Persuasive Essay : Why Homework Should Be Harmful To Children

One of the most controversial topics in education today is homework. This debate has been going on for decades, as teachers, administrators, and parents disagree on whether homework should be assigned, and if assigned, then what the right amount of homework should be. The time students spend on homework has increased over the years. “High school students get assigned up to 17.5 hours of homework per week, according to a survey of 1,000 teachers” (Bidwell). Recently, more fuel has been added in this debate because younger students in particular are receiving much more homework than before. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, states that “The amount of homework that younger kids – ages 6 to 9 – have

Because kids need time to do homework, if they are free then they have a chance to do homework. To begin, students get to learn new skills. They become better, but that is if they do their homework, they would be better at that unit. In addition, they get to prepare for the future and what’s ahead of them. Students could get a job in a future, so they would need to have practice with homework, so if you have to use what you learned for the job, then you would need practice for it first so you know what you're doing. Along with, they would get an achievement for what they are doing if they mastered that unit. In the future, many things would happen, students would turn into adults, and they would need to master the stuff that they learned from

Imagine having a full time job where you did not get paid, could not quit, and have at least a few hours of paperwork to complete each night. This is what students go through everyday with homework. Homework is assignments sent home from school for students of all ages to finish by a certain due date, for a grade. In the past decade, controversies over the amount of work kids and teens are given has lead many to study the benefits of homework to see if the work teachers assign is actually helping students academically and improving test scores. It has grown to an extreme amount, prevents kids and teens from getting the things they need in life, gets in the way of a good childhood, damages relationships, and has not proven to actually aid

“Homework is arguably the worst punishment inflicted upon the student body.” One would think this extreme statement would come from the 10-year boys and girls who complain to their parents about the homework they have to complete. However, Rodney Jones starts of his argument against homework using this statement. He argues that homework does not help children taking up all their time. Continuing, he explains how parents should extend child’s knowledge out of school instead of homework and in the end these assignments do not help students grade. However, in contrast of Jones’ beliefs homework indeed benefits children’s learning through the small amounts of extra practice it gives to help the students excel.

Sometimes our parents have no time to help us because they have their jobs. Then if we can’t get any help it’s going to be either a late grade or an F because we can’t get a good grade without a complete assignment. Our parents could also have a goodnight sleep without having to worry about us failing their classes because of homework. Teachers will also gain out of no homework because they don’t have to deal with grading messy handwriting and awful grammar. They don’t have to stay up however long it takes just to grade all the papers their students. It’s especially hard for middle school teachers and up because there are so many kids and so many different classes. Teachers can go anywhere they want if their lesson plan is finished for the next day if there is no homework. They won’t have to deal with angry kids, teens and yelling at them if they’re failing school because of homework. Homework is keeping everyone up.

It’s approaching midnight, the room is scattered with papers, and the only audible sound is the clicking of your pencil on the paper. You’ve been up for hours trying to finish your homework, which all seems so repetitive. You question how beneficial completing this homework actually is. A routine you all know too well. Homework has been a highly discussed topic for years. Everyone questions the benefits and reward. People should be informed about homework and the effects it actually has. Homework just causes stress, doesn't always help us learn the material, and doesn't prove to be helpful in standardized testing.

The debate regarding exactly how much homework is too much homework has been an ongoing debate for years. As of right now, there seems to be no end in sight for this debate. Various adults believe that if children do not obtain homework, then they are not learning properly. However, numerous children are obtaining a substantial amount of homework per night, as well as per each class. Once a child exceeds a certain amount of homework, then it is no longer beneficial for the child’s education. An excessive amount of homework can essentially become harmful to the child’s education. As a result, teachers are struggling with finding the right amount of homework to assign to students. The National Education Association as well as the National Parent-Teacher Association endorse the “10-minute rule” for teachers to follow when assigning homework to students. If a child is assigned an excessive amount of homework, then the child might experience more harm than good when attempting to complete the assigned homework.

   Do you guys think that homework should stay. If so, then You should keep reading this, because this is going to show you why we should keep homework. Then, how it can help the students.

Homework has never been a super popular thing to do after school, but some principals started noticing that it maybe taking up the time they usually use for activities they love to do. “... If we believe in developing kids' passions, we need to give them time." said Kirsten Walker, principal at Acacia(Moore). Kirsten Walker a principal for Acacia Elementary schools wanted to help kids grow their passions more by giving them the time they would usually use for homework to do so. Reading is a skill that will help any kid easily excel in their school work. If their ability to practice it is taken away They could end up even worse than where they started. “New York City’s P.S. 116 elementary school made news last year when its principal Jane Hsu abolished homework and asked families to read instead”(Schumaker). New york city realized that homework was taking away from kid’s after school activities and even extra reading time that they were losing when they have excessive amounts of homework. Homework takes up time in kids everyday lives which they could be using to get outside and have fun. “At the start of the 2013-14 school year, the Fentress County School District in Tennessee announced that it would enforce a district-wide ban on graded homework assignments because of the large amount of time it takes up”(Graham). After the realization that most kids do not have the time at

“Homework puts pressure on both kids and parents.” The things students learn on a regular bases parents did not learn back when they were in school and if they did it had a new method of doing it. The stress level of kids always studying and doing homework on a daily basis is making them overwhelming. “Homework takes away our personal time no student wants to come home and do more work on what they were already doing for the past 6 hours anyway.”

In many American households, homework is the main cause of stress. Some people think that America is not so well and adding more homework will fix that problem. A study by Indiana University found that students who do more homework tend to get higher scores on standardized tests” (“Do Kids Need Homework?”). “Plus, part of growing up is learning to balance outside activities and the demands of schoolwork” (“Should Parents Help Kids With Homework?). Teachers have their reasons as well. “Teachers say homework is important in the learning process and can help kids develop study and organizational skills. They say kids need to practice what they've learned in school so that the material sticks in their brain” (Strauss). “Having too much homework

The negative consequences it yields come forth in multitudes. It gives teachers an excuse to not improve their teaching skills but rather assign homework to make up for squandered class time. Hours spent on homework leaves students with hardly enough time to spend on extracurricular activities, personal interests, family gatherings, and sleep. The stress it produces often leads to depression, physical health problems, unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drugs and alcohol, self harm, and suicide. An ample amount of research has been done that substantiates homework’s harmful impact towards a child’s educational progress and emotional growth, yet it is repeatedly ignored. For something with such hazardous risks to be viewed as an essential constituent of education is absurd. Our nation is essentially valuing education before life itself. Teachers should not be given the ability to deprive children of necessary developmental experiences by assigning extreme amounts of homework, and parents should not sit around allowing it to happen. In order for children to become truly educated they need to experience the world and what is has to offer, not be cooped up in their bedrooms for hours on end completing futile

It has been said that “with all the homework students start to think less creatively and they might lose the learning to try and avoid challenging tasks” (Kohn). The fact that homework is able to make the students lose what they are learning is perhaps the most important reason that is is not beneficial. Homework has been seen as a way to increase learning and practice what students are learning, but with too much homework it can defeat the purpose. Students are getting much more work that is harder, because the schools are receiving stricter standards from the government that they must follow. But “the main effect ‘of the drive for so-called higher standards in schools is that the children are too busy to think,’as said by John Holt in 1959” (Kohn). Students are not being able to think creatively, because they are tied to standards and homework. “For students to become lifelong learners and good people, we need to work with them rather than using techniques like rewards and punishments, which merely do things to them” as said by Alfie Kohn, author of the book The Schools our Children Deserve (Kohn). Students see large amounts of homework as a punishment, and as said by Alfie Kohn that “merely does things to them” (Kohn). Homework should not be given in amounts where it starts to be counterproductive, and is no longer helping the students learn or think

Students all over the world hate homework. Even some teachers hate homework, but they still assign it. Homework causes stress, students have no time, and if kids don't understand the homework, it won't help. Homework just causes a lot of problems. Student should not get anymore homework.

The majority of students have, at one point or another, wished for less homework. For some student’s homework is not a big issue but for other students it can take hours and even days to do all their homework. That wasted time could be used for enjoyment or learning life skills instead of homework. Nine in ten high school students reported feeling stressed about homework (Galloway 4). So, should students get less homework? Yes, students should receive less homework because it improves their well-being by reducing stress and its impacts on health, increasing leisure time, and showing that homework does not affect grades significantly.