Homework is a daily task that is a part of students lives everyday. It is the dreadful thing each student has to come home to at night. While It is meant to reinforce what students learned in class and help them, nowadays, students face a lot more pressure with their busy schedules. This leads to an increase in stress levels and brings the true purpose of homework into question.
In a study conducted by the OECD, (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,) it was found that after around four hours of homework per week, the additional time invested in homework has a negligible impact on performance.
This means, giving students anything over an hour of homework per night has little to no benefit for the students performance, and ends up hurting students both physically and emotionally. Heavy amounts of homework leads to lack of sleep and less time for physical activity. It also causes anxiety in students with the constant need to get their work done. This feeling causes burnout for some.
According to the University of San Diego, the most elite musicians, artists, scientists, and athletes only do productive work for about four hours of the entire day.
Having students spend seven hours a day at school then asking them to do more schoolwork for hours at home is unreasonable.
“When I have other stuff to do, like applying for colleges, scholarships, having to attend events, conferences, plus the other clubs I’m a part of it stresses me out cause it just stacks on top of each other,” senior Kalli Stumpf said.
Students, though, tend to focus on only the negative effects of homework, but it can be beneficial.
“It depends on the type of homework,” social studies teacher Melissa Peterson said. “There is busy work homework or work that extends the learning and requires more critical thinking that should be essential and required.”
An example of productive homework would be creative projects where students have to take what they have learned and apply it to a Google Slide, gimkit, or quizlet assignments. Assigning homework using educational games is also very helpful for long-term memorization.
While this might sound awful to students who would rather lay in bed after school, the homework is interactive and requires them to use critical thinking skills. Instead students are given 50 definitions to write out or a worksheet with 15 of the same math problems. This repetition doesn’t actually expand someones knowledge on a subject, its just a lot of work.
“Homework in some classes isn’t difficult and it feels like just a grade to put into the grade book,” Stumpf said.
Homework that furthers a student’s learning will actually help prepare them for college or advanced classes.
“If the district didn’t require me to give homework, I think I still would, just to get kids more practice, especially in the AP classes with writing and the styles of writing required for the AP test,” Peterson said.
This is also why doing one’s own homework will help long term. With the use of ChatGPT and other AI students can do their homework faster and make it look better. However, this creates an over dependence on AI and students are no longer learning.
Teachers assign homework to further a students learning, but with AI it doesn’t take any skill to ask the internet for answers to their homework.
Students are able to finish their homework quickly, therefore they don’t have to stress about homework that is often repetitive.
“Some students are learning from their homework while some are learning how to use technology, unfortunately to their own demise,” Peterson said.
While it is justified as to why students use AI, in order to help themselves they could start using it to check their work or give them explanations over a topic they don’t understand. Teachers could then assign homework that is productive, not just busy work that is easier to do with AI.
Homework is no longer helpful for a student if it is not adapted to new ways needed for better learning.
“The district collectively gives too much homework,” Peterson said. “There’s an extreme amount of pressure on the Elkhorn students to succeed and at some point you need time to be you and have time for your own things instead of just always doing homework.”
