure that they can do it on their own without someone leading them through it”, said Lori Seitz, a high school math teacher in New Berlin West. “If you don’t practice it, you’re not going to on game day, test day or quiz day. You’re not going to be able to do it by yourself or be successful.” Seitz explained
“Well, is it stressful for them or hard on their mental health? Maybe. But in the long run, I think it’s better for their mental health because then they’re doing better on tests and quizzes.”, said Seitz. The benefits of homework only occur when students are engaged and ready to learn. The more homework they get, the less they want to engage. “Homework is an insufficient moderation, if there’s too much of it at once, it’s a little bit of a pain. It can be a nuisance in your everyday activities.”, said Jake Peterson, a football player and student from NBW.
Many students decide to not do homework because of the amount of time they have to put in into the assignment. Then grades will slip if the homework is graded in order to put a student in “active learning”. Active learning is meant to promote the analysis and class content in real-world settings, homework doesn’t always provide these opportunities, leading to boredom and a lack of problem-solving skills.
The inventor of homework is an Italian teacher named Roberto Nevilis. According to College Homework help, he invented homework in the far 1905 and made it a punishment for his students. Since then, this practice has become popular around the world. Today it still feels like one for many students in the U.S.
Going outside and dedicating time to friends, helping parents, watching TV, and playing games help boost morale and being active with the world instead of being cooped up in a room working on something that was received 30 minutes ago. Teachers should provide them with more free time.
According to College Homework help, homework is also proven to have a negative effect on exams and testing. Lengthy assignments are a distraction and there is a major difference between studying and homework. Studying could just be taking 30 minutes of look through notes or work from school but homework is an assignment that could be related to the topic but it would take 2-hours to complete and not all the information was absorbed. Some assignments might not even be related to the topic and therefore shouldn’t be relevant as a task to do if it’s not going to help give a better understanding. Other assignments require more time if it is or like a project that would prove or inform one lesson or topic instead of multiple topics being covered in 3 or more days, depending on the assignment, and then say there isn’t enough time in school to cover the simple topic.
According to a study by Stanford University, 56% of students considered homework a primary source of stress since too much homework can result in a lack of sleep, headaches, exhaustion, and weight loss. Schools could already have some negative effects on mental health, such as bullying, but having to go home and have to do homework can be really stressful.
Many high school students have jobs after school and have to juggle a whole business schedule. It doesn’t have to be jobs either, after school activities, clubs, or personal errands can take a long time, but having homework after the whole day is just another task they have to do with no energy, in other words, too much homework can also result in less active learning, even for someone in after school sports. “You have practice right after school and then you get home at like 6:30 and then you’re tired and then you have to go to bed and eat and shower and stuff.”, said Andrew Schmidt, a sophomore football player from NBW
Teachers have only an hour to teach a class about a topic and sometimes give homework to do but don’t explain everything they need to solve the task. Parents could only do so much but they don’t remember everything and the topic could be new to them. Students can’t do the task if there is something that can be more complicated if it’s not shown the right way. Teachers can have enough time to teach the lesson if they use the time wisely without the use of after school assignments and be straight forward and reassure student’s confusion.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), proved that in 4 hours of homework assignments weekly, the extra time invested in education has insignificant effects on product and creativity.
Finland was ranked first of the top 20 countries with the best education systems internationally, according to the “World Top 20 Project”. Finland does not have homework in its education system for years and 93% of Finnish students graduate from high school, compared to 75% in the US, according to LeadPrep. The reason is from teachers who were required to have a Master’s degree and gain a salary that rivals a doctor and a lawyer. At West, 40 out of the 80 teachers and staff have a Master’s degree, as becoming a teacher doesn’t require a master’s in the U.S. Finnish students also have more free time after school to help with their mental and social life. Standardized testing is kept to a minimum, students are required to take the standardized test when he or she turns 16 years of age.
Strictest parents share they do not see their children since work and education separate these generations. After reducing the amount of after-class tasks, family members will obtain more time to spend together instead of having to work all day like their parents. Excessive homework can even result in poor dieting, with families choosing fast food as a faster alternative, according to Oxford learning.
It is true that back then schools gave a lot more homework but it should be taken into consideration that technology has grown expediently of the years, making teachers a lot easier with new projectors, calculators, computers, phones, programs, methods, tablets, machines, models, and etc. Being a teacher can be a hard job but improving someone’s social life early on will help teachers be more comfortable around any new generation of students and build a relationship to better understand one another. Instead of spending 30 to 40 hours a week working and having more work with more hours in between, according to The New York Times.
Under these circumstances, homework should be abolished as a mandatory requirement. Sure it could help them get a better understanding of the topic but it should be given as an option so more students could succeed better in school. Students like myself always have to juggle with time to plan out when they should do their homework but never really absorb the lesson given by teachers. Most homework received could be easily taught in class and have practice right after the lesson, making homework unnecessary. If people are struggling, they should have work at home that explains more in-depth of the lesson and then have a practice that should take 30 minutes instead of 2-hour assignments each day.
