Why Should Schools Force Students Have Homework?

Most students recognize a stressful day, full of activities to do. They rush straight from school to track practice to swim practice, and end up eating dinner in the car on the way to piano lessons. (Or any extracurricular activities.) Then, they get home at about 8:30, take a shower, and lock yourself in your room to do the 3 hours of homework that’s ahead. These students normally end up going to bed late, dreading a day of struggling to stay awake ahead of them. While many people believe that homework is helping students, it actually just lowers performance in school, lowers your ability to learn about the real world, and most of the time, it doesn’t account for the different learning styles out there. So why should schools force students to do their homework if it only decreases the amount that they learn? First of all, many studies have shown that homework actually lowers school performance. According to a study by Gerald LeTendre, most homework is actually busy work, which would explain why it lowers the test scores of many students. In fact, Richard Walk, an educational psychologist at Sydney University did a study which concluded that in countries that spend more time on homework score lower than the PISA exam (Program for International Student Assessment) For example, in Finland, much less time …show more content…
Extracurriculars are important to give students a chance to explore career interests, make friends, and develop a strong character. Family time is also extremely important to stay close to your family and build your self-esteem (according to sheknows.com). So, why wouldn’t kids be able to do this? It’s all about the homework. In high school, the average student ends up with nearly 3.5 hours of homework per night, on top of the already long school day, which at Unit 5 schools last seven hours. It’s difficult to find room for what matters when you’re always spending time on school