Is Homework Really Necessary?

Homework is often a huge part of the school system’s way of getting students to understand the material, but is it really useful?

I’ve been thinking about this homework situation since middle school when the workload really began to pile up. Every class, I would hope the teacher would forget to hand out the sheets of paper; which usually never went as I had imagined. Something that had come across my mind was wondering why we needed homework if classwork shows that we already understand the material. Although there’s always that argument that goes along the lines of, “Well, it’s good practice.” Yes, it is practice, but students have already done lots of work during their time in the classroom, and adding additional work onto their already tired and unmotivated selves doesn’t seem right.

Ryn Waugh, a Community High School freshman, said homework wouldn’t necessarily benefit students with an exception of certain classes such as languages.
“Language [classes] should have homework because it’s something you’re supposed to be focusing on a lot like practicing your language at home and in places other than school.” Waugh said, “I think it’s good for practice. I don’t think it should be graded as if it’s an assignment for school because you’re not learning new things.”
She said that even with the homework that should be given, the time it takes shouldn’t be a lot, saying that it should only take about 15 minutes for each class.

Homework can take hours and completely drain the energy out of students, making it hard for them to do their best at school. Some students even work until at least 12 a.m. the next day. I believe that the goal for when you graduate is to become educated in multiple subjects and increase brain power, but I don’t understand how doing hours of homework on end would help.

Teachers should keep in mind students’ other classes and how much work they get per class when assigning homework. Since students typically have 2 electives which usually don’t give a ton of homework, based on my experience, all the other required classes have given homework basically every meeting. The work begins to pile up a lot, especially if you have intertwined classes or split enrollment courses.

My hope for teachers, the school systems and the curriculums is for it to be fair to the students and have homework become not as frequent to prevent stress, especially when it’s not always necessary.