Sure this is my belief that homework is not beneficial. However a new study came out also saying that the effects of homework are not as great as once thought.
Maybe now schools will either do away with it, or cut it down some. I'm sure it does help some, but I would think it would be harmful when a student has 5+ hours of homework a night. And I am not talking about college students either. My younger siblings who are in high school and middle school actually have more homework than I do. Even when they come home and get straight to work on it, it takes them from that time to dinner time, and an additional few hours after dinner. That is just so messed up. I believe homework should be on a curve. Assign certain assignments to all. However help the students more during school hours, and the ones who don't finish have them do the rest at home. Why shoud all be punished for the sake of a few? If a student has a ton of homework to do at night, the older they get the more it becomes commonplace for them to brush off the work they feel they don't need and then focus only on what they think they need. Thus, they get bad grades in a class because they did not do an assignment they felt pointless so that they could work on something they did not know.
Too much homework cuts into sleep time, eating, and social time. I am not talking about getting online and chatting with your friends or playing on MySpace, but the quality time a child needs with their family to bond.
I live in fear of the day my sons start school, especially high school. Sure I graduated, but in the few years since then the work has gotten harder, more demanding, and more time consuming. Already, I have trouble helping my siblings in 9th and 11th grade. They are doing stuff I did not learn until I started college. And they have so much!
I say we all get together and protest this horrible thing known as homework!
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I would not go that far and doing completely away with homework. I for one have recently had an experience with this. In my Algebra II with Trig class we did not have homework assigned for a week, at the end of that week we had a quiz. Everyone in the class did awful, no one got an A and the majority of the class made below a C. We started doing homework on the exact same material tested on the failed quiz and the next friday, we had another quiz. Everyone had improved their grade. Yes we did have more time to study, but we also had reinforcement through working problems similar to the quiz problems.
I honestly do not want to do homework if it is not needed, but in most cases homework goes back over what you just learned and always you to apply those skills. You are right though in the fact that the amount, and not even that, but the time it takes doing the homework is ridiculous. In this case especially your sibling who is in middle school has no choice in what they take or the difficulty in which the classes are, to a certain existent, but whereas I choice the difficulty of my classes. I know I am taking difficult classes, and know that these classes will require much outside reading and further study. I often feel that I do not have anytime to do what I want though. I hardly have an option though to take easier classes, when universities are expecting such high standards for courses, test scores, and extra activites.
Yeah, I probably wouldn't want to completely do away with it either, just try to make changes in it so that its not so much. And I understand the knowing some classes will take more work. In highschool I took all Advance Placement classes, so I knew what I was getting into, but even then I never had as much homework as a lot of kids do now.
MommaTrish - mom of 2 boys and a bump
I do feel that homework can be beneficial in some classes, especially Math, because it provides extra practice that I wouldn't have been motivated enough to try on my own. Other classes overdo homework, but I think we should be looking on a teacher-to-teacher basis.
I've heard news reports of young students getting so much homework that they get back problems from weighted-down backpacks! Now that can be detrimental. I seriously thought at one point that all teachers should get together and compare homework, quiz, and test dates so no one was overloaded on a single day, but the work involved in that endeavor would probably be unthinkable.
Could you cite the study, and maybe spend a little more time talking about it if you're going to include it in your blog? I think it would improve your blog overall.
~C
Check out the latest entry in the Between The Lines column!
Umm...I have a class where the homework is assigned and never checked, not required, nor even considered beyond, "Here you go if you want to." No one does it. Ever. And guess what? You can't learn Calculus that way.
Nicholas Aden
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Word.
Even now as I'm putting off reading for my History of Mexico class; while I sit here and eat my pizza and read these blogs... Even though I'm complaining about the six chapters that take 5 hours a piece to read and the 80 terms I need to know by the end of the night......
I'd never do away with it.
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What's the worst that could happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do? [Rudy Steiner from The Book Thief]
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I hate homework. But, I think that passing any math or physics course would be near impossible without it. Homework enables extra practice outside of class to ensure a better grasp of the subject. I do believe that my 12 year old brother in middle school has entirely too much homework and "busywork."
Some homework is beneficial, but too much hinders a student's growth in areas outside of school and in classes viewed as less important.
Last year I had a class similar to the one that Nick mentioned above. He told us on the first day of school that we would get homework from him almost every night, but that he would not check it and it would not be a part of our grade. People had mixed emotions. Some wanted the homework to be counted so it would boost there grade and there wouldn't be that much of a focus on tests, and others were like sweeeeet no homework for this class. The teacher had an excellent strategy, however, because he also didn't give us notes in class. Our grades on our tests basically depended on the reading and the questions we had to answer at home for homework. We went over them in class and it really helped. I wish more classes did this because whenever I didn't get a question I didn't feel pressured to try to find the answer or to make something up so I would have something for the teacher to grade. I simply noted that question so I could ask the teacher the next day. I was also able to finish my hw faster because I didn't really answer in complete sentences, I just took quick notes for myself. I also found myself studying a lot less for that class before a test because I wasn't studying from notes that I took when I was half asleep, I was studying from homework that I took time to look up and write on my own.
Homework is designed to aid in the learning process. Some kids may understand things easier than others and not need the homework, but most do. Answering questions on a homework assignment helps to show that the students understand the material. A lot of times, students can try just reading the text and THINK they understand what they are reading, but in reality they may not have a clue.
I hate doing homework just as much as anyone else, but when I am doing the homework, I am forced to truly understand the text. I always do better in classes where we have homework assignments.