1

Download as docx, pdf, or txt
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 4

1.

It Contributes To Increased Anxiety

If there’s one word that describes middle-school and high-


school students, it’s anxiety. In my homework statistics article,
I cite research showing that 74% of students cite homework as
a source of stress.

They have so much to juggle, from the novelty of adolescence to


the realization that they must soon start preparing for college and
their life after (Pressman et al., 2015).

It’s a lot to manage, and adding homework that reduces their free
time and makes them even more restricted is downright harmful.
The natural outcome of this dogpile of pressure is anxiety, and
many students often feel overwhelmed, both by the hours and
hours of coursework in a day and the extensive homework they are
assigned (Galloway, Conner & Pope, 2013).

Because teachers often don’t communicate with one another over


curricula, major assignments can overlap such that students have
to tackle numerous large projects at once, which contributes to
severe anxiety over good grades.

In response to this, some students check out of school entirely,


letting their academic future go to waste. While, of course, it’s not
fair to strawman and say that homework is to blame for all these
cases, it may indeed by a contributing factor.
2. It Offers Less Social Time

Homework cuts out free time. Children already spend the


better part of their day learning in a school environment, and
when they come home, they need to socialize.
Whether it’s family or friends, a social balance is important.
Depending on the coursework they’re assigned, homework can
detrimentally affect students’ social life, which feed back into more
of our first gripe about homework: its anxiety-inducing nature.

Furthermore, social time is extremely important for children to grow


up well-balanced and confident. If a child is highly intelligent (book
smart) but lacks to social skills we might call street smarts, they
may struggle in adulthood.

Homework encourages cheating.

Mandatory homework makes cheating feel like students’ only


option. When homework is too difficult for students and must be completed
in order to get a good grade, they’re incentivized to cheat on their take-
home assignments. Not only does this encourage deviance outside the
classroom; it makes the very reason for homework obsolete.[10]
School is already a full-time job

Students already spend approximately seven hours a day at


school. Add in two hours of homework and that means students are now
working more hours than their parents, leaving them frustrated and
exhausted. Pile on the book reports, study guides, and essays that
teachers regularly assign on weekends and holiday breaks, and homework
prevents students from being able to relax and disengage from their
studies.[1]
 For years, teachers have followed the “10-minute rule”
giving students roughly 10 minutes of homework per
grade level. However, recent studies have shown
students are completing 3+ hours of homework a
night well before their senior years even begin. [2]

It Convolutes The Subject

Another important consideration about homework is that it can


often be counterproductive.
That’s because teachers don’t always use the full curriculum
material for their teaching, and they may choose to develop their
own homework rather than to use the resources offered by the
curriculum provider.

This homework can often be off-subject, extremely niche, or


unhelpful in explaining a subject that students are studying.

Students who don’t understand a subject and don’t have resources


to rely on will eventually give up. That risk becomes even more
prevalent when you factor in the scope, complexity, and type of
assignment.

Students need to be taught in a safe environment where they can


feel free to ask questions and learn at their own pace. Of course,
there’s no fairytale way to perfect this ideal, but what is clear is that
homework is not beneficial to the learning environment for many
students.
It’s Not What Kids Want

Lastly, homework should be banned because it’s generally not


what students want. From elementary to college level, most
students harbor some sort of resentment towards homework.
It might be easy to dismiss this to say that the students “aren’t living
in the real world.” The truth of the matter is that the real world is a
lot more nuanced, creative, and diverse than the repetitive, broad,
and often stagnant homework.

It’s easy to understand why most students wish that more time in
school had been spent on learning how to live rather than trying to
figure out how many apples Johnny had. Subjects like car
maintenance, entrepreneurship, computer skills, socialization,
networking, tax filing, finances, and survival are touched on at best
and ignored at worst.

It’s not enough for students to be able to regurgitate information on


a piece of paper; in the end, the education system should teach
them how to be self-sufficient, something that might be much easier
to do if resources were divested from homework and poured into
more beneficial subject material.

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy