Homework is an issue that isn’t being addressed correctly by schools.  They say things like, “How can parents help their kids with homework and What type of homework should we be assigning?”  When the real question should be, should we be assigning kids homework?  This has been a topic of discussion for a while now and still hasn’t been resolved.  It is also clear that kids like to learn on their own even without being given assignments to do after school. 

The debate about homework goes back a long way.  In fact, the American Educational Research Association stated in the mid-1960’s: “Whenever homework crowds at the social experience, outdoor recreation, creative activities, and whenever it usurps time that should be devoted to sleep, it is not meeting the basic needs of Children and Adolescents.”  This is a good example of people noticing the problem at hand way back then.  However, they didn’t fix it.  Kids are still given the same or even more homework. 

There is also the point that without the burden of homework, students are my interested in learning and teachers can spend school covering the entirety of the material.  Students will often do their own research if they find a topic interesting.  They may even create their own projects to complete but, will probably enjoy completing it because they are not pressured to finish or follow a specific set of instructions.  An example of this is from Lauren Knight, author of the article The question of homework: Should our kids have it at all? says that her child, Milo, has done this.  Milo asked worked with his father and learned math concepts in math that he hadn’t yet learned because he was inspired by what they had learned in class that day and even asked his dad to give him some practice problems, which he completed.  However, he wouldn’t have been able to do this if he had had homework. 

Some people might say things like “homework is a way for kids to practice what they learned in school.”  The problem with this is, even if they do the homework, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily doing it right.  This means that the kids will be wasting their own time and the teachers time.  Time, that could be used to do something they enjoy or even researching something they found interesting from that class or another.

Not giving homework might have downsides for some people but overall, it seems to help kids enjoy learning more and not think of it as something that they are forced to do.  If kids didn’t have to stress over homework being due, they could also do more things with their time and maybe even research topics that they learned in school father.  This would also make kids be more excited about going to school and overall feel better about education.