What is Homework?
Homework is a set of assignments assigned to students by their teachers, to be completed outside of class, typically at home. Homework can be given for any subject, ranging from reading assignments to solving mathematical problems. The purpose, generally speaking, is for students to use homework as a way to increase their knowledge, and to improve their performance. Instead of having to learn new things, homework is typically designed to reinforce concepts that have already been taught in class.
The Debate
The debate around whether homework is actually helpful for students has been raging on for decades. While research has shown that homework is beneficial for students in higher grades, not everyone is in agreement on this. Does the homework make the student a high achiever? Or do high achievers generally do more homework? Opponents of these studies argue that correlation does not mean causation.
The consensus now is that homework does not typically benefit younger students, and the fact that it creates a lot of stress has led many to question the very existence of the practice and whether or not schools should eliminate it.
It has also been observed that some schools, and teachers, use homework as a way to get students to cover material that was not completed in class. Standardized homework assignments also lead to some students being under-challenged, and others feeling overwhelmed, depending on how good they are at the subject.
So while no end seems to be in sight for this debate, we’ve picked out some key arguments from both sides, to help you decide for yourself just how useful homework is.
Pros
Homework teaches children how to properly manage their time, in order to get all their work done in a timely manner. These skills serve them well as they progress to higher studies, and eventually into their professional lives.
Every student learns at their own pace. Some are quick learners, while others require a lot more time to be able to grasp the same concepts. For the latter, homework can significantly help improve their academic performance. For slow learners, time spent in school is often not enough for them to fully understand a given concept, going home and putting more time into these concepts can help them gain a better understanding.
Reengaging with the same content with a clear, well-rested mind can allow one to fully engage with the content, and thus gain a better understanding. It also provides parents the opportunity to get involved directly in their children’s studies, whether to help or simply to provide a different perspective.
Students and young children generally spend a lot of their free time in front of a screen, be that a mobile phone, a television, a computer, or something else. When not in school, this time tends to increase even further, with many full days spent entirely staring at a screen. With homework, students are encouraged instead to focus on studies, with less time available to look at screens, which can help develop beneficial habits.
Cons
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. This common saying applies as much to homework, as it does to work in a professional setting. Studying is a good thing for children, but so is time spent playing, and having fun. With no time to spend playing, their social development, and their academic performance, can be negatively impacted. It can lead to lasting issues, such as lower character development, lower safety awareness, and worse physical health, problems that can cause issues throughout one’s life.
Spending long hours sitting down at a desk, or at a computer, doing homework can lead to your children developing a sedentary lifestyle. A sedentary lifestyle is when one spends a majority of their time sitting or lying down, with little to no physical activity. This can lead to issues such as obesity, poor physical fitness, and in some cases, premature death.
With so much time in the day is spent and school and then on homework, many students simply don’t have the time to engage in more creative endeavors, such as reading, painting, playing an instrument, or event photography. This stifles their natural creative talents, which can lead to depression, and regret later on in life. While schoolwork is important, it is also important for a child to have something important, that is their own, and not dependent on the school.
The consensus in the teaching community is that a student should be assigned only 10 minutes of homework per grade level. So a first-grader should have 10 minutes, a second-grader 20 minutes, and so on and so forth. However, many schools do not follow this rule, with students being assigned up to 4 times as much homework as recommended. This leads to students returning from school and then having to devote most of the rest of the day towards more studying, leaving little to no time for anything else.
While there are many pros and cons to homework, and the academic research community is still not in agreement as to whether it is beneficial or not, there is something to be learned by examining these arguments. The best solution is, like most things in life, to avoid excess. Like anything else, doing too much homework can lead to students not being able to reap the benefits of doing homework at all, and so moderation is the only way for students to be able to do this, without burning out completely.
