Homework: To Give or Not to Give?
Homework, a single word that carries differing opinions amongst varied individuals. With the debate of homework at the forefront of many schools and classroom teachers, there are two positions to consider. Before taking a side and conducting research, we began by simply looking at what the word homework means. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines homework as, “an assignment given to a student to be completed outside the regular class period” (2017). The concept of homework is one that has been recently highly debated. With every school’s ‘hot topic’ there are pros and cons to be discovered. Looking at the topic of homework, the list seems to grow exponentially as our world rapidly changes.
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.
Homework provides the opportunity to bridge the gap between home and school. It is a means of communication. Students are able to engage their family members in current classroom content, often leaning on parents for assistance to complete homework in the younger grades. According to V. Tam and R. Chan, it is important to “consider the home-school communication role of homework which includes designing assignments that explicitly involve parents, as in parent-child projects” (2016, p. 40). Through this, homework can help increase the opportunity for high quality family time opening up the doors for collaboration amongst family members and further enhancing the home school bond.
Beyond the positive effects homework has on students, it also provides insight for teachers.
Glenda Pryor-Johnson of Concordia University says that homework assists in developing four essential qualities in children: Responsibility, Time Management, Perseverance, and Self-Esteem (Fuglei). In addition, homework fosters greater self-direction and self-discipline in students. These are the necessary qualities that will help them become high-achieving students. These skills acquired from homework will also benefit students in the real-world, and in college too. Students who regularly completed homework will be more inquisitive in life and participate in more independent problem solving (Plato). In college, professors expect that students have well-developed study habits from all those years of homework. Proponents believe that homework serves as the foundation for acquiring these qualities and study habits, however, the opposers of homework believe these benefits to be highly subjective, and cite lack of evidence as their reasoning behind refuting this
“Homework is arguably the worst punishment inflicted upon the student body.” One would think this extreme statement would come from the 10-year boys and girls who complain to their parents about the homework they have to complete. However, Rodney Jones starts of his argument against homework using this statement. He argues that homework does not help children taking up all their time. Continuing, he explains how parents should extend child’s knowledge out of school instead of homework and in the end these assignments do not help students grade. However, in contrast of Jones’ beliefs homework indeed benefits children’s learning through the small amounts of extra practice it gives to help the students excel.
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?
For the most part, education in the United States has revolved around the idea of a “work hard, and succeed” system. Educators strongly push for this idea and are in a way obliged to extend learning by assigning more work, which they are unable to complete in a school setting. In turn, they rely on homework to expand knowledge beyond the classroom. Homework has become what may seem a positive influence on education and test scores in the United States. However, It has also become one the biggest burdens on high school students.This burden fails to reflect today’s advancing technological society. It needs to conform to a more individualized and purposeful approach for students.
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
Homework. It is word that haunts anyone from adolescents to adults. Even though it's sole purpose is to educate students, homework seems to have ingrained a negative connotation among everyone in society. There is no doubt that homework has helped students improve their academic performance, but there is a point where it becomes overkill. From personal experience, I found myself drowning in homework in high school. Every night would consist of coming home after practice, and working for an average of four hours on assignments. At the end of high school, I realized I was just doing homework to get it out of the way, and it wasn’t helping me grow academically. I know that thousands of students feel the same way, and it is a true flaw in our education system. Although homework has helped students grow academically, ultimately the effects of too much homework have brought unhealthy amounts of stress, inability for students to explore their interests, and a reduced social skills.
I. Homework allows students to get additional support on the concept of the day. II. Furthermore, connecting examples of the learned concept to real life enhances the depth of understanding. III.
The term “homework” has many different connotations and definitions associated with it. According to Merriam-Webster, homework is “work that a student is given to do at home” or “research or reading done in order to prepare for something.” Going off of the first definition, homework is commonly associated with those enrolled in both public and private institutions, primarily elementary school, middle school, high school and college. In order to better understand the concept of homework, it is helpful to examine homework/education in other countries, the history of homework in the United States, homework in contemporary society and how American teachers are changing their teaching styles to help combat student stress as a result of homework.
Homework is learning assignments practiced or completed outside of school hours. The majority of schools in the United States homework is assigned to students as work to be completed at home, outside of the classroom, and returned to the teacher for credit.
In recent years there has been a growing “No Homework” movement in North America. Educators, parents and guardians believe that the school system is overloading students as young as four years old with an excessive amount of homework. However, homework has been an essential part of a student's academic life. In a study that was conducted by Harvey Foley he examined if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The research results from Harvey Foley’s study reveals how homework is a beneficial resource to students. There are a number of ways in which students have benefitted from homework like developing good personal habits such as time management, to teaching students to use their resources. Ultimately, homework is an effective resource for both the students, educators and parents.
Homework, that terrible word that gives any high school or college graduate PTSD. Homework is a daily thing in a student life and it can become overwhelming. Its standard in school, but in recent years its become overly stressful and the workload has increased. The average high school student in the U.S. has about 17.5 hours of homework a week, divide that by 5 days in a week is 3.5 hours of homework each night, and if the average student is at school from around 7:30 to 3:00, that is 7.5 hours at school. Add 7.5 hours at school to 3.5 hours of homework at night you have spent 11 hours in school. Health studies say that teenagers should be getting around 9 -9 ½ hours of sleep. Now, remember there are 24 hours in a day. So 11 plus 9 is 19 hours that leaves 5 hours in the day for eating, sports, relaxing, or even working if you have a job. This is a statistic from 2017. In 2011 studies showed the average student spent about 6.8 hours doing homework, and in 1994 a survey should that the average 17-year-old had about an hour of homework a week. (A WEEK) This increase in hours spent doing homework is a problem. And it is a problem that has dramatically increased in the past 10 years. Many people argue that homework is an essential part to school, while others believe student spend enough time in school already and their time outside of school should be spent with extracurriculars, playing sports, relaxing, spending time with family and getting enough sleep. The debate over
That depends on what grade your child is in. In elementary school, homework is mostly about establishing responsibility, said Katie McGrath, LAUSD’s director of elementary instruction. That includes teaching children to follow directions, learning how to be accountable for keeping homework safe, completing it, and turning it in.
Schools today give out homework like it’s candy. There are students who come home from a long day at school and immediately start their homework, only to finish it hours later. The vast amount of homework given out these days is insane, and should either be cut back or abolished altogether. The pressure put on students just to finish their homework is unnecessary. It is proof of homework being harmful to students.
SUTW 1: In order to find out a student progress, homework can help to figure it out. Parent need homework, if not for homework, said David McLeod, he and his wife would not have known how their son was doing at school” (Schwartz 1). From a teacher’s point of view through homework, they could see what they were learning and what they were having trouble with” (Schwartz 1). “If your child doesn't understand why he is doing something, it's sort of a futile exercise” (Schwartz 2), which means that the child isn’t understanding the assignment.
Many students in school struggle to complete piles of homework assigned to them each night. Some wonder if homework is really critical to learning, and many wish homework wouldn’t exist at all. These people argue that homework is overwhelming and it takes away most of their free time at home and is just “busy work”. While some people may feel this way, I personally believe that homework is a key point of learning because it teaches time management and helps solidify what was learned during the day.