The Great Homework Debate
By Sarah Bayley and Sakura Jung
Homework is terrible, right? Some studies show that homework can be bad for you, but there are benefits of homework, like the fact that it still can affect your grades whether they are good or bad.
The Pros of Homework
Homework teaches time management skills. Students need to organize a time to ensure that all the work gets completed. It also reduces screen time. It provides more time to complete the learning process. Homework also creates a communication network. “Homework at a young age isn’t necessary, but I think it can be used to build skills,” says Dr. Daniela Montalto, a pediatric neuropsychologist and clinical director of the Institute for Learning and Academic Achievement at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone. Moreover, studies show that homework improves students in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.
Homework helps students to reinforce learning and develop good study habits and life skills and It allows parents to be associated with their child's learning.
The Cons of Homework
But one of the valuable reasons why homework should be banned is the fact most teachers fail to explain everything needed to solve the task during the class.
Parents cannot help with every task. Student's friends may lack the experience to help, and they have work to do as well. Studies show that too much homework is bad for kids. Piling on the homework doesn't help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores.
Furthermore, homework can be a waste of time. More homework does not lead to good grades. According to a study by Stanford University, 56 percent of students think about homework as a primary source of stress. 56 percent! Too much homework can result in a lack of sleep, headaches, exhaustion and weight loss. Excessive homework can also result in poor eating habits, with families choosing fast food as a faster choice.
Moreover, most homework is on a computer and sometimes kids can’t do that specific homework. Fifteen percent of US households with children do not have internet access. This problem concerns kids whose families do not have internet.
So is it good or bad? That is the question.
The pros and cons of homework are unquestionably all over the map. Many parents and teachers follow their personal outlook and establish learning environments around them. When parents and teachers clash on homework, the student is often left in the middle of that tug of war. By discussing these key points, each side can work to find some common ground kids can profit from a clear precise message.
The Facts
In the early 1900s, developing education theorists decried homework's negative impact on children's physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15. Public opinion overruled in favor of homework in 1917. Today, kindergarten to fifth graders have an average of 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders have 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth through twelfth graders have 3.5 hours per teacher, meaning a high school student with five teachers could have 17.5 hours of homework a week. Quantity may be important, but quality must be the priority for homework if a student is going to be successful.
Research published in the High School Journal demonstrates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework "scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average." On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn't have homework. A majority of studies on homework's impact - 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another - showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement.
Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: "Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students."
America has had issues with homework in the past. About a century or so ago progressive reformers argued that it made kids extremely stressed which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh.
The 21st century has had more homework to deal with than ever. American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s. Little kids are asked to bring schoolwork home with them. A 2015 study, for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers mostly agree that the kindergarteners shouldn’t have homework, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.
Homework is still very beneficial. Homework offers a valuable window into the curriculum, assessment practices, and instructional preferences of teachers. But this does not mean that students should get a massive amount of homework every day. Hopefully, this article got you to think about why do I even have homework. Is homework good or bad? What is your opinion?
Homework is terrible, right? Some studies show that homework can be bad for you, but there are benefits of homework, like the fact that it still can affect your grades whether they are good or bad.
The Pros of Homework
Homework teaches time management skills. Students need to organize a time to ensure that all the work gets completed. It also reduces screen time. It provides more time to complete the learning process. Homework also creates a communication network. “Homework at a young age isn’t necessary, but I think it can be used to build skills,” says Dr. Daniela Montalto, a pediatric neuropsychologist and clinical director of the Institute for Learning and Academic Achievement at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone. Moreover, studies show that homework improves students in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.
Homework helps students to reinforce learning and develop good study habits and life skills and It allows parents to be associated with their child's learning.
The Cons of Homework
But one of the valuable reasons why homework should be banned is the fact most teachers fail to explain everything needed to solve the task during the class.
Parents cannot help with every task. Student's friends may lack the experience to help, and they have work to do as well. Studies show that too much homework is bad for kids. Piling on the homework doesn't help kids do better in school. In fact, it can lower their test scores.
Furthermore, homework can be a waste of time. More homework does not lead to good grades. According to a study by Stanford University, 56 percent of students think about homework as a primary source of stress. 56 percent! Too much homework can result in a lack of sleep, headaches, exhaustion and weight loss. Excessive homework can also result in poor eating habits, with families choosing fast food as a faster choice.
Moreover, most homework is on a computer and sometimes kids can’t do that specific homework. Fifteen percent of US households with children do not have internet access. This problem concerns kids whose families do not have internet.
So is it good or bad? That is the question.
The pros and cons of homework are unquestionably all over the map. Many parents and teachers follow their personal outlook and establish learning environments around them. When parents and teachers clash on homework, the student is often left in the middle of that tug of war. By discussing these key points, each side can work to find some common ground kids can profit from a clear precise message.
The Facts
In the early 1900s, developing education theorists decried homework's negative impact on children's physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15. Public opinion overruled in favor of homework in 1917. Today, kindergarten to fifth graders have an average of 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders have 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth through twelfth graders have 3.5 hours per teacher, meaning a high school student with five teachers could have 17.5 hours of homework a week. Quantity may be important, but quality must be the priority for homework if a student is going to be successful.
Research published in the High School Journal demonstrates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework "scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average." On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn't have homework. A majority of studies on homework's impact - 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another - showed that take-home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement.
Research from Johns Hopkins University found that an interactive homework process known as TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) improves student achievement: "Students in the TIPS group earned significantly higher report card grades after 18 weeks (1 TIPS assignment per week) than did non-TIPS students."
America has had issues with homework in the past. About a century or so ago progressive reformers argued that it made kids extremely stressed which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh.
The 21st century has had more homework to deal with than ever. American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s. Little kids are asked to bring schoolwork home with them. A 2015 study, for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers mostly agree that the kindergarteners shouldn’t have homework, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.
Homework is still very beneficial. Homework offers a valuable window into the curriculum, assessment practices, and instructional preferences of teachers. But this does not mean that students should get a massive amount of homework every day. Hopefully, this article got you to think about why do I even have homework. Is homework good or bad? What is your opinion?
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