Top 10 Reasons Homework Should Be Banned
Homework is one of unique evils that all of us can relate to. Whether it plagued our evenings or weekends – or, for those unfortunate enough to be homeschooled, every waking hour, – for each of us homework evokes an individualized and vivid set of memories. Mine tend to consist of horrendously early mornings spent either trying to disentangle apparently impossible mathematical equations, or frantically scribbling a series of unsubstantiated (though passably well-articulated) ideas and interpretations for a humanities assignment. On a particularly bad morning, I’d have to do both.
Looking back
, constantly leaving my homework until the last minute was no more than a matter of course. For a guitar-obsessed teenager who would invest more time in the PlayStation than in any given chemistry or biology textbook, homework was always going to take a back seat, as it did amongst my peers. Indeed, I look back with fondness on friends whose constant failure to even attempt the set homework was matched only by the constantly poor excuses they offered to the teacher: ‘some homeless guy on the bus’ (who presumably had a profound interest in long-shore drift) ‘stole it’ remains my personal favorite.
As a teacher my relationship with homework has taken on a new dynamic. Working in Italy, I am obliged to set (and of course grade) increasingly large amounts of homework: most of which is completed by my female students, little of which is even attempted by my male students. While the dynamic has changed, however, my view has not. Homework does not help. Instead of contributing to learning, it only threatens to blacken the association young people have with education. Here are 10 reasons it should be banned.
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