Taking the Work out of Homework

Many parents think that  it is a good thing when they see their child doing homework. But in some cases it is the opposite. Much of the homework students are being assigned from their teachers is pure busy work that doesn’t help them learn whatsoever. All of this work is causing students to stay up super late and be exhausted for the work they are doing in school that actually does help them learn. According to the New York Times, “A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has ‘little to no impact’ on student test scores.” This shows that not doing this work takes a very long time and it has a little impact if any on a student’s learning. Also according to ProCon.org, “Fourth grade students who did no homework got roughly the same score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam as those who did 30 minutes of homework a night. Students who did 45 minutes or more of homework a night actually did worse.” Homework being assigned is so pointless that if you do more of it you do WORSE on tests. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

 Some people think these scores may be due to other factors that have nothing to do with homework such as kids playing too much video games. This may seem like a good argument but it’s actually false. According to Romeo Vitelli from Psychology Today, “Supporters of the cognitive enhancement hypothesis point out that video games are often highly complex and can act as training programs for different cognitive skills. This would mean that regular gaming can lead to significant improvements in attention capacity, visual orientation, and overall memory.” This shows that playing video games can do the opposite of what people think which shows it isn’t from things that have nothing to do with homework. I think these worse scores from more homework is due to the stress of all of the assignments they have. According to ProCon.org, a poll was taken and “59% said they had too much homework” “43% said it was their biggest source of stress” and “82% said they were always stressed by schoolwork.” This shows that the more homework that is given to students the more they are stressed. It also shows that many students are stressed so if less homework is given there will be better test scores for hundreds and thousands of students around the world. That brings me to my solution to this problem of this pointless homework. Teachers should be handing out little to no homework to students. It will help all students.

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1 thought on “Taking the Work out of Homework

  1. It is very surprising that homework has no impact on test scores. This piece is well written and clearly states the call to action.

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