Posted: January 1st, 2020
Why Homework Is Bad
For decades, teachers have delegated homework to students. The purpose of homework is to discover if students understand the material well enough to complete an assignment on their own. Yet, is homework really helping kids or hurting them? From teachers’ point of view, homework is helpful to get an idea of how well students understand the material. On the other hand, from the parents’ and students’ point of view, homework is extremely stressful and time-consuming. I believe that homework doesn’t help students and may actually be hurting them.
First, homework isn’t helping kids as they rarely have time to get outside and be active. Without time to get outside and exercise, more and more kids are being diagnosed with ADHD and obesity. They don’t get to have fun and let out energy so when they are at school for seven hours a day they have a harder time concentrating. This has become a growing problem with middle and high school students as many schools have taken out physical education from the school schedule.
When kids get home, they won’t have time for exercise if they have hours of homework waiting for them. Second, kids are only kids once and need time to do what they want. They need creative outlets for their personal interests, like music, drama, and sports. If kids have no time to do what they want, are they going to be happy? Of course not! If they aren’t happy, will they try their best in school? Doubtful. When tired kids get overwhelmed with work, they block out or miss important information in the classroom.
Then, they don’t have what they need to know for their homework and what about that test next week in Spanish class? Are they going to get a good grade on that? No! Not completing homework has a domino effect. When the teacher explains tonight’s homework and stressed kids don’t get it, let’s just say, “It’s going to be a very long night! ” Kids can get so upset over homework; it doesn’t only affect the child but also the parents. Wouldn’t life be so much easier without homework? A third reason that homework doesn’t help is that children are growing and need more sleep.
Now that homework has become a huge part of a child’s night, it is still being done late into the night. Most kids are getting less than seven hours of sleep. If kids don’t get a good night’s sleep, how do parents and teachers expect them to do their best in school? When kids are tired, they are more likely to get overwhelmed and stressed. If exhausted, do you think their work is going to be quality? No! Doing poorly on homework impacts kids’ grades. Homework has become something that children stress over every night. Let’s put it this way, homework is not helping.
It is causing more kids to get diagnosed with ADHD and obesity since they don’t have the time to just get outside and play in the bright, sunny outdoors . Because they have homework piling up, they have less time to just be kids and do what they want. Also, kids don’t get enough sleep with so much homework every night! Think about what life would be like without homework. The world would be a better place and kids would be doing so much better in school. Have you ever thought about the fact that children spend most of their day doing school related things? Does homework still seem like a good idea? ?
