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Why Homework Should Be Banned: Wishful Thinking or Solid Reasoning?
Author:
Samantha Williams
Jul 15, 2024
12 min
Table of contents
- The Homework Debate: Is It Really Beneficial or Just Harmful?
- Figuring Out the Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned
- Discovering the Main 20 Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned
- Homework Should Be Banned! Or Is It a Problem Per Se?
- Should Homework Be Abolished, Or Should the Approach to Assignments Change?
- To Ban, or Not To Ban – That Is the Question
The Homework Debate: Is It Really Beneficial or Just Harmful?
Regardless of whether we are talking about schools, colleges, or universities, students do hate homework. Of course, the common belief is that students’ distaste for homework comes from the fact that they are lazy. But can simple laziness be blamed for that?
Digging a bit deeper, students can explain why homework should be abolished. And laziness is rarely mentioned as one of the reasons. Various articles on the case cite different negative aspects of homework.
According to those articles, homework promotes inequality, ruins families, hampers social development, and seriously damages mental health. Well, it seems like the message is clear: homework does more harm than good. But should it be banned?
Let’s check out the negative effects of homework in detail to see whether the homework per se is the actual root of evil or it is the way that the educational system handles it.
Figuring Out the Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned
Okay, homework is considered to be the keystone of education. After all, it allows students to reevaluate and strengthen their knowledge of the subject. And now, we are talking about the reasons why homework should be banned. Does that mean that homework is useless?
We are going to answer that particular question later, but when it comes to reasons why it should be abolished, pointlessness never pops up on the list.
- Homework causes a lot of stress
- It leads to sleep deprivation
- Leaves you with no time for personal interests
- Disrupts your life-study balance
- Takes the fun out of learning
Those are the main things that students generally point out when it comes to reasons why they dislike homework.
As you can see, homework is not pointless when it comes to education. Yet, even without it being pointless, it manages to wreak havoc in the lives of students.
Of course, you can always say “no pain, no gain,” but is your education worth losing sleep and living in constant stress? The provided reasons are enough to figure out why the idea of banning homework is that appealing.
But before making any definitive conclusion, let’s take a look at some reasons in more detail.
Isolation or Checking Out the Social Reasons to Ban Homework
“School is taking all the time!” – a complaint so popular among students. And it doesn’t mean that you spend, say, eighteen hours a day at school, college, or university. It’s less than eighteen hours, and you are not in the institution physically. But there’s always homework that you have to do, and it takes a lot of time.
Classes are over, so you go home and start doing your assignments. It surely limits your social interactions. Students are so focused on their excessive homework that they literally have no time to make new social connections, and, as a result, their social skills suffer.
In class, you are at least involved in some teamwork. But homework, unless it’s a collaborative project with fellow students, only leads to isolation. Besides, you have no time for your personal interests unless some serious time management is involved.
Yet, even with time management, many students find themselves in a situation where they have to sacrifice their personal interests or let their grades fluctuate.
And things are unlikely to get better when it comes to colleges and universities. There, most students are torn between doing odd jobs that help them pay the rent and tuition and assignments.
Let’s Talk About Psychological Reasons Why Homework Should Be Abolished
We’ve already talked about the fact that homework causes a lot of stress. Don’t forget that sleep deprivation can also lead to mental health problems. For some, the fact that most students feel anxious because they need to meet the deadlines of the assignments is already enough to claim that homework should be banned.
On the other hand, those deadlines prepare us for the deadlines we are going to be obliged to meet as adults. After all, work will also have its deadlines. But getting your assignment ready on time is not the only issue.
Students may feel worthless when they get bad grades for their assignments. This way, homework leads to low self-esteem. Besides, students sometimes have to deal with unrealistic expectations from both their parents and teachers. And when they fail to meet the said expectations, they frequently end up feeling like a failure.
Yes, you can easily dismiss it by saying that students shouldn’t be snowflakes or that the grades they get don’t mean anything. But this understanding comes with age.
In hindsight, most people see that all their worries about grades are not that important. But this realization pops up in therapy sessions when you try to figure out where your low self-esteem comes from.
Cases When Homework Does More Harm Than Good Education-Wise
We’ve promised to figure out whether homework can be pointless education-wise, and we can firmly state that in certain cases it indeed does more harm than good. Especially when it is excessive. When students are given too much homework, they are more focused on getting it done rather than on the quality.
Another problem is that a lot of homework boils down to memorization and repetition of the same tasks. It kills the creativity in students, as tasks like that simply don’t demand a creative approach. In the end, students are confused and don’t know what to do whenever they face a creative assignment.
Finally, loading students with excessive amounts of homework kills their interest in learning. It turns education into busywork for them.
As a result, it doesn’t provide them with knowledge and fails to enhance learning skills or develop critical thinking. Hence, the system is indeed to be blamed, at least partially.
Discovering the Main 20 Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned
We provided you with some psychological, social, and educational reasons why homework does more harm than good. While that may seem enough, is it all? Maybe the list is longer?
Yes. You’ve been asking for it, so we give you the list of the main 20 reasons why homework should be banned:
- Constant stress
- Absence of free time
- Diminishing time with family and friends
- Lack of sleep
- Diminishing interest in learning
- Low self-esteem
- Absence of time for personal interests
- Negative impact on physical health
- Strained relationships with relatives
- Mental exhaustion
- Lack of social interaction
- Lack of creative approach
- Education as busywork
- Anxiety caused by unrealistic expectations
- Limited freedom in learning
- Diminishing teacher-student interaction
- Disrupted study-life balance
- Development of resentment toward education
- Desire to cheat or plagiarize
- Waste of money
Quite a long list, which requires further explanation. So, check out the following sections.
Delving Into Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned
We’ve discussed sleep deprivation and constant stress. We’ve talked about low self-esteem, resentment toward education, and how homework turns it into busywork. But what money and the inclination to plagiarize have to do with that?
When you don’t want to do something that has to be done, you look for ways to delegate those tasks to someone else. That’s when we get into online tutoring, seeking help on shady platforms, and/or simply plagiarizing the works of others, whether intentionally or accidentally.
Now, let’s talk about the negative impact on physical health. As all your time is consumed by homework, you don’t go outdoors much. And you, obviously, you don’t have enough time for physical training. This is especially difficult for children and works as one of the main reasons why homework should be banned in schools.
A sound mind in a sound body, they say, but how do you get a sound body if most of the time is dedicated to doing homework?
One of the Most Unpleasant Facts Why Homework Should Be Banned
Why homework should be banned facts revolve around the possibility that it can have a long-lasting negative impact on your life. Several times throughout the article, we have mentioned that excessive amounts of assignments disrupt the sturdy-life balance.
You may say, “So, what? When education is over, my life will get back to normal.” Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
What you should take away from school, college, or any other educational institution is knowledge and certain skills. Quite frequently, you get disrupted life balance in the same package as a bonus. Throughout your school, college, and university years, you get used to sleepless nights, finishing assignments at the very last minute.
And it follows you after graduation as well. Your disrupted study-life balance turns into a disrupted work-life balance. Your only hope is good time management, but most end up slipping back to finishing work up at 3 am. That’s the price you pay to be a good student.
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Homework Should Be Banned! Or Is It a Problem Per Se?
We’ve discussed all the negative impacts of being overwhelmed with assignments. Mental fatigue, strained relationship with parents, diminishing interest in learning, loathing the educational system…
Quite enough reasons to say that students should study during classes and never be bothered with home assignments ever again. But we must think about the crucial question: is homework the real problem here?
Mindless tasks that don’t require a creative approach are bad. Excessive assignments are also obviously bad. But, home assignments, nonetheless, are an integral part of the learning process, as they allow you to work independently.
They allow you to showcase your knowledge of the subject. In many ways, they are the only means for teachers to be sure that you’ve learned the material well and that their work wasn’t in vain.
However, some teachers abuse home assignments. They give the students all possible tasks they can do, hoping that such an approach will turn them into better learners.
Another concern is that the education system rarely reevaluates which assignments are conducive to the learning process and which are not. And that’s how studying turns into monotonous busywork.
Should Homework Be Abolished, Or Should the Approach to Assignments Change?
The approach when students are overloaded with home assignments should definitely be abolished. After all, nobody enjoys the learning process when it turns into survival.
Sit through the classes, participate in seminars, and get home as fast as you can so you can devote the next several hours of your day to homework assignments. Then, pray that you will finish them by midnight so you will have at least six or seven hours of sleep.
Needless to say, such an approach to assigning tasks develops nothing but resentment toward learning. But abolishing homework altogether can do more harm than good.
The Negative Aspects of Abolishing Home Assignments
We live in a world filled up with radical views. To ban or not to ban, that is the question. While we focused on the reasoning why homework should be banned, we need to think about why we get homework assignments. We learn how to work independently, and they allow teachers to assess our grasp of subjects.
Without home assignments, we will constantly need supervision from others. And when it comes to tests and exams, we simply won’t know what to do because we didn’t have any experience working on assignments on our own. So, a ban will do more harm than good.
Should Homework Be Illegal, Or Should the Academic Load Be Reconsidered?
Banning something is the easiest way, and it can be a good solution, tactic-wise. However, strategically, it is the worst possible decision. Ban homework right now, and you will end up with millions of unprofessional people everywhere, simply because there is no way to assess their knowledge in their respective fields.
Reconsidering students’ workloads and reevaluating the importance of every type of assignment is a longer process. Still, it is more productive and will lead to better results in the long term. And that’s the approach that the education system can take.
To Ban, or Not To Ban – That Is the Question
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous homework or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing ban it altogether?
Yes, there are 20 reasons why homework should be banned, and if you dig deeper, you may find 20 more reasons. But hey, should video games or horror films be banned because they, from time to time, inspire certain individuals to commit violent acts?
Should medicine be banned because a wrong dosage can lead to lethal outcomes? Should cars be banned to avoid traffic accidents? The list of questions like these can go on forever.
Any invention of humans can equally be a benefit and a hazard. And prohibiting something is not the best solution. The better option is to do the homework — no pun intended — and figure out ways to change it so it will be more beneficial than disadvantageous.
We need to ease the workload, limit the number of mindless tasks, promote creative approach, and keep in mind that students have life outside educational institutions.
Home assignments give you a lot of benefits, which are hard to recognize under the weight of studying. The problem is the way that the education system handles home assignments and not the assignments per se.
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Although homework is an integral part of the learning process, too much of it has a negative impact on students. It frequently causes low self-esteem, as students are prone to blame themselves for not being able to accomplish assignments. It can also cause sleep deprivation, which leads to mental fatigue.
Excessive home assignments often lead to isolation. Students are so focused on getting all their homework done that they have little to no time for social interactions. Hence, home assignments can hamper the development of students’ social skills.
Homework requires students to sit down and work on the assignment. Countless assignments mean that students have little to no time for outdoor activity and physical training, as homework consumes most, if not all, of their free time.
Students frequently spend nights working on their assignments to get their grades, which leads to mental fatigue. This is one of the main arguments why homework should be forbidden. Mental fatigue prevents some students from concentrating on learning, and they end up with low self-esteem if they cannot be as successful as their peers.
Being overloaded with assignments often leads to students focusing on accomplishing homework with no regard to natural needs like sleep. This leads to diminishing study-life balance, which can later become a lack of work-life balance. As a result, people are suffering from mental fatigue and depression years after graduation.
Home assignments, per se, are not to be blamed. The workload is. The amount of homework should be monitored, and the importance of certain types of tasks should be reevaluated. The ban won’t solve the issue and will cause more problems in the long run.
