“No kid should be getting three or four hours of homework a night. There’s no breathing time, there’s no family time, and there are just extracurriculars and homework and then go to bed.” – Ross W. Greene. Many educationalists and commoners are in favor of this view. Even schools in Essex, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, and California are getting rid of homework. However, this no homework curriculum of the schools sounds alarming to the parents. It is more concerning for those who wish their children to graduate from universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Nonetheless, numerous kinds of research suggest that eliminating homework offers more benefits. But, it has been the subject of worry for more than a century. Hence, the pendulum continues to swing back and forth between the benefits and damages of homework to a child. Read this blog to analyze the various aspects of homework and uncover why is homework bad.
Understand the Evolution of Homework
Homework has helped children in the past as it does in the present. In the history of the academic system, assignment is a fairly new addition. It was brought into the USA from Prussia by the educationalist, Horace Mann. However, since ages, students were given work to complete at home. However, the tasks were not formatted in the format we know for homework today. Nonetheless, from the first day of implementation, the practice of homework has been vehemently opposed. At that time, many people believed that since assignments involved doing chores at home, it was a form of child labor.
However, during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the government of the USA wanted the American youth to be ahead of the children of the Soviet nation. Hence, they made homework mandatory for formal education. Moreover, in 1986, the US Department of Education noticed the impact of homework in boosting the quality of education. Hence, they officially included assignments in the academic education system in the USA. It has remained the same ever since.
In the present day, academicians find that the school tasks that are assigned to students to do after school hours have some benefits. Studies bring out that homework makes students more connected to their studies and pursuing it regularly improves their academic performance.
However, the analysis done by these educational researchers highlighting the benefits of homework is not always believable. Read the reasons outlined in the section why is homework bad to know the complete details. But, before that, let’s take a look at the arguments in favor of assignments.
Also read: Who Invented Homework and Why?
Does Homework Help Students?
Homework helps students in multiple ways. Here are a few prominent ones:
Enhances student’s academic performance
Experts have noticed that doing homework has been an effective way to determine what the student has understood about the topic discussed in the class and to what extent they have understood the concept. Moreover, a study reveals that more than 68% of students who engage in regular homework activities and complete their homework with little or no assistance perform better in academics. Additionally, these students are more likely to attend college than those who don’t.
Encourage students to learn by themselves
Self-learning is one of the most essential life skills. The earlier you grab this skill the better. Homework is one of the tools that encourage you to recognize your learning requirements, look up your learning resources, set self-learning goals, and practice the learned lessons. Moreover, through self-learning, you can evaluate what you have learned in school. It also boosts your confidence and motivates you to get involved in your academic activities.
Learn to manage time
Time management is one of the skills that will give you returns throughout your lifetime. You just need to learn it. When you do your homework, you dedicate slots for doing each task and complete it within the timeline. It helps you to learn to prioritize your tasks, save your study time, and control the workload.
Develops persistence
Persistence is a skill that helps you to work hard and follow the adage – never give up in daily life. Homework helps you to gain this skill. When you do your assignment, you may often fail to get the accurate result. However, you keep pursuing it from a tender age. This builds your skill of persistence and helps you the most in difficult situations in life.
When educationalists look at these benefits, they don’t get a scope to wonder – “Why is homework bad.” Instead, they keep on increasing the pressure of assignments to attain these superficial benefits. It goes on unless someone gives them the reality check and highlights the prominent reasons why is homework bad.
Also read: Why Homework Should Be Banned?
Why is Homework Bad?
Plenty of reasons suggest that homework does more harm to students than good. Here are a few significant ones:
1. Increase stress in students
A survey found that 56% of students feel homework is the main cause of stress. Additional assignments given by schools and universities increase stress levels among children and youngsters. They feel anxious about not being able to complete their work on time or solve their assignments accurately. It can have severe impacts like changes in the brain architecture, or overactivation of Hypothalamic Pituitary and Adrenal (HPA). It can lead to lifelong issues in learning, behavior, and physical and psychological health.
2. Bars social development
Good mental health is essential for learning. It also helps one to enjoy their day-to-day life, and develop a positive and meaningful relationship with society and parents. Assignment keeps students engaged in their academics, does not allow them to keep their minds healthy, and bars students from enjoying their social life or developing their social skills.
3. Lack of time for outdoor activities
The other reason why is homework bad for students is that it does not permit them to engage in outdoor activities or tasks apart from their education. Students tend to become couch potatoes. They sit in place to do their task throughout the entire evening. Hence, they have less mobility. It brings in lifestyle diseases like obesity, cardiac disease, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes at an early stage of life. These diseases usually happen after a person reaches 50 years.
4. Causes depression
One of the most common effects of excessive homework is depression. A study highlights that close to 40% of students suffer from depression, daily. The main reason behind this is that students want higher grades in every aspect of their studies including homework. When they fail to attain their academic goals, then they fall prey to depression.
Moreover, it has also been noticed that the academic environment in various educational institutes never sympathizes with a student’s inability to score high grades on assignments or other academic papers. Instead, they put additional pressure on and often punish students.
It increases their depression, which further lowers the student’s grades. They feel low in energy, become more dependable on others, lose optimism, and hinder their performance in academics, sports, and other activities they take part in.
5. Kills the Freedom of Students
Childhood is meant to be enjoyed. However, with excessive homework it becomes impossible. Instead of spending time on things they love to do at home, students devote most of their time from their daily schedule to homework. Hence, looking from a different perspective, assignment controls a student’s freedom.
6. Breaks student’s confidence
Studies suggest that among several reasons that break a student’s confidence, homework tops the list. When a student does the same task repeatedly day in and day out without getting a significant result, he is bound to feel demoralized and lose faith in themselves to complete the task or to do the task successfully. It will reduce their enthusiasm to do any other task and lower the chance of their success in any venture.
7. Low academic returns
Anything monotonous is bound to take more time to get done. Homework is no different. Spending more time on homework is directly related to a decrease in the academic performance of students. You may score better marks through assignments but the rate of return is usually low. Hence, there is no significant benefit to spending time on bulk homework.
8. Seems like a full-time job
Assignments seem like a full-time job for students. They go to school or college from 8 am and continue their school work in the form of homework till 7 pm. It is similar to working on a full-time job. But, the additional pressure is not effective for children or young adults. They do not need to practice working in an office from such a tender age!
9. Irrelevant subject
Just like students are answerable to their teachers for doing their work, teachers or professors are also accountable to the administration of the academic institution for their work. Many teachers fail to fulfill their work responsibilities and assign tasks to students that are yet to be discussed in class just to do away with their responsibilities. Educational institutions must prohibit these types of activities. It is unfair and injustice to students to do homework on topics that have not been discussed in class.
10. Lack of family time
A potter can mold the shape of soil when it is soft. The same goes for children and young adults. The relationship and bond can develop with family when a child is young. But, if the time is snatched away by homework they barely get time to spend with their parents and siblings. Even, at times, the additional assignments and homework take up their weekends. Hence they fail to interact with families. However, family bonding is crucial for the emotional development of a kid. Additionally, it makes them feel safe and secure in the world which also reduces the chance of getting addicted to drugs from a tender age or engaging in antisocial activities.
11. Destroys sleep cycle
Homework makes students work till the late hours of the day. Some prefer to work till late in the night while others wake up early in the morning. Both these activities compromise the sleep of students and even those who are in their junior school. It makes them feel drowsy and go through brain fog. As an immediate impact, they fail to absorb the contents they see, touch, or hear. Hence, they cannot learn new things and hence, cannot work on the homework assigned to them. It makes them fall into the never-ending loop. The long-term effects of lack of sleep include increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack, and stroke to name a few.
12. Encourages cheating
When students are assigned to work on excessive homework in a short period, they can barely complete the task. Hence, to complete the homework by the stringent deadline students feel compelled to cheat from other students. However, any academic institution considers copying from others’ work as an unlawful activity. If teachers catch the copied contents, students may have to face the consequences, which include strict punishment.
13. Lowers academic grades
Teachers often give a synopsis of the topics. Hence, the intricacies of the subject remain unlearnt in the class. Moreover, when assignments are given on this summarized knowledge, students don’t get time to learn the details of the subject at all since they spend their entire time at home working on the homework. However, most often assignments and assessment questions are based on detailed subject knowledge, which students fail to know for doing their assignment. As a result, their assignment grades decrease.
14. Counter productivity
It is also one of the negative impacts of homework. Instead of improving education, intense homework can impact negatively a student’s performance. Most students are stressed about completing their assignments every night. However, what they forget is its impact on their performance in school. Thus, homework brings forth counter-productivity in students.
15. Takes up free time
Relaxation is as important for a student as learning academic papers. The brain is nothing but a machine that works with nerve synapses instead of electric wires. Therefore, like every machine letting the brain cool down is important to perform better. However, homework makes the brain overwork by not allowing any free time to relax. Hence the brain becomes tired and wearied.
Also read: Is Homework Illegal Anywhere in the World?
Conclusion
Hopefully, by now, you will have gained a clear idea of why homework is bad. However, we can’t deny the numerous benefits that assignment has. But mainly due to the cons of homework, several students, teachers, and parents wish to ban homework. Remember, weeding homework off the academic system in the flash of light is impossible. Teachers must understand the harm assignment causes to students and act accordingly. In specific, teachers should reduce the load of homework from the student’s shoulders or attempt to give students the healthy and enjoyable childhood that they deserve.
