Students in every grade in every school claim that they have too much homework. In our school it is preached that it is a good thing to be an athlete. Yet an athlete coming home from an away game can come home as late as ten at night leaving very little time for homework. There are also kids in band who also have to attend these games, not giving them much time for homework either. Kids involved in the play or musical also struggle trying to find time to do their homework. Kids simply cannot handle it all at once.
There are two different sides when it comes to homework. One of the two sides are teachers. However, there is some discrepancy among teachers about whether homework is a good or bad thing. Teacher’s job is to give kids an education. Homework is a necessary thing for kids to get an education. Homework is one of the only ways that kids can practice what they need to learn. Kids do not pay attention in class and they do not study. If they do not have homework they will fail all of their grades and they will not get the education they are supposed to receive. There are some subjects, like math, where you need homework so that you can get the education you need. According to Ms. Ebling, “I think that I more expect kids to put time into studying for vocab and grammar quizzes versus practice assignments.” Just because kids don’t get homework does not mean that they aren’t studying. You can laugh at that just like a lot of people will, but some kids actually do study and would continue to if they didn’t have homework. Some kids who never study now might start to study. You never know what might happen if you never give it a chance. Some teachers have a completely different standpoint on how much homework kids should get. They understand that kids already are spending seven to eight hours a day trying to gain an education. They also understand that not every subject needs all of the extra practice that other subjects need. According to Mrs. Dugan “If they can demonstrate proficiency on summative assessments they are always going to be able to pass and I think it’s important to look at this idea of homework in the big picture,” She believes that homework can be good, but it is really just extra practice. Mrs. Dugan believes that where students actually prove their understanding on tests. If they can get all A’s on tests, but don’t do their homework they should not be failing a class. These kids have proved that they are getting educated so you should not punish them if they are too busy one night to get their homework done. Mrs. Dugan also claims, “I very rarely give an assignment and give one day at the end of class and have it due at the beginning of class which would be like a true homework assignment, so if students don’t finish homework there is usually some fundamental reasons behind it, it’s not that they didn’t do it one night.” There are kids who have jobs or are unable to do their homework because of issues that go on in a kids home. It can be difficult for a kid to find time to do homework on a certain night. Then there is also the point of view of the students. There are many different activities that students juggle at one time and it can get hard for them to handle it all. They say that these kids are being taught responsibility, but why should these kids be punished for extra things they want to be involved in. Kids who are not in these activities are usually the kids who don’t do homework and they are the ones with lots of time to accomplish it. Homework takes kids a lot of time to do. Let’s not lie there are a lot of kids out there who are procrastinators. They do not do projects until the last minute and then they are up for hours the night before. That is completely and totally their fault, but when you add up all of the homework that the students got that day it can take hours to complete all of it. After an hour or two most kids get bored out of their mind and decide that it is not even worth finishing their assignments. Even if they do their work it usually is done without any effort and it didn’t do them any good. When asked how much homework he gets each night Gehrig Monday said, “I usually get about two and a half hours of homework each night.” That does not seem like an insane amount of time, but when you add in all of the other things a teenager is expected to do each night then it does seem to look like long amount of time. Our school encourages us to be in sports, so let’s say that is two hours a night. Most teenagers then have to eat dinner which is another hour. There are teenagers who then work each night, so let’s add on three more hours. Most kids also have small chores to do around the house so let’s add a half hour. Adding this altogether with getting out of school at 3:15, you end up with having kids get to sleep at 11:45 each night. This is not enough time for students to sleep and then start the whole cycle over again the next morning. When asked how much homework students got each night Ms. Ebling answered, “From what I’ve asked students they have anywhere from one to two hours of homework a night.” This is what kids receive after study hall. There are other things besides homework that kids can be assigned as well, such as projects. Even though most teachers give work time to do projects it still takes a lot of time and that adds onto their one to two hours a night. Homework has some potential value as Mrs. Dugan and Ms. Ebling alluded to, but each teacher should recognize that they are not the only ones giving out homework. Teachers will sometimes think that they can give kids enough homework that they will just finish in study hall, but a kid can only finish one of those assignments then and that leaves others. If teachers all have this philosophy then kids won’t get their homework done, because that is a lot of 45 minutes stacked onto each other. Homework is something that has the possibility to help every child’s education, but the only problem is that they are getting too much.
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