Students today deal with jam packed schedules daily, replete with long school hours, extracurricular activities and tonnes of homework. They are constantly under pressure to excel at school, maintain hectic social lives and keep up with a rigorous curriculum.
In such circumstances parents often wonder if the cons of homework outweigh the value it purports to add to a student’s academic progress. In fact many teachers and academic professionals are considering possible alternatives to a daily homework schedule in an effort to replace it with a different learning tool.
Here are some important cons of homework that teachers and parents must keep in mind about homework assignments:
- Homework can be too much for students:
Students get stressed out with homework mainly because it is so time-consuming. One of the major disadvantages of homework is the fact that it eats into a student’s free time.
- After spending a large chunk of the day at school, children need time to relax, rest and recuperate.
- In order to develop into well-rounded individuals, students need time to pursue other hobbies and activities.
- Not only do they need to pursue certain extracurricular activities like sports and music, but they also need time to themselves to read, watch TV, play games or go out with their friends.
- If students are burdened with too much homework, they may develop one-dimensional and ill-adjusted personalities with poor social skills.
- Assignment schedules can be punishing:
Students are assigned homework in various subjects daily. While it may be a little bit in each subject, it adds up at the end of the day when she comes home and has to finish three different homework assignments.
- Teachers can keep in mind the nature of a subject while assigning homework.
- For instance, Math may require daily homework practice, but subjects like English, History and Geography may need weekly assignments.
- For certain topics, class work or group projects work better than a gruelling homework assignment schedule.
- Punishing assignment schedules cause students to feel sleep deprived, stressed out and fatigued. This is one of the most important cons of homework that teachers must keep in mind while assigning homework to students.
- Homework assignments may not be the best learning tool:
The main purpose of homework is to function as a learning tool that helps students practice new concepts and explore subjects independently within a structured framework.
- It is meant to teach students to manage their time and resources. It gives them practice and makes them responsible and accountable.
- However, research does not back up most of these claims. There seems to be no direct link between homework and academic improvement and proficiency.
- Students who have too much homework often suffer from stress and anxiety. They stay up at night working on their homework and feel tired in class during school hours.
- Some spend so much time doing homework that they don’t have time to study by themselves as a result of which they lose out on the joy of learning. They feel no love for their subjects and no curiosity. Thus homework may not actually be the best learning tool for students.
- Homework can be a cause of family stress:
Other cons of homework include the fact that it can become a bone of contention between parents and children.
- Homework can become a daily struggle at home that can cause escalating tensions within the family.
- Parents try to get their children to work on their assignments and guide them wherever possible. However, sometimes children can be difficult and refuse to do their work. They maybe too tired or simply defiant.
- Homework takes away from the time parents can actually spend bonding with their children instead of arguing about homework.
- It is a difficult balancing act with most parents who need to guide their children but not do their work for them.
- Assignments may be counterproductive:
- Students today are assigned so much homework that it no longer serves the purpose it was designed to fulfill.
- In order to understand the purpose, it is supposed to trytop 10 reasons why homework is important to a student’s development.
- Too much homework takes the joy out of learning. Children lose their natural curiosity and love for learning. In an effort to somehow complete their work, they hurry through multiple assignments in one night never focusing and learning from any of them but working mechanically.
- Some children are so exhausted that their parents have to complete their work for them!
- Homework has become a burden for students who now just copy assignments from one another because they have to focus on the quantity of the work and the word count rather than the quality of their learning.
- If homework is becoming counterproductive, it must be replaced with other learning tools like group discussions, class projects, pop quizzes and team presentations which may be more effective.
So keep these cons of homework in mind when helping your students and children cope with their homework assignments.
