Homework should be abolished

what about leaving time in school for students to be responsible? I think schools should be more about learning how to work for yourself instead of just learning facts and never learning how to apply what is learned.

Homework in general is good, because it serves as practice. Some students like me need to practice things in order to learn, but maybe that is not your case. HOWEVER, all the way from elementary school to high school, most of the assignments are useless. I'll list some examples I can recall:

- Making a comic obout the history of our country (Mexico in my case),
- Science fair (I learned nothing).
- Cultural fair (Dancing and singing).
- Anything having to do with ethics and 'human development'.
- A diary with ridiculous questions the teacher made every class.
- Creative dress, food, hairdo.
- History tunnel.
- Entrepreneurship project (In that class they only teach you about values like leadership and that #, what kind of project do you expect from a high school student if they didn't teach anything useful like actually starting a business?).
- Countless pages of sentence writing in Spanish class (ok, maybe could benefit some people).
- Making your own game (again, they didn't teach anything useful to actually make a game, like programming).
- Presentation about who you admire.
- Reading useless ethics essays and having to make reports.
- Presentation about the 'World Charter', about sustainable enterprises and things like that, which may sound useful, but it was not.
- Any activity in elementary school, truly any.
- Any report about a movie we saw in class.
- Anything in English class. This is sad because instead of teaching grammar, vocabulary and fluent conversation which is needed to properly use a foreign language, we only did stupid activities like improvisation and Thanksgiving.
- Dozens of math problems when only a significant few are needed. A homework of 10-15 problems for each chapter is enough to mastering math.
- And one of the worst: Algorithm Flowcharts!! They didn't teach any real programming in middle school but they made us draw countless useless flowcharts.

These are only a few examples of useless activities I had to do. If they don't want to teach something real, then at least give us that free time for ourselves. I don't complain however for all homework, some few activities were worth the while.

Originally posted by 7Ayreon
Well the problem is that the majority of the people agree but nothing is being done about it. I would like to know why? What's the opposition on this theory?

Ok, here's the opposition to this theory.

If homework were "outlawed" there would be some studious kids who would do it anyway to get ahead. They would become far smarter than the lazy-asses who went home and played their Wii and listened to their iPods all night.

Then these smart kids would end up getting into the best colleges and getting the best jobs, and basically getting ahead in life. This would lead to the whiny kids who didn't do homework growing up and whining about how the smart kids have the big houses and all the money and how that isn't fair.

if you can make this come true you will be my hero!!!!!!!!!1

reply to post by chissler


I'm sure glad I read your response first. You said it better than I could have. School is training for real life. Training comes in stages, where we learn to either reject the system and forage out on our own, or embrace the system and learn to take responsibility for our actions. I have actually had the pleasure of being in both places at one time or another. As my Dad said, "It doesn't matter, Son, so much HOW you get your education, as that you get it somewhere. Until you decide where to get it, I suggest you try college. Oh, By the Way, you'll have to work your butt off to pay for it, same as I did."

And I did. 'Course, I augmented my income from a low-paid honorable job by running booze from Idaho to Utah. It was a living.

reply to post by 7Ayreon


I understand what your saying, its been many many years since i was at school, and to be honest looking back they were some of the best years of my life.

however i sometimes felt that teachers gave excessive amounts of homework, id have 6 subjects a day at school, all subjects gave homework except Phys ed (2 subjects of that a week) on any given day id have to do 5-6 subjects of homework, each subject would take about an hour to complete PROPERLY (lol) plus you add assignments on top of that.

it seemed to me that it was the teachers way of compensating for a lack of teaching ability on their part. now if someone was taught something and didnt understand what was being taught they would go home and do an hours homework wrong, then get frustrated and start to resent school even more.

I have just finnished compulsory education and I agree that homework is entirely useless. I can honestly say I never learnt anything from homework as it was always useless.

If the teacher didn't finnish what they were meant to do in class they would set a piece of terrible homework to 'teach' you what you missed in class. Of course the truth was either you had already been taught it and it served no purpose or you hadn't been taught it and the homework made no sense.

You can never learn anything from homework because you need the teacher to enforce it, without the teacher it is forgotten immediately.

The only good homework was Coursework as it truly couldn't all be finnished at school.

An even better idea to reduce missing school, make lunches longer! In fact, make half the day free time. Actually even better, do no work at school and make the teachers entertain us, make them cook food for us and juggle! Perfect!

reply to post by LordBaskettIV


This is absolutely correct. Teachers should do more to teach children and not depend on the parents to take up the slack.

Let me give an example. When i was nine years old I was hit by a car. Broke my femur clean in half. Was in the hospital for a few months in traction and ended up in a body cast and sent home to heal. I was way behind in schooling by then and my parents hired a home tutor. She only spent 1 hour a day with me and when i went back to school i was ahead of my class in there studies.

So my conclusion is there are way to many students in a classroom and teachers are unable to teach each child properly. Something must be done about our current educational system or there will be many kids not meeting there potential. The main problem is the funding just is not there.

SO YES, teachers should do more but in reality they cant due to lack of resources. Another aspect is you try teaching kids that show nothing but disrespect and no passion to learn. You must then only focus on the ones that show they want to learn.

And the parents need to teach there kids the importance of an education and instill some values at a very early age.

In my opinion homework should not exist. Take it away for a year or two and maybe someone will see that its our schools that need help and something may change then.

Here is a solution. lets say one hour a day for homework.times 7 days is 7 hours a week. Times 4 weeks. that is around 4 school days. times 12 months we have 48 days. Add 48 days of school a year or 1 hour a day. I bet most kids would prefer an extra hour a day rather than 48 days a year.

I think homework is not generally bad or good. It really depends what you do and how you do it. I think the whole school system needs to be reformed. students need more freedom by choosing what they wanna learn and should be supported in their interests in small groups.
I don´t think homework makes students leave school but the way they are treated. there are a lot of teachers who do not see their people needs or have no good pedagogical or psychological knowledge.

I study what interests me when I feel like it. If that coincides with tests fine, if not fine.

My grades are fair to middle and my folks can only afford state college so it really doesnt matter, does it? SATs count for everything and grades for practically nothing.

I know bright kids who bummed or quit high school, got high SAT scores and are doing just fine at Cal State.

The whole grade thing is game to keep the teachers busy like they had nothing else to do.


sarc

when i finish my job at the end of the day.. my boss doesnt send me home with 4-5 assignments to complete.. and he doesn't tell me that i'm going to be doing a cetain task the next day so i should study this this and this.. all that is done at work... and school work should be no different.. i agree with the OP kids skip school cause if they didnt do there h/w they dont want to go into class...

Originally posted by 7Ayreon
I believe it's time that adults finally listen to the youth and take there word for it that homework SUCKS. Therefore, teachers should not issue studying, homework etc. be done at HOME. School takes a large portion of our lives as it is, and half of our bloody day. So what I'm saying is that once school is over for the day - that is IT! No homework or anything to do with school until we go to school the next day. Studying for tests should only be done at school, period. Why do I think it should be this way? Because I believe this will SIGNIFICANTLY end students from skipping school. Homework = skipping school, no homework = ends skipping school significantly (not completely because of bullying etc. etc).

Take the message from the Media themselves for example, "ReFresh". They are telling employees to Relax more during lunch hour and STOP over working. Its the same thing with education. Get the point I'm trying to make?

Stop giving homework? Most kids don't even do any homework when assigned! Sadly, it's reality that our students are becoming lazier every year, and it starts with the study habits taught at home. I do believe homework makes kids better educated since they take what they got at school and further work with it at home. School is full of distractions with gossip and dating and BFFs, so I guess doing work at home has a positive outcome for those kids who actually care about their education and want to be better than most.

I think homework should be very limited. School is for school and home is for home. This teaches kids to bring their work home with them when they grow up. California and Arizona schools over load kids with homework. Many times the type of homework that is assigned requires that a parent be involved. I don't have time for that S$&*.

I have brought this up before to schools and teachers and they just look at me like I am crazy.

We never had that much homework when I was a kid and we focused on actual learning while at school. These days they cram all sorts of nonsense down the kids throats while they are at school.

For example, last year on cinco de mayo, my kids spent the entire day at school celebrating/learning about Mexico. The school sent home boat loads of home work that night to cover for all the real learning that was passed over on that day.

Most of the little homework I had I could do in half an hour at most. Really there is enough down time at school to finish it quickly which is what I did. I considered non school hours MY time, most people don't bring their work home so why should I do this garbage I'm not getting paid for on my time?

At higher levels like AP classes you can decide for yourself how much time spent and effort studying you need to invest to do well (in my case it was not much). Tests are what really determine your grade and if you listen in class to your teacher or professor and really engage in the discussion you will find you don't even need to take notes, you will just know the material. Only in higher level college classes and non-strength areas do I find the need to take notes and study. Hell I research stuff and watch documentaries on my own like here at this site which I recently registered but have enjoyed for a while. I am motivated by my interests and lack of knowledge in a subject I deem necessary, not the establishment. I also believe philosophically that humans weren't meant to live like workaholics, which is of course the desire of the corporate world. They were the ones that first promoted public schools in the 1800's so they'd have a docile, obedient workforce. You can imagine how appauled I was when California outlawed homeschooling. I believe that is dangerous and unconstitutional.

If kids were allowed to pursue their interests and not shepherded into stuff they hate and won't use again, maybe we wouldn't have such a problem. Instead you get our fine educational institutions.

[edit on 2-10-2008 by CapsFan8]

I think giving homework to kids regularly under the age of 12 is laughable. I have helped homework my kids do their homework every night when they were really young and I could see the frustration that built up over the inane, stupid things they had to do on top of a full day at school. After speaking with his Teacher I was totally dumbfounded to hear that my kid was seen as stupid. He didn't say it out loud but said that he was below average in intelligence and that he had to work doubly hard to make it. He had to live with that until the age of 14 when he was tested and it was discovered that he has dyslexia. He was put off homework since those early days but because he is smart he still made it to college doing Aviation Studies. He is doing well but I know for sure that doing homework at such an early age has nearly ruined his chances.

teachers give homework to train kids. not teach. TRAIN. make them mindless robots that will do any task given. think about it. teachers can assign any crap assignment they want and kids will still do it.

ex i had a homework for math class where i had to make up and solve an equation... i thought thats why we had books.

its riduculous. homework has no puporse except keep kids off the streets and extra 30mins - 1hour.