Homework: Harmful or Useful to Children, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Since the moment the system of education in America was founded and up to the present time, parents and education professionals could not find a unilateral agreement on whether homework is bad or good for students. People are used to believe that homework is an indispensable element of any effective education, and thousands of students simply do not imagine how it would be like without homework. However, more and more parents come to realize that homework is nothing but a burden, which their children are bound to carry in order to study well. Many others doubt the effectiveness of homework for student achievements at school. At the same time, homework is believed to be a good means to make children stay at home and keep them from trouble. In reality, not homework itself, but the amount and scope of home tasks, which children must complete, produce negative effects on children’s wellbeing; and to resolve these issues and to make homework an effective element of successful learning, schools and teachers should become more attentive to how they distribute home workloads among small students.

Homework is the critical element of any studies. In schools, colleges, or universities students are expected to complete a set of predetermined tasks and assignments in order to succeed in their studies and to pass their grades. Unfortunately, the recent decade was marked with the growing controversy over home tasks. Students find it difficult to cope with the growing amount of home assignments. Parents lack time and effort to help their children in studies. Overloads lead to negative psychological and health consequences and do not leave children a single chance to make a good steady progress in the process of learning. Homework used to be an essential element of any curriculum and for centuries the system of education was based on the reasonable combination of classroom activities and home assignments. That is why many people simply cannot imagine their children without a need to engage in working with home tasks. The question is, however, is not in whether homework is the necessary element of any educational system but in whether homework is harmful (or good) for children.

That homework can be harmful to children parents gradually come to realize. Because children are overloaded with home assignments and because, when at home, they do not have any time for other childhood activities except learning, one can assume that homework could be potentially harmful to children in their school years. The more homework a child must do to meet the basic standards of curriculum and education, the more frustrated and psychologically this child is likely to become. It is no secret that homework requires a great deal of knowledge and skills. Beyond these, homework also requires high degree of patience and persistence, which not all children possess. The amount of homework, which children must complete daily, does not train them but, on the contrary, results in the development of irreversibly negative attitudes toward studies and education. Not all children can tolerate and keep their emotions inside upon seeing how much they must do, when coming home after school. “Homework is usually a daily, not a weekly chore. More hours are least likely to produce better outcomes when understanding or creativity is involved. […] Time on task is directly correlated to achievement only if both the activity and the outcome measure are focused on rote recall as opposed to problem solving” (Kohn). As a result, children feel frustrated at being unable to participate in activities and initiatives so characteristic of childhood and moreover, trying to do everything fast, they are often scared that the quality of their work will not conform to the required standards. In other words, homework is associated with the fear, which children hold toward criticism and bad marks.

Parents often criticize their children for their failures at school. However, not all adults can fully realize the negative impact of such criticism on the child’s psychology. No, that does not mean that parents do not have any right for criticism; on the contrary, reasonable and justified criticism and analysis are the desired components of any educational success. However, when it comes to homework, parents cannot always balance their critical remarks with the objective picture of the educational process. In other words, parents cannot always take their children’s viewpoint on studies, and their criticism often borders on their unreasonable desire to overload children with unnecessary paperwork. Parents cannot always realize that what children are required to do at home is too much for them. They cannot always look beyond the basic curriculum standards and weigh educational requirements against the abilities and skills, which children possess. Many parents simply require that their children cope with all tasks they have at home, regardless of whether they are physically able to do it. In such situation, and when facing parent criticism, children often feel the lack of understanding and contact with their parents, being unable to explain why they cannot do whatever their professors require them to. They become scared of studies. “If slogging through worksheets dampens one’s desire to read or think, surely that wouldn’t be worth an incremental improvement in skills” (Kohn). Too much homework imposes severe limits on the child’s performance and confines them in their small world, without any pleasures and/ or natural childhood activities. And while parents fail to recognize the misbalanced nature of homework, the way homework tasks are designed also neglects specific abilities and skills of students, tying them to uniform standards of learning.

Really, how many teachers do diversify homework assignments to fit specific student abilities, skills and requirements? How many teachers are able to see that what curriculum requires from them is not always realistic or reasonable? Children, who study in one class, are given one and the same home assignment, and no matter whether they possess abilities and knowledge necessary to complete it, they must do it to pass the grade. As a result, some children will need 30 minutes to resolve all math problems, while others will spend hours fighting with a couple of simple algebraic tasks. Such attitudes toward homework do not carry any value for children but lead to the development of conflicts in families and between children and their tutors. The problem of our schools is in that they do not account (although recognize) the individual differences between children. Although a wealth of literature was written on how children in one class differ from each other and how professors must make use of these differences, most children receive one and the same home task and must fight with its difficulties on their own. Very often, parents, too, become the victims of their children’s homework. With children being unable to successfully complete a home assignment, parents have no other choice but to engage in a difficult cooperative process, which requires time and effort and sometimes distracts parents from their primary obligations. Instead of taking care of what their children will eat and whether they have clean clothes to wear, parents spend hours with their children, writing, checking spelling, learning the alphabet or multiplication rules. Parents are not professional teachers, and they lack skills necessary to teach children. That is why in this atmosphere, parents can provide children with the distorted vision of the subject they are trying to learn. Obviously, homework as a concept has significant drawbacks, but leaving children without it may also have its negative consequences.

Homework overloads do produce serious negative effects on children, but those who vote against homework often forget that the need for children to study at home also has reasonable benefits in that it can train their discipline, develop balanced attitudes toward home activities, help children develop closer relationships with parents, and simply put, keep them from trouble. It appears that “a few examples of schools with high achievement despite severe limits or bans on homework” currently exist (Mathews). Children who have a small homework to complete, and who realize the importance of this home task for their studies, will strive to schedule their life and activities in a more disciplined manner. Instead of spending hours in front of a TV set, children will spend their time in the search for new knowledge. Such children will be more likely to have more disciplined views on their lives, and will try to keep to one and the same schedule every day – school, dinner, home, homework, individual activities. As a result, they will find it easier to balance their individual desires (for example, to play with other children) with the need to finish their homework on time. They will be more disciplined to put their school activities over games and socialization with peers. Certainly, these school and homework activities should not create an environment, in which a child does not have other pleasures beyond studies, and in which socialization with peers is nothing but a myth.

By engaging in home studies, children can develop closer relationships with their parents. As mentioned earlier, parents are often required to spend time with their children, helping them to cope with their home tasks. In this context, children move closer to parents, while parents learn their children’s behaviors and reactions. They learn each other’s interests and recognize each other’s talents. Parents have a unique opportunity to determine the best child’s abilities and to promote them for the sake of his (her) educational and career development. Parents and children, who spend their time in studies, are more likely to maintain these close relationships in other activities, including going out with friends or spending their vacations together. Such attitudes lead to the development of the new quality of relations, which may be absent in families that do not engage in any common activities with their children.

With the need to study at home, to work with home tasks, and to cooperate with parents, children also learn to accept reasonable criticism and to learn their own mistakes and failures. Homework can be fairly regarded as a unique chance for a child to identify his strengths and weaknesses in each particular subject – the task that is mostly impossible in class. “Students who don’t do their homework will not see any increase in their achievement in school” (Ravitch). Face-to-face with a home task a child, finally, can see, without being pressured by the teacher or by other pupils, what he can do about each particular assignment. The child can finally identify the major gaps in his (her) knowledge, the problems he (she) cannot resolve, the concepts and theories that are not clear and consequentially, ask these questions in class. Potentially, homework should be a logical continuation of classroom studies and leave much room for individual contemplation and reflection.

Unfortunately, in the current state of education, homework is more negative than positive. Because of excessive loads, children cannot successfully cope with their studies. They become irritated and frustrated. They do not display any interest toward learning. They view school as a burden, which they want to get rid of by any means possible. Not homework by itself, but its amount and scope predetermine its effectiveness in the learning process. For these reasons, only when schools reduce the number of home tasks, especially in elementary schools, homework will cease to be a completely negative phenomenon in modern schools.

Conclusion

Is homework good or bad for children? This question is difficult to answer. On the one hand, excessive homework results in frustration and irritation in children. They become afraid of failures and cannot explain their reasons. They face criticism on the side of their parents and are bound to conform to uniform standards of learning, which do not account their talents and interests. At the same time, homework is a successful element of a better discipline in children. Homework often results in improved relationships between parents and children. Children have a unique opportunity to take an individual unbiased look on how they can succeed in studies. Not homework in itself, but, rather, its amount, predetermines the relative effectiveness of home tasks. That is why only when schools can reduce homework overloads for children, they will turn homework into a reliable tool of better discipline and knowledge among children.

Works Cited

Kohn, A. “The Truth About Homework.” 2006. Education Week. 19 October 2009. http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/homework.htm

Mathews, J. “The Weak Case Against Homework.” 2006. The Washington Post. 19 October http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112100633.html

Ravitch, D. “Why Homework Is Good for Kids.” 2007. Huffington Post. 19 October 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/why-homework-is-good-for-_b_44037.html