Schools should eliminate homework

Nadia Karim Reporter

Students are encouraged to go out for sports, join clubs all while keeping up in school and completing their homework. Eliminating homework in general would increase strength in family relationships and eliminate the inequalities that receiving homework causes.

According to onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu, a credible website run by the University of San Diego in California, homework highlights many inequalities between students. These include home life and wealth. A student who is wealthier may have the advantage of owning technology and having many opportunities someone with less money doesn’t. This could be due to the fact that a student with less money has to work after school or watch over siblings while their parents are working, giving them less time to complete their homework.

Not only does homework highlight inequalities between students, it also can become a factor of mental illness. Being tasked with hours and hours of homework each night becomes draining and overwhelming to a teenage mind. As kids we should have time for family and friends, our lives shouldn’t just be flooded with school work when we are no longer at school anymore. 

According to kansas.kvc.org, kids are experiencing mental distress from academics at a way earlier age than before. This increase in pressure for kids to succeed can lead to anxiety and depression causing students to perform less than usual. Homework is a cause of academic stress due to not knowing the materials well enough to complete it or if a student is already dealing with difficulties, they might not have time to complete it causing them to fall behind leading to more distress all because of homework. 

From a young age, students are encouraged to play sports, learn an instrument or join clubs to get involved. Trying to balance all extracurriculars while balancing school, family, and friends adds a lot of stress to a single person to deal with alone. This can cause students to perform poorly. It would be better if instead of giving homework out as an assignment a student can only complete at home, it was given with extra time in class or given as an option to use as a study tool if the student found it necessary.

Another way to make students want to attempt their homework would be to offer it as extra credit. Many students would appreciate any opportunity to raise their grades. It would have zero consequence if not done, but if completed could be put in as a couple formative points. 

Many teachers offer answer keys to their students to use as they complete their homework. This is a helpful resource, however, students could easily just copy down the whole assignment just to get the credit this could result in lower test scores.

Ultimately, homework causes extra stress and should be given with extra time in class to complete or not given at all. Not all students need the homework to understand a topic and shouldn’t be required to complete something they don’t need. Students that do need to understand a concept better should have that option without it negatively affecting their grade.