Should Homework be Banned?

After long, eight-hour days, the last thing most students want is to go home and do homework. Some parents and others believe that excess homework is preventing children from leading balanced lifestyles with a healthy amount of sleep and activities to keep them fit and active.

“The horror stories I hear from parents and students about five or more hours spent on homework a night fly in the face of evidence of what’s best for kids, even what’s best for promoting academic achievement,” said Harris M. Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Critics of homework argue that it can cause a lot of stress, especially when students are already under so much pressure to do well in school, get into a good college, make friends, and stay active.

In fact, the time that children spend outdoors or playing sports has decreased by 40 percent since 1981 according to The Atlantic. And while some think homework is good for students in small amounts, critics argue that too much homework can cause stress.

Still others believe that requiring students to complete additional course work by themselves at home is good, because it forces them to test their own understanding of a subject. They believe that keeping up with homework and making sure to set aside the time to do it also teaches  students essential skills such as time management, discipline, and responsibility that they will need to succeed in the future.

In addition, homework proponents argue that it allows you to practice what you are learning. If you didn’t have homework, some think you would have to stay in school until you finished your practice, and since everyone works at different rates, you might have to be there until the slower students finally caught on.

So how much homework is too much? Some professionals agree that students should not be assigned more than 10 minutes per grade level of homework a night. A 2007 Metlife study found that 45 percent of students in grades three to 12 spend more than an hour a night doing homework, including six percent of students who reported spending more than three hours a night on their homework. In the 2002-2003 school year, a study out of the University of Michigan found that American students ages six through 17 spent three hours and 38 minutes per week doing homework.

How do students feel about the homework situation? Alexis Bickers, a 5th grader at Fluvanna County Middle School, says “Homework is awful. It’s a waste of time, in my opinion. Between my two main teachers, I have three or four pages a night.” “Yes, homework should be banned,” said Brian Porter, a 9th grade student at FCHS. “We do enough work in school, then we go home and on top of chores, sports, and family we have more work on the subject we already spent hours on.”

However, some students don’t mind getting homework. “I get a decent amount of homework, sometimes none. I do not play sports and without homework I’d have a lot of extra time on my hands,” said 5th grader Karly Miller.

Others admit that homework, while not enjoyable, is a necessary evil. The famous saying “practice makes perfect” implies that the more you work on your homework problems, the better you will get at the skills, making you smarter and better at doing things. “I do not think homework should be banned, but I do think it should have some limitations,” said FCHS 9th grader Anja Vernatter.

The question, then, is how much homework is ideal? The answer isn’t an easy one, but one thing is certain: Compared to some students in the rest of the world, American students have it easy. According to a study on Quarts.com, American students spend only six hours per week on homework compared to 10 hours a week in Russia and 14 hours a week in China.