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A Student’s Mortal Enemy By Elysiana

Assigning homework does no good for students. Homework is just repetitive, useless, and a waste of time as many students would say. It really doesn’t do any good for a student’s learning if it isn’t done correctly. It may lead to cheating, and other negative things involving school work.

One reason teachers should do away with homework is because most students do bad on homework because they don’t know how to do it. Therefore, they are practicing it wrong. If homework is for practice or to help understanding, how can it help with either of those if the student has done it wrong?

Another reason is because of time management. Even if a student knows how to do the homework, they may not get to it so their grade suffers. If parents have gotten their children involved in multiple things, those things may have extra work needed done, too. If every teacher assigns one assignment, that’s at least five assignments. If each takes 20 minutes to complete, that’s 100 minutes, or over an hour and a half. For most kids, there is practice to go to, church, family things, and other extracurricular activities. Children may not get home until six or seven at night, then eat supper. By the time things are done, only half of the assignments may be done before exhaustion or tiredness sets in. The point of homework is to learn the skills, right? So even if a student knows the skills, their grade may not reflect that because of homework assignments.

After a few assignments aren’t done, a few more may not be done the next night and the student falls farther behind. Trying to get old assignments done along with new ones take up a large chunk of time, then you add out of school activities, and unexpected things, and the day is almost over. Once the time comes to go to sleep, the time is late and sleep may be lost over the worry of these assignments. This happens everyday, causing a vicious cycle. Now, imagine your day being like that everyday. Could you do it?

So in conclusion, homework very rarely helps students. Without the teacher there to teach the skills, if students are confused, they are left on their own.

To Heck With Homework By: Madison

Isn't homework supposed to help students? Shouldn't homework make things more clear for the student to understand? Isn't homework meant to take stress off of students by giving them practice in what they are learning in class? Yes, homework should do all of these things, but it sometimes doesn't. It does the complete opposite. And so students say that they should not be required to do homework, as it does not always lead to increased learning:

The nation's top homework scholar, Duke University's Harris Cooper, concluded that doing homework won't measurably improve academic achievement for grade school kids.

Japan, Denmark, and Czech Republic assign less homework than American teachers; yet, they outperform the U.S. on student achievement tests. Countries that pile it on such as Greece, Thailand, and Iran seem to be "low-scoring countries."

The Homework Myth's Alfie Kohn says, "It's one thing to say we are wasting kids' time and straining parent-kid relationships, but what's unforgivable is if homework is damaging our kids' interest in learning, undermining their curiosity."

Although it can be beneficial, homework's cons weigh the pros down. Since homework does not alway increase learning, it schould not be required of students. Teachers need to teach students. Students should not be teaching themselves.

Why Homework? by Zach

How helpful is homework to students truly? Doesn't really lead to increased learning and make our students smarter? Or doesn't it hold back students and cause them to fall off the wagon and fail their classes?

From what I have researched, I have learned that homework really doesn't increase learning in school. For the smarter kids in class, homework is just a dull review of the days lessons that are easily finished while the slower students struggle over their assignments, due to it not being as easy for them to learn the material, and end up not doing the homework, doing it wrong, or just cheat off a friend, which can be easily reflected by poor test scores.

If a school wanted to increase learning value, they would create a mandatory learning center for the slower students so they could learn the material at their own pace and do well in school. Not give them homework, where some students find the assignments only an optional choice and decide not to do them.