Does Homework Bring More Good Than Harm?

Does homework bring more good than harm? The word ‘homework’ has never been a question in everyone’s mind. They are tasks allocated by teachers and completed by students during non-school time (Cooper, 1989, as cited in Gifford, 2004; Lorna, 2004; Russell, 2004). However, as the amount of homework given to students keep increasing, many debates have been raised between parents and school officers. Someone hold a point of view that homework is requisite to enhance students’ performance. Nevertheless, the others believe that homework is not a must for students as there are still many other ways for them to learn. This essay argues that homework should be banned at school as it brings more cons than pros. It brings stress to students, takes away students’ precious time, elevates families’ pressure, overworks students and even decreases student’s interest in learning. This essay will first talk about the harm and benefits of homework before making a summary that homework has to be banned and other practices should be used to substitute it.

To begin with, homework should be prohibited as it makes students become strained and exhausted. According to Lacina and Gifford (2004, as cited in Jan, 2010; Rhodes, 2010), students are stressed because of the great amount of homework allotted by their teachers within a day’s time at school. This illustrates that the amount of given homework has already outstripped the volume that students can handle. In nowadays’ society, most students join numerous extracurricular activities after school such as volleyball team, orchestra, choir, arts club etc., they are already very tired when they arrive home at night. Students then need to face a large number of homework and tasks with just a finite time, and so they are uninterested and unwilling to finish their homework. When the number of incomplete assignments keep growing, students will turn stressful as they realize that there are still many tasks waiting for them to complete. Also, when students endeavor their best to accomplish all the tasks in a short time so as to hand in the homework to their teachers in the next day, they will be fatigued and frustrated as they cannot get enough rest. Therefore, homework ought to be vetoed because it affects the mental and physical conditions of students.

Furthermore, homework should be quashed as students are deprived of their valuable time for family bonding and other activities. Pope (2005, as cited in Sarah, 2005) mentions that students are stuck with homework and have insufficient time for resting, doing chores and being with their families. This supports the idea that students are devoid of their own free time, they cannot do what they desire after finishing a whole day of study at school. Normally, students need to spend about eight hours at school in weekdays, they only obtain less than a half day time after they go back home. If students need to join extracurricular activities or attend tutorial classes, they only have a quarter of day time left. Since they have to submit a huge volume of assignments to their teachers in the coming school day, they need to consume the whole night to fulfill all the tasks allocated by the teachers. They will then have no choices but apply less time to have dinner and liaise with their families. As they do not possess enough time to finish the homework, they will have a little time or even no time left to take a break and enjoy doing other activities for example watching television, listening to music, surfing the Internet, hanging out with friends etc. too. Hence, homework should be cancelled as it badly affects how students utilize their own free time.

In addition, homework should not be kept as it augments the strain of families. As report by the National Public Radio and CBS Sunday Morning (2003, as cited in Gifford, 2004; Lorna, 2004; Russell, 2004), parents interviewed by the programs state that they are not able to manage so much assignments. This evidence shows that the unreasonable quantity of homework conducts burdens and complications for the family. When the amount of homework supplements, parents will need to participate more in their children’s work. For those parents who