Schools should get rid of homework as it can be very detrimental to the students, and is generally unfair!
According to the US Bureau of Labor, as of 2023, 23% of homeschoolers have jobs on top of school. With school taking up 40 hours a week, it’s practically already a job, just without pay. So why are we forcing our students, these kids, to take what’s practically unpaid overtime on top of a “second” job? That isn’t going to be healthy for anyone.
A Stanford study shows the pitfalls of homework, saying that homework doesn’t help every student, depending on their own stress level. However, studies have proven that stress can be beneficial and homework can offer bad grades that have been limited to students who already thrive in academics or people who do not have many stressors in their lives, such as a relaxed schedule, poor finances, and a lesser to absent social life.
It hurts mental and physical health, studies show that teens need more sleep than younger children and adults forcing students to to take more work home will cause those teen students to miss out on sleep and start growing bad habits around sleep deprivation, such as caffeine addiction, and for those students that don’t stay up to do hours homework and studying what are those trade offs? Poor social life, less exercise, ignoring mental health needs, everything that teen students need to grow up healthy and set good habits for adulthood.
It’s an unfair assignment that should not be assigned because it favors certain people, skewing your true grades and GPA. Not all students have the same access to technology, help from adults, a place to study, time to study, etc., and that’s just not fair and doesn’t give everyone a truly fair chance.
In 1905, Italian educator Roberto Nevilis invented homework as a punishment for students who acted up during his classes, so why are we punishing every student regardless of their actions or commitment to education? What happened to the 6th and 8th amendments? We can not just apply this punishment to everyone without reason, and it being beneficial is not a valid reason because people argue that mandatory military service is good and helps grow discipline skills and connects youth, yet we don’t do that.
How can we fix this? Schools should assign optional homework and non-graded assignments for those students who want to focus more on academics and want a challenge, while not hurting those who can not do the homework. Schools are giving out less work than they used to and grading people higher than they used to. Some people believe that assigning homework will fix this, but teachers could just assign more work or more challenging work to be done during class instead of focusing on less important lessons, such as movies or “free work” days, or having a very relaxed class, as many teachers do, especially here at BFA. If a student is falling behind, they can still do their work outside of class, but that is their choice, which encourages students to pay attention and work harder during school hours, lest they miss sports, work, etc.