by Sara Miller, features editor
Homework: the weekend ruiner, time sucker, and mood destroyer. Students hate homework. Who wants to go to school for seven hours only to have to spend two-three more hours focusing on school again? Homework does however offer students more practice, allowing them to be successful in class.
Where do we draw the line on homework? Though homework is beneficial, sometimes too much is too much. This brings about the question no one can agree on; do teachers assign too much homework?
Teachers intend for homework to reinforce what they teach in class, allowing students extra practice and more time to try and understand the topic before the teacher moves on to a new one the next day. So if homework is used for practice, one could compare it to the idea of practicing for a game, with a game representing a test in school. Coaches don’t make the team practice for too long because they would get tired, and eventually bored with doing work for so long, even if they love the sport. This is why the average practice is only about two hours long; mind you that is for a sport the athletes enjoy.
Teachers should keep that idea in mind when assigning homework. Students are tired from a long day at school and who knows what else, so having more work to do is the last thing they want. Therefore, instead of treating homework as practice and something for them to understand the topic better, they rush through it as though it is just another task on their long list of things to do, thus defeating the purpose.
Students don’t enjoy homework, and when they receive too much of it, all they want to do is get it over with. Therefore, most of the time, if they even do it at all, they just do the minimum to get by and barely understand/remember what they did the next day.
The large amount of homework that teachers assign defeats the whole point of having it. If teachers gave less homework, students would likely try harder on the homework they actually receive because they won’t have as much to do. If students received less homework, then they have more of an opportunity to become successful in the classes they need extra practice in, which is the teacher’s goal anyways.
Homework should be decreased because student performance should not decrease.