Why Homework is Utterly Unnecessary

[NetSyn]

Why Homework is Utterly Unnecessary

If you were given seven hours per day to accomplish something basic,
something that people are inherently capable of doing; something that
is in human nature and is a very basic part of life, would you not assume
that is sufficient? American schools feel that seven hours per day of highly
structured learning is not enough, hence, they are compelled to extend their
tendrils into the private lives of students. While there are many other
aspects of the American public school system that certainly need to be
improved upon, homework is the most visible and most easily reformed
aspect of the school system.

Prior to entering the school system, between birth and approximately
five years of age, children undergo a stunning change. They go from wholly
instinct driven creatures to beings who have grasped how to communicate
using an alien language (or more than one, depending on what they're exposed
to), how to perform tasks such as playing a game of baseball or riding a
bicycle; they learn concepts such as truth and lying, sharing, and etiquette,
and they are capable of detecting when someone is attempting to fool them
into doing something, and how to do the same if necessary. Some children are
able to create beautiful music at a very young age, such as Mozart. These
children are not forced to memorize quadratic equations, or read dry
stories that hold no relevance or meaning to them, or sit through hour-long
lectures, or write reports about novels they have no desire to read. They
simply utilize their innate curiosity and passion for learning to discover
things on their own and apply them.

Stifling a person's mind by forcing them to engage in dull,
pointless work during their time away from school is not a good thing.
The resources of the mind are much better spent focusing on tasks that a
person enjoys, rather than work that will be forgotten in two weeks. Mark
Twain's novels may not have existed, had he remained in school and focused
on algebra and science rather than creating the characters of Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn. Harlan Sanders, better known as the Colonel, might never
have had the time to create his recipes for fried chicken if he had spent
his time in a classroom listening to a burnt out teacher who didn't want to
be there in the first place. Claude Monet's beautiful works of art possibly
could never have seen the light of day, had his time been occupied with
writing reports about authors whose works were utterly irrelevant to him.
As the aforementioned examples demonstrate, homework has very little bearing
on what a person is capable of accomplishing.



--By Chance (Overlord_45`)



I totally agreed with this and belive more would like to read it so i figured id paste it here in cosmos for a nice talk about homework : )

add anything ud like

*i got permission from chance to post this up here he wrote it to give to his teacher to try to get out of doing a stupid report*

[KissCool]

Yes, but this homework is not only to destroy our lives. It is needed to complete school stuffs, to prepare us to do a lot of work in any situations we could (or not) imaginate.

I'm in "classes préparatoires" in order to enter in "grandes écoles" of engineers and the homework is only necessary because we don't have the time to do all during the day (to do exercises, to demonstrate some stuffs, to understand the lessons...). It is very invasive (I can't do anything, I'm working all the time between 8h am and 00h am) but it is necessary to make a better work in the future.

We aren't all Mark Twain.

[thesecretfire]

In some ways this is right, in some ways it isn't.

For instance, my math teacher assigns a nice little bunch of questions that have to be done (or you loose marks). Without doing any of them, I'd ace the test anyway (I know this from past experience), and they are basically just boring drudge work that does nothing but make me dislike the class.

But there is a place for some amount of homework. By the time you're in high school, each class is really only getitng a few hours a week (depending on what system your school uses) so some of them need to assign homework for teaching purposes. It can also be used to evaluate students. (Niether of which applies to the aformentioned dumb math homework)

[er0k]

i think homework is a great idea, it furthers the students education at home and helps them study etc. the teachers have this thing called a lesson plan. and in this lesson plan they have to get through certain amounts of work each week or so to determine when the test is going to be, when the end of semester tests are and what they cover etc. now that would be hard to do if all the work was done in school when the students dont have enough time to either finish it or completely understand it. of course then you have the lazy ppl who dont do there work period, now those ppl dont do homework so it doesnt matter for them.. etc... homework is a great idea, it keeps the school system flowing.

[allenb1963]

Hate to break it to you, but there will come a time when you will look back and wish that homework was all you had to be concerned with. Your teachers are preparing you for the real world the way it is, not the way you think it should be....so you better buckle down and make the most of it. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but until you've pulled 50+ straight hours of hard labor (been there, done that) with nothing but meals and bathroom breaks to rest yourself, I can't give you any sympathy. You've got it easy right now, but still you whine. I hope you can overcome this, or life is going to snap you like a twig.

[|The|Specialist]

I quit going to school and now I have to worry about things like G.E.D. and what I want to do with my life but if I had stayed in school I would have had peaple coach me though things but now i'm all alone and its just me vs. the real world.

[gghornet]

I actually enjoy homework,but I enjoy most of the courses I'm taking also.If you try to become more interested in the subject you're studying rather than seeing it as a burdon or an obstacle,it makes school much easier,and usually it goes by faster too.

[GreekGoddess]

I'm going to try and throw in another perspective as seen in sociology when pertaining to education, the school systems, and homework in general. And if you really think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

School, the rules you put up with, the mindless busy work you do, tons of homework, and so forth is all about conditioning you for the real world. In the real world, with a real job, you follow the same principles. (Here are a few)

1. Show up on time.
2. Follow all of the rules.
3. Work promptly.
4. Don't question policies.

Here are some interesting quotes:

While children's perceptions of the world and opportunities for genuine spontaneity and creativity are being systematically eliminated from the kindergarten, unquestioned obdeience to authority and rote learning of meaningless material are being encouraged -- Harry L. Gracey, sociologist, "Learning the Student Role: Kindergarten as Academic Boot Camp" in H. Stub (ed.)The Sociology of Education: A Sourcebook (1975)

When a teacher complains that students are "off task" - a favorite bit of educational jargon - the behaviorist will leap to the rescue with a program to get them back "on" again. The more reasonable response to this complaint is to ask, "What's the task?" Not surprisingly, this way of framing the problem meets with considerable resistance on the part of many educators. More than once I have been huffily informed that life isn't always interesting, and kids had better learn to deal with this fact. . . . Thus is the desire to control children, or the unwillingness to create a worthwhile curriculum, rationalized as being in the best interests of the students. -- Alfie Kohn, social psychologist, Punished by Rewards (1993)

The function of education has never been to free the mind and spirit of man, but to bind them; and to the end that the mind and spirit of his children should never escape Homo sapiens has employed praise, ridicule, admonition, accusation, multilation, and even torture to chain them to the culture pattern . . . for where every man is unique there is no society, and where there is no society there can be no man. Contemporary American educators think they want creative children, yet it is an open question as to what they expect these children to create. And certainly the classrooms -- from kindergarten to graduate school -- in which they expect it to happen are not crucibles of creative activity and thought. It stands to reason that were young people truly creative the culture would fall apart, for originality, by definition, is different from what is given, and what is given is the culture itself. From the endless, pathetic, "creative hours" of kindergarten to the most abtruse problems in sociology and anthropology, the function of education is to prevent the truly creative intellect from getting out of hand. -- Jules Henry, Culture Against Man

http://www.jordoncooper.com/resource...s/e-quotes.htm

Also, here is an interesting essay that goes over some of the basics I discussed above:

http://don.ratcliff.net/childspirit/ceremony.html


Now, even understanding this, I don't find all homework to be pointless. The majority of it is a good conditioning tool to learn the material. When I got to college, there was no homework, and if there was, they really didn't give a damn whether or not I had it done, nor whether or not I even showed up to class. I grunted and complained in high school too, there was A LOT of pointless homework. Stuff to do just to keep you busy. However, when I got to college, and was used to that, it gave me the extra patience to sit down with my books, study, make nice outlines, do unrequired homework and any extra work I needed to do to suceed in the class. So the highly structured learning is important. By the time you get out of high school, you're prepared for college, where things are far less constrictive as far as creativity is concerned, you're taught to be a free thinker and examine things on a higher level, rather than, this is how it is...this is how it's going to be attitude, as in high school.

So, I hope the two points of view sheds some light on things. Not all homework is meant to be enjoyable, but not all jobs are enjoyable, not all college classes are enjoyable, in fact, you're going to do a lot of things in life (bills, responsibilty, etc.) that aren't very much fun either. You learn to suck it up and deal with it.

[rcgreen]

The worst student we had, the worst student I have ever encountered, was in his life outside the classroom, as mature, intelligent and interesting a student as anyone at school. What went wrong? Experts muttered to his parents about brain damage-- a handy way to end a mystery that you can't explain otherwise. Somewhere along the line his intelligence became disconnected from his schooling. Where? Why?"

http://eqi.org/holt.htm

The above author was a pioneering thinker of the modern trend
toward home education.

[doktorf00bar]

I think this is highly relevant to the 1st post in this thread, and to the reality of education in general:
http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Wri...chooling.shtml

What do y'all think?