The Great Debate of Homework or No Work?

Homework has been a big topic with students and staff in many schools across the country. The question of whether students should be given homework has come from students and parents. There has been a complaint from almost every student at some point in their academic career when given homework.

They’re either asking, “Why do I have to do this?” or “What’s the purpose of this homework” or the biggest thing stated by students is “I won’t have time!!” There are mixed feelings from students and staff  about homework.

The main concern of students is they question why homework is necessary. Jeremy Poe, a 10th grader at Kenwood High school says, “I believe that homework shouldn’t be given because we already do enough work for the seven hours we spend in school and homework is just adding to the stress of life.”

On the other hand, teachers like Ms. Scott-Cerezo, an English teacher, feels that homework is occasionally necessary to reinforce concepts or provide practice. Other students felt that homework shows how responsible a student is and prepares them for the responsibility of the real world. For example, if the homework has a deadline, it shows that they will be able to turn in the homework before the deadline making sure they don’t receive points off for turning it in late. This prepares them for the real world as jobs, bills, and many things in life come with deadlines. If jobs have deadlines for certain things, school has already prepared them for meeting deadlines no matter what else is going on in life.

Meanwhile some students find it very hard to balance their work life and school at the same time. Nick Fields, an 11th grader at Kenwood shared, “I work almost 40 hours a week, so with homework in the way, it makes my life stressful knowing that if I don’t do the work my grade can possibly drop. I can’t handle both and I’d rather have money in my pockets that worrying about homework.”

Mrs. Glenn, another Kenwood English teacher often keeps this in mind when assigning homework. “I know many of my students have jobs, are a part of sports or extracurriculars, or are taking additional classes at night to either recover credits or get ahead with CCBC courses so there is a lot in their day to get done without the added workload of too much homework so I tend to keep it to reading or giving them further out deadlines that allows them to manage their own time accordingly to get it done with everything else they have going on.”

From my own experience as a student, homework is often a heavy weight on my mind. Some students struggle to handle the additional load of homework which can lead to them losing points on missed homework which leads to losing interest and focus. Some students stay awake way past a reasonable bedtime to get work finished for the next day, cutting into their time for quality sleep which is just as important for student success.

We all will have our negative and positive opinions on whether homework is a necessity to our education. It doesn’t seem we can all come to one understanding because we all have a different mindset on the benefit of homework and the lives we all have outside of school varies so much from one student to another.