Education's Downward Spiral
In this article Elizabeth writes about the inefficiency of homework in the modern world.
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Education's Downward Spiral
Education's Downward Spiral
By: Elizabeth Dugan
By: Elizabeth Dugan
The value and effectiveness of homework has been debated for over a century. The homework system was introduced in the early 19th century by Horace Mann, who many consider to be the father of the American educational system. It was created with the original intention of reinforcing what was learned in the classroom and to teach responsibility. However, how homework is being utilized now teaches kids and teenagers from a young age to adulthood to expect and do required free labor to succeed in the workplace.
Horace Mann did not create the homework system we know today, but he did start the path of the homework system. However, countless teachers and school boards have taken and twisted it to teach kids to expect to do free labor to keep the capitalist system standing. According to History Cooperative, a history journal homework was created “ as a deliberate strategy with several essential objectives in mind.” Most of these objectives are meant to give school a more structured and rigorous system to teach responsibility, time management, and reinforce what was learned in the classroom by assigning tasks to complete outside of school. What was once a structured system of signing a few tasks has now turned into rigorous hours of reading, writing, studying, and analyzing well into the night, causing most teenagers to lose sleep.
Image of Horace Mann from GetArchive
This shift in the homework system is really a reflection of the social change we as humans have gone through but have not updated the education system to reflect and support. The way the school system was set up was to prepare children for work in a factory setting, but most people today do not work in factories. Instead, they go to work in schools, corporations, law firms, gyms, playing fields, and countless other professions and areas of expertise. As such, the school system reacted by adding more required classes with a lot of bookwork to ensure children are well-rounded as humans to handle the world, which just continued to add homework to kids' schedules.
Image from PxHere
Tyler Cheek, a math teacher at Grants Pass who has worked with hundreds of students and has seen how homework is both beneficial and ineffective, said, “ The homework system has to depend on the class, but is beneficial to enforcing what was learned, as well as to ensure the kids meet all the requirements set by the school because there just isn’t enough time in a day to teach them all without some kind of homework. However, homework has a time, place, and way it is effective. Outside of those, it just becomes busy work and takes away from its meaning.” Cheek’s understanding of the homework system shows insight regarding how the main problem of piling homework on kids starts at the top with the school board requiring the kids to have a certain amount of knowledge in each subject, which teachers do not have enough time to fully address in class. This added pressure on teachers forces them to adjust and, in most cases, assign homework to students to ensure they meet the graduation requirements. This leads students to become conditioned to the idea that work must be done-- even if it has to be done outside of working hours or the workplace.
Homework continuously piles up, adding more and more work to a students' agendas after school hours. This heavy workload punishment system consequently teaches kids and teenagers that work is to be done no matter what. This learned behavior is reinforced throughout the years that children must go through in school, and it is what they come to expect in the workplace when they are grown adults.
Sources:
Sources:
Interview with Tyler Cheek: 3/4/2025
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