Sally had so much homework she was stressed. She was only absent for a few days and now her evil wicked teachers gave her of a stack of homework that’s taller than the Twin Towers! Sally was so crushed because her favorite show was now on Netflix and she didn’t have time to watch it. Let’s stick with facts, students hate homework and rarely have time to do the things they enjoy.
Homework is being used in a bad way because teachers are giving out too much homework which can keep students from doing other things. Homework should be banned because there are no academic benefits, too much homework can be harmful and not all students have the resources to do homework at home.
There is a lack of evidence that homework helps students. Homework doesn’t always help students learn more about the lesson because if students are confused about the assignment, they are still going to be confused after they have done their homework.
Fourth-grade students who didn’t do their homework got the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a day. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night did worse. Homework is not a helpful resource to help students learn because students get stressed if they have a way to much, so they don’t learn anything.
A professor at Temple University, Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, says that homework is not the most effective tool for students to apply new information. “They’re learning way more important skills when they’re not doing their homework.” Homework isn’t always the solution for students to process new information and learn new things.
If students get too much homework from their teachers it can be harmful in many ways. One of those ways is stress, stress is when you feel overwhelmed or nervous. When it comes to stress, more than 70 percent of students said they were “often or always stressed over schoolwork,” 56 percent listing homework as a primary stressor.
Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor. Too much stress leads to increased heart rate and blood flow. High-achieving high schoolers say the amount of homework they have to complete leads to lack of sleep and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems.
The American Educational Research Association explains that “Whenever homework crowds out social experience, outdoor recreation, and creative activities, and whenever it usurps time that should be devoted to sleep, it is not meeting the basic needs of children and adolescents.” Homework can be harmful in many ways and teachers don’t even notice it.
Not all students have the resources to do homework at home because they live with low-income families. 41% of US kids live in low-income families, which are less likely to have access to the resources needed to complete homework, such as pens and paper, a computer, internet access, a quiet workspace, and a parent at home to help.
They are also more likely to have to work after school and on weekends or look after younger siblings, leaving less time for homework. Most parents are out working late shifts which are hard on them because they can’t help their children do their homework and most parents don’t know how to help them with their homework.
A study by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation found that 96.5% of students across the country said they needed to use the internet for class assignments outside of school, and nearly half said there had been times they weren’t able to complete their homework due to lack of access to the internet or a computer, resulting in lower grades. As all of this is going on, students can feel high levels of stress which can be bad for their health.
References
- The Relationship Between Homework and Achievement – Still Much of a Mystery – A research article exploring the complex relationship between homework and academic achievement.
- Is Homework Helpful or Harmful? – An article providing arguments for both sides of the homework debate.