Krowemoh, Homework spelled backwards

Krowemoh or homework, how much should students get?


Many people say homework is bad for kids and destroys family time. But other people say that it teaches important values. The only way we can work this dilemma out is by finding a compromise, and a good one. I believe that the compromise is to only use homework to complete projects, with certain exceptions, like math homework, which is needed to pass tests.  People have argued, that there isn't enough time to get everything done in school. I agree, in school we hurry around to our classes and learn things and take notes. Unless you have an extensive time where we have no class, there isn't enough time to finish things just by doing it in school. If you were reading a book for class, would you do it at break? No, breaks are reserved times for social stuff, and they are not even long enough to retain knowledge from reading. Also classes you planned to read in can be replaced by other classes. This making reading in class not reliable enough. Therefore, all school related work that happens over a long period of time, studying, making a project, reading a book, must take place at home or in school.


If it is stated that we do need homework to get things done, then logical thinking would lead us to the conclusion that if we give more homework then more things will get done. This is  untrue. The National School Board Association's Center for Public Education has found that there is no large relationship between completing homework and  school achievement. There is a small relationship, which leads us to give homework to get projects done. But giving a lot of homework to students to heighten in school achievement is counter productive. The amount of homework only has a limited effect on in school achievement, and giving more than the limit will not make more achievement happen. In fact, students begin to resent the amount of homework they are given, which leads to hating teachers, hating school, and finally hating learning. Even though there are certain exceptions to the resentment of learning chain reaction, large amounts of homework usually only benefit people in high income homes because they more likely have a parent at home to help them with homework. This puts poor people at a very unfair disadvantage. All this abolishes the false need for overdosing of homework.


I suggest, that we should consider a compromise. In the compromise homework assignments would have to amount to a big picture objective. This would allow things to get done, as explained in the second paragraph, and not include high amounts of homework which cause multiple negative effects. In the compromise, teachers projects and plans would not be changed completely, but only modified to fit the compromise. For example, if students had to read something they had already read in class, and write a paper on it, the assignment has to correspond to the bigger picture of the class. If they were learning about analyzing literature, then the paper would have to be the analysis of the material so they could have practice for a big analyzation at the end of the unit. Either that, or the assignment would be taken away or replaced with something more important.