Homework: the weekend ruiner, time sucker and mood destroyer. Students hate homework, because who wants to go to school for seven hours only to have to spend two-three more hours focusing on school again, this time at home. Homework does however, offer students more practice, allowing them to be successful in class. Where do we draw the line on homework? Though homework is beneficial, sometimes too much is too much. This brings about the question no one can agree on; do teachers assign too much homework?

Teachers intend for homework to reinforce what they taught in class to students, allowing students extra practice and more time to try and understand the topic before the teacher moves on to a new one the next day. So if homework is used for practice, one could compare it to the idea of practicing for a game, with a game representing a test in school. Coaches don’t make the team practice for too long because they would get tired, and eventually bored with doing work for so long, even if they love the sport. Which is why the average practice is about two hours long, mind you that is for a sport the athletes enjoy. Teachers should keep that idea in mind when assigning homework. Students are tired from a long day at school and who knows what else, so having more work to do later is the last thing they want. Therefore instead of treating the homework as practice and something for them to understand the topic better, they rush through it as though it is just another task on their long list of things to do, thus defeating the purpose.

Students don’t enjoy homework, and when they receive so much of it all they want to do is get it over with, so most of the time, if they even do it themselves, they just do the minimum to get by and barely understand/remember what they did the next day.

Because teachers give so much homework the way students do the work defeats the whole point of having it. I believe that if teachers gave less homework students would try harder on the homework they get, because it would be okay to spend more time on some subjects because they don’t have as much to do. If students received less homework than they have more of an opportunity to become successful in the classes they need extra practice in, which is the teacher’s goal anyways.

Yes, it is understood that other countries have more time in school and more work outside of school than students in the united states have, but those students in other countries also are not as competitive in sports because they have no time to truly enjoy and improve in them. Other countries sacrifice sports and the chance to spend time with friends and family, so that their children can be dominant in academics, which is great, but in America, that violates our ideals. Our favorite sunday night pastime is football. Our favorite things to do include sports, video games and spending quality time with those we care about, maybe we aren’t as dominant in school, but we are not dumb. Homework should be decreased because student performance should not decrease.