Homework or Busywork?

It is a sunny day out with a gentle breeze, just strong enough to keep the bugs away. The jungle gym is shimmering when looked at from a distance, its colors spanning all those found in a rainbow. The swing set creaks softly; The rustling of the chains is barely audible. The massive blacktop, marked with chalk and paint set the boundaries of the kickball fields and four-square courts. A gleaming, grassy field is just beyond the sea of asphalt, seems to beckon to passersby to come take a rest and lie down or play an impromptu game of football or soccer. A bell chimes out. Students rush out of a brick citadel and out to the playground, every group marking their domain. But, their time is cut short as their parents come to pick them up, knowing that there is a mound of homework that must be done before the student can enjoy the vast land of the playground.

Does this seem familiar to you? It does to me. As a student in elementary school, the playground seemed much more intriguing than it does to me today. Is it because I am twenty years old and find these things childish? No, I would love to play a game of kickball or four-square and be like a kid again. So what makes us lose our interest in these childhood past-times? Homework. Every student's third most hated phrase, falling just short of "pop quiz" and "test." When I was in kindergarten and first grade, we had plenty of play time along with some learning time. Numbers, letters, and eventually words, spelling, and memorizing our contact information were all that we were concerned about learning. We didn't have to worry about filling out times tables or reading required novels or writing research papers. We just learned something new and worked with that new information during the rest of the day and maybe into the next day or two. We didn't bring anything home besides a spelling list because that was our ticket to learning the language. All we were concerned about were playing and learning new things that seemed strange and unconventional to us at the time.

Then, from second grade on, we were taught a new word: homework. Why was I given a sheet (or multiple sheets as I became older) to complete at home when I spend five to six hours of my day in a classroom? Why can't we work on these new ideas and concepts in class like I did back in kindergarten and first grade? Why can't I just go play on that wonderful playground after school? Why do I need to do this homework?

Teachers tell themselves that homework is a way to check that their students are learning new concepts an ideas, and rarely think twice before assigning homework every day, even in elementary schools. If a student is struggling then the teacher will tell himself or herself that he or she can spend a little more time with tat student on the subject. If a large number of students are struggling with the information, then the teacher will go over the information again, and assign even more homework.

I have heard some of my teachers complain about all the grading they do and wish that they didn't have to do it. And they are also the ones assigning twenty math problems every day or requiring many tests, quizzes, and classwork regularly. It seems they don't realize that in the end they are only making themselves work harder. But, not just because they need to grade more work.

As the amount of homework increases, students tend to resent the teacher that gives them homework every day. Because of this, the students lose interest and motivation in class, and the teacher must work harder to make the class interesting and to motivate the students. What used to be a simple lesson plan of teaching a few concepts with a demonstration or hands-on experiment an giving out homework could spiral into teaching one concept and creating ways to keep students motivated and interested, including multiple demonstrations, hands-on experiments, interactive class discussions, etc. Not only does this increase the amount of work a teacher must exert in teaching, but the effort also goes into creating a lesson plan. And to top it off, the daily homework assignments must be graded as well!

Why do we insist that homework will improve students' understanding of the concepts? If a student struggles with an assignment, they may lose confidence in their abilities, and then begin a downward spiral to a failing grade. Not only would you have a decimated student that is failing in your class, but you also have angry parents to deal with, on top of all the other work that you are doing. We as educators need to re-evaluate how often, how much, and what style of homework we give to our students.

Also, a daily assignment tends to become busywork in the eyes of a student. This is even more apparent when there are similar concepts with just one or two other factors that are different. If you were teaching addition and assigned a full page of addition problems and recommended that the student use buttons, coins, jellybeans, or other small items to solidify the concept, doing the same with subtraction the next day would be slightly different but still a similar process. Students will tire of doing similar tasks over and over again and view the daily homework as boring and monotonous.

Sure, the appeal of the playground will be lost sometime after the transition into middle school, and homework can be more frequent, but it should be relevant and useful to the student, not just something to have the student do because they are a student and you are a teacher. And the transition into high school and post-secondary will give the student even more homework, but then there is no more playground outside the school, beckoning to the students, distracting them from the lesson being presented to them.

I would agree that you can't entirely eliminate homework from any grade level, but I also argue against having more than one or two homework assignments per week before middle school, because then there is no more playground for the student to have fun at. The distraction would be gone. But if we admit this, then why are we making the elementary students do homework instead of playing on the playground after school? Cut back the amount of homework given before middle school, and then we have students who are still interested in learning and have had time to be a kid.