Is homework a necessity or an obligation?
It is said that hard work is the key to success.
Homework represents a way for students to solidify and to expand their knowledge from the school activities and for parents a tangible way to involve themselves in the educational process. The children consider them a big source of stress, the parents view them as an additional daily responsibility, and the teachers spend many hours correcting them. The traditional homework, inherited from a generation to the other as a rudimentary didactic method, doesn’t seem to find its place in the picture of modern-day education.
Once you become a pupil, the child starts to have certain responsibilities, far bigger than when he went to kindergarten. Firstly, he starts to have responsibilities regarding his future of becoming an adult. Among these responsibilities is also the “homework”.
On every student’s lips most frequently there is the question “Is homework a necessity or an obligation?” or “Why do we have so much homework? When am I supposed to hang out with my friends if I have so many assignments?” These questions have been bugging all pupils. We cannot help but wonder what a highschoolers life would look like without homework?
I can answer you with a single word, happy. From the standpoint of students, homework is a burden, a “punishment”, but also among them there are certain exceptions because, without exceptions to the rule, life would be very boring. Most certainly, there are students, either at Vianu or in other high schools, which do homework happily. “How can you do homework with pleasure?”, would be the question of every student. Well, every one of you may know or have heard about someone who does homework without feeling forced. A poll conducted in multiple elite high schools in the USA shows that 56% of students consider homework as the main source of stress regarding their school activity. But, what do teachers think?
Students must understand why they receive assignments to do at home, as they must consolidate what they learn at school; to prepare for the next days of lessons; to have a reason to resort to certain sources of additional information (books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, the Internet, etc.) Meanwhile, homework helps children to become more confident in their decision-making abilities, to want to learn more, and to become more disciplined, to be able to manage their time, and to respect “deadlines”. Studies show that homework helps at assimilating the concepts discussed within the lesson at school. These contain elements that the students have been taught in that day and they are imposed or the sole purpose to understand better the lesson. These assignments force students to apply what they learned theoretically in a practical problem. So, the theory will be better understood and learned.
At the same time, many of us had difficulty remembering a person's name when we met her in an unexpected environment, but we easily remembered her name after meeting her several times in various places. Similarly, students need to practice their skills in different environments, managing to accumulate new information more easily and better fix their information taught in class, even managing to deepen it.
Homework is also an effective way for a student to spend their free time. Solving homework gives the student an increase in his level of intelligence, which will lead to better results in school and life. In the same way, the child will gain more confidence in his way of reasoning. The link between homework and educational performance is supported by a synthesis of several studies, which conclude that the relationship between homework and academic success is positive and statistically significant.
Following a discussion with my friends about the school, I had the opportunity to find out their opinion about homework. They consider that the topics have a different purpose than the one they should. The idea of the topic involves a consolidation, an exercise of the studied notions that the student should do in private to master the subject better, but in reality, most of the time, the homework is given only to fill all the personal time of children. For example, weekend homework or holiday homework, I was told that they can be classified in such a situation.
Do students spend too much time at the office with their noses in books and notebooks? The amount of work required to do homework should be within reasonable limits. It is observed that a large number of exercises lead to work of redemption, copying, abandonment of the whole topic, refusal to approach the topic. Adolescents should not spend more than an hour each day doing homework, according to a study published in the Journal of
Educational Psychology. The study also shows that the long time spent on homework is directly related to decreased school performance.
Another question that certainly frustrates students is whether it is worth doing their homework, whether it will benefit them. Studies show that students who pay close attention to homework do better in school, discover new things. Differences of opinion are increasingly common between homework supporters and those who consider them an impediment to quality time spent in the family and the formation of harmonious relationships with others.
In conclusion, homework is both a necessity and a necessity in the life of teenagers, managing both to fix the information accumulated in class and to discover new things, and to spend time-solving homework, by approaching correct of the given subjects.
Don't forget to follow us on instagram! @the.magateen
editorial: Alexia Florete
graphic design: Alexia Florete,
Alexandra Zanef
translation: Ana Maria Petrescu
DP (desktop publishing): Alexandra Zanef
