Homework: Good or Bad?

In a very subjective blog post, a student is going to talk about their opinion on homework. Homework is always a controversial topic from the eyes of students, parents, and teachers. All three parties seems to have a different take on the topic. Time to dive into the popular positions from all the different viewpoints and figure out what the real deal on homework is.

·       Students: Spoiler alert here: students hate homework. It’s not even one of those low-level hates, where it’s more of an annoyance than a dislike; it is a full blown hatred comparable to few other things that could be going on in a student’s life. The fact that students have to go to school for (typically) 8 hours a day, just to have multiple hours of extra work for home piled up after that, is just unfathomable to people from the ages of about 10-22. It has been reported that homework adds unnecessary stress; some schools have even gone as far as to eliminate homework from their district in order to focus on their students’ mental health, like this one here. All in all, the majority of students would probably vote against homework, and look at it as more of an unnecessary addition to school.

·         Parents: Parents have been historically known to be pretty indifferent on the homework topic. Some see its benefits and why kids have to do it, some are nostalgic with the “If I had to do it, they should have to do it too!” and some have seen it tear their kids apart mentally and emotionally and have been trying to reduce or eliminate it for years now. There are multiple viewpoints from this demographic, but the worst one is the nostalgic believers. Times and people change, and maybe this current generation can’t handle the pressure like previous generations could. At the end of the day, parents who argue the benefits of homework have a point, and parents who are against homework have solid points too. As stated before, things change, generations evolve, and the parents’ opinion on things shouldn’t even be considered. This is a decision to keep between the school district and the students.

·         Teachers: A common misconception that I often see from students is that teachers want to give them homework. That is usually not the case (exception to times where the class misbehaves so the teacher punishes them with homework), the teacher really just gives homework to better help prepare their students. There was a teacher at my high school who used to make his homework optional. The catch, however, was that half of the exam questions came from the homework, while the other half were mixed in with questions from the books and notes. While the homework was worth no points, it was still smart of the student to do it because it ended up being practice for the exam. I thought that strategy was genius, because it really showed who cared about the class and who wanted to learn. It was one of the most productive classes I took in high school.

So after breaking down the three most popular arguments made for and against homework, the conclusion can be drawn that while homework has multiple benefits and should not be eliminated completely, maybe it is time to start making homework less of a chore, start making it valuable to the kids instead of just busy work, and maybe don’t put as much value into it when it comes to grading. Taking away some of the pressure while adding value to the assignments is one way for everyone to be happy about the homework situation in school.