Homework stresses kids out and is worthless busywork, so why do teachers keep assigning it? Do they even think about how our lives include juggling sports, relationships, and jobs? And when you add on time-consuming homework that’s almost always worthless, does it all eventually catch up to us and make us reach a breaking point?  

Why give homework?

The importance of homework is a very controversial topic and will most likely always be for as long as there is school. If we can learn what we learn in school by classwork and class time, why spend unnecessary time at home with homework that could easily be done in class? Ms. Ward and Mr. Soule, both biology teachers at Pentucket, are teachers that rarely ever give homework but both agree that ¨We give a minimum and when we give [Homework], we give it because it’s needed to help them in class and what goes on.¨ They then added, ¨It helps reinforce the classwork and helps the students.¨

Forms of Homework

Homework can actually be in many forms. When not just in worksheet form, it takes the form of books and reading. Mr. Casey, a ninth-grade teacher, never gives homework that is written worksheets. The only homework he gives is reading the due book. He claims,

¨Homework is very different for me, homework for me is reading at home and I never give written homework as I feel it’s unnecessary to do so.” Mr. Casey feels he only gives written homework when the student doesn’t do what they were supposed to. He has his students read because he needs to teach in class and he can’t do that if he has them read the whole period. He must teach them to work effectively and in order to make the class function,  he needs to have his students read outside of class.

Importance 

Throughout the interviews I conducted, the teachers felt like homework can be unnecessary but also important sometimes. Homework depends on the student and on the class. Compare the work from a history class to a math class and you will see that it is drastically different. Also, compare the homework that kids in AP and Honors have to CP and it’s not even close. But does this really help the Honor and AP kids more than CP? Honors and AP get unnecessary amounts of homework while being taught the same thing. Homework can always be done in class and the importance of it is just not there. 

The stress

The biggest problem we all have is the added stress of homework. Students have lives outside of school that include sports, relationships, and jobs. Why bother with work that can be done in class? Homework is a key part of why so many students are not in a good mental space. According to Stanford Edu, 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress in their life. Teachers also have a lot of stress with homework. Between assigning it, correcting it, and making sure that they can complete what they want to be done in class. This is undeniably a very challenging concept on all sides of the argument 

How we juggle all this together is horrible and is just too much for some kids. Some people handle homework in their lives way differently than someone else can. When will teachers understand that handling stress is hard enough and we shouldn’t have to handle unimportant work that’s taking up our lives and filling it with stress like a volcano? We just don’t need something so useless. We never will.