Intro

“No kid should be getting three or four hours of homework a night. There’s no breathing time,
there’s no family time, there are just extracurricular and homework and then go to bed” said
beautifully by Ross W. Greene an American physiologist who works with kids and families. It is
unfair that students are experiencing 3-4 hours of homework each night. Would you want an
extra 3+ hours of work after you left work? No! There is too much homework for students
because it is taking away time from students, it’s causing mental issues in students, and
homework is making students stressed - causing homework to be ineffective. Homework was
even invented to punish students, the creator of homework Roberto Nevilis only invented
homework to punish his lazy students in 1905! Now homework is everywhere in schools across
America, punishing students who do try. Furthermore, there will be more details on how
Homework is ineffective.

#1 Claim (Time spent)

First of all, Homework is taking away students time when they could spend it with family. Just
you may know, spending time with family is important, more importantly so for the younger
children. It is important that children have time to spend with family, to bond and feel the
security in their home. “According to Jones (2017,) children are less likely to have behavioral;
issues at home or at school.” A quote pulled from "Why Spending Quality Time With Your
Children Is Important" (Roudabush and Rider). This is straight connection to school, the more
time kids spend time with their family, the less chance of stress and issues of behavior. But the
kids may not to spend that time appropriately with their family, using it on homework. I think this
is why it connects to why homework should be banned, without homework, kids can focus on
being kids. Another quote from a different article, “..children whose parents are involved in their
daily lives tend to preform better academically than their counterparts” (Brozak). What this
means is that if kids weren’t spending their time on homework so much, they might be able to
preform better in school along with their peers. Because they are spending that same time with
their parents, ‘cause study suggests parents being involved with their kids improves
performance. To conclude, homework may have its benefits but one reason why homework is
not beneficial is that it takes up too much time in the kids lives, this could lead to behavioral
problems at home and at school. More similarly, homework also can cause a lot stress, leading
to noticeable physical attributes.

#2 Claim (Physical Changes)

The stress caused from homework is increasing in students alike and its causing serious
problems, which is another reason why homework should be banned. Do you know when you
haven’t gotten a good nights rest? Tense from a situation at home? Notice how you feel and act
differently, you may feel groggy. And you are less likely to care about your own appearance.
Well these are causes from having to stay up to frantically finish homework for most students.
“Stress that's left unchecked can contribute to many health problems, such as high blood
pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.” (“Stress”). Health problems? These things are
all physical. Nonphysical effects can include depression, anxiety and other emotional problems.
And to think these things could of all been easily prevented if we were not stressing our
students out with the homework assigned. I think this connects to what I’m saying, because
health problems are pretty serious when they could have been prevented. “When a person has
long-term (chronic) stress, continued activation of the stress response causes wear and tear on
the body. Physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms develop.” (“Stress”). From a different
article saying a similar thing, It also says later in the article that stress can cause muscle aches
or muscle tension. That certainly isn’t fun for a student trying to study late in the night because
of their 2+ hour homework. Especially when most students don’t have medication available and
this could have been easily prevented once again if schools were not assigning homework.
Overall, homework can be stressful. Homework will never NOT be stressful and stress causes
serious changes in students. That is why it should be banned so we can give our students a
break to fix themselves of these problems they have acquired. But it’s not just physically tearing
students, its also mentally. This will be talked about in the next paragraph more closely.

#3 Claim (Brain stuff)

Not only is stress causing problems, but the time being spent for homework is not beneficial to
the student themself. Even so, potential over-cramming could lead to depression and worse.
What do I mean by that? Students are not given enough time to sleep, not enough sleep means
their brain was unable to process what information what it was given to them that same day.
With this stress and worry, kids are experiencing the negative effects of their brain being
overworked. Things like depression and anxiety can closely become one with students life. “'If
you don’t sleep, your brain doesn’t have a chance to consolidate information.'” (“Five”). Says
expert Dr Melissa Weinburg, meaning when students stay up all night cramming in their
homework. They aren’t actually retaining information, because they don’t give their brains
enough time to process information. Which kind of defeats the purpose of homework right?
Homework was created so students could refine on the material they are learning. So, we can
fairly say we should lesson the homework to give the time for sleep and that process of
information. “Researchers also say that too much stress from studying can cause brain
inflammation and result in memory loss and depression” (“The”). This is another reason why
homework is self-destructing. If your over-cramming constantly at night because you don’t have
time any other time, you can forget it all in a snap. Which is quite unfortunate if you have a test
the next day. This is why I think homework should be banned or reduced because it will improve
performance in tests. With a whopping 36.4% of college students experience anxiety
(“College”), which can connect to the fact most of these students have probably over-crammed
throughout the following years of college. Just thinking about how some of these effects could
have prevented is very rage-inducing- without homework the percentage of students with
anxiety, depression, and other mental issues would drop significantly. Thats why I think
homework has yet to take its leave. But what about the independence that students have
learned from homework?

#1 Counterclaim (Homework is actually relevant)

Homework is actually good for students and helps them prepare for the future, in fact it teaches
students how to be independent and encourages initiative. And homework does manage to
teach students about sometimes forcing themself to do things that they don’t want to, the
independence they have learned comes from doing homework. Without homework, they won’t
learn that important virtue for adult life. “Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’
lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them” (Rimer). Which is true, homework does
engage kids and is very relevant to them. It teaches kids the act of responsibility and initiative,
because no one wants to do homework. Just like the real world, if someone were in a job and
they got assigned a task. The same person would be prepared for the type of thing by forcing
themself to do that task. But that person would understand that of what they are expected to do.
“Direct positive effect of homework is that it can improve retention and understanding”
(“Homework”). Another thing is that homework is the material students are reviewing in class.
With homework, they can take the material they are learning and understand it better. Without
any time spent to study, students would fail and all of that teaching would have gone to waste.
But that teaching won’t go to waste if we have homework, that way students have a way to
review that material. Because without homework, kids wouldn’t have been able to retain that
knowledge or information from their teachers. I mean, after you see one thing once, would you
remember? They would have started failing the big tests, and soon they aren’t passing. Which is
why homework is a-okay right now. Students also should be managing their time correctly, and
having homework including other after school activities teaches them proper time management.

#2 Counterclaim (Its the students fault for not doing this or that)
The next claim comes down to the students, some people say that homework could be more
and that students are choosing to not do homework. Really when it comes down to it. Student’s
should be doing homework, it is their responsibility. There are not any reasons why students
shouldn’t, right? Well, when it comes down to it. Sometimes people forget that homework may
be boring, it isn’t a priority, and/or students need help and are not asking for it. So they end up,
not doing that homework because of those obstacles. “Emotional Intelligence and the Yale Child
Study Center found that nearly 75% of the students’ self-reported feelings related to school
were negative” (Belli). To say if we improved the quality of homework, then students would be
learning and their feelings for school would improve. Instead of eradicating the entirety
existence of homework, we should change the parts of homework to make it fit for its job.
Students with negative feelings for school probably have similar feelings towards homework, if
we could perhaps improve the quality of homework, we could fix the “Why” students aren’t
finishing homework or not doing it in the first place. “The ratings scale supported the findings,
with students reporting feeling stressed (79.83%) and bored (69.51%) the most” (Belli). And so,
judging from the results from the findings of the conducted research, 69% of students were
bored. If we engaged in the homework would, there would be no reason to get rid of homework.
It also says in another article that countries with that average higher grades for students assign
less homework. “many countries with the highest scoring students, such as Japan, the Czech
Republic and Denmark, have teachers who give little homework” (Blaum). Which means
students would be doing better if our teachers assigned less homework. Overall, homework
should stay, because it helps students understand their material. By assigning less homework,
students grades would improve because they are not feeling as overwhelmed. Finally, to
summarize this.

Conclusion
Homework has its pros and cons, but effectively homework has done more harm than good.
I say that homework has done more harm than good because I have only looked at a small
percentage of millions of articles with evidences and studies showing us that homework hurts
our students.