What is the point of homework? We all hate it, despite it, yell at it, get mad at it, and yet we are always crushed by mountains of it. So they (some random teachers at my sorry excuse of a high school) tell me that homework is for ‘practice’ and ‘understanding’ – to prove that you can ‘persevere’ through it. Yet I see no correlation between homework and knowledge, and the only things that are directly affected by homework are the number of hours you sleep every night and your social life, and neither of them in a positive way.
Take a moment, and think back – do you remember any homework assignments? Perhaps a few – some of the big projects – what good have they done? Is there any purpose or application of them? For a vast majority, I will venture to guess that the answer is no. Not one English poetry analysis, Data Management summative, or Science EUT has helped me learn a damned thing, except to teach me that some people will do anything for marks, that group projects are exponentially more inefficient than working alone, and that any learning that goes on in school is merely an illusion to satisfy parents who need some place for their kids to be when they are at work and don’t want to deal with them. Homework needs not be done when the student already understands the material and remembers it – homework is merely work to keep students busy while teachers make it look like the students are learning from it. A truly good teacher does not need homework to make a student learn – their act of teaching itself should suffice.
Homework, in our modern schools, should not be something assigned to be checked and monitored, but rather something optional and done only when needed. I’d like to think I know a lot of people, but I know that I don’t – the people I know are more than likely to be of above average intelligence, and of the hard-working variety – which is what scares me most. As far as I can tell, assignments are not done for the sake of learning – they are done for marks and recognition. The unmotivated will simply plagiarize things at little risk, while the more motivated will simply paraphrase from a few more sources. People will pay others to do assignments, or find elaborate ways to copy from someone else. The value of assignments has been cheapened so much so that they are worthless. In fact, the concept of an assignment itself is flawed – when you are forced to work at something, it ceases to become enlightening, and learning no longer occurs. Learning needs to be done while the learner is enjoying it, not dreading it. Thus, homework should not be something forced on students, but something entirely optional to be done at a student’s best interest. I know, the obvious counter argument is that there will be a vast majority of students who will simply ignore homework and get lazy – but the cause of that is not homework itself, but that they were not properly taught the value of learning, or indeed how to learn (both parents and teachers at earlier stages are greatly responsible for this – but that is a matter for another time). For those who do not care enough to learn, well then it is indeed too bad for them, and they deserve the kick in the ass they will get from life when they found out they screwed themselves over. Anyone who wants badly enough to learn will then have an opportunity, and it will not be forced, but done at will – learning done willingly is much often more enjoyable and memorable, as I have had the pleasure of learning for myself many years ago when teachers did not pile mountains of homework on me.
Myself, I have decided not to do homework if it’s not worth anything (any assignments, I believe, are simply hoops to jump through to prove myself to some morons who have done the same in the past and are too lazy to realize that all of this is just an elaborate show that benefits nobody), but of course, that’s just my two cents – don’t go blaming me when you fail your next test because you listened to my rants.
[Postscript: Yeah, it's crude, but it gets my point across. Yeah, I sound pissy, but that's what happens when you get piles of homework that you can't finish and see no point in finishing - you start to procrastinate and do everything except for the 'homework' that you are supposed to do.]
Comments (4)
Unfortunately the reality is that most people who don’t do their homework need it, while those who do it, don’t. Our AP classes always serve as a flawless match to your arguments, but I think this is due to the calibre of the students in these courses, and not the course itself. There are some of us (maybe just one or two) that devote all of their time to homework, while others like you and I don’t do it unless required. It is clear that your understanding of the material is unparalleled, and thus this rant of yours holds true to yourself. However, being in a lesser strand of education much longer than you, I understand the need for homework to be mandatory. However, I do agree with you on the fact that it being mandatory doesn’t fix any problems. As the bottom line is still, those who need it, don’t do it, no matter the consequences.
-brendanW
Well… as much as I agree with you in most respects, your argument seems to be more centered on the exact sciences and mathematics. I agree that for those, an understanding of the concepts is worth a whole lot more then a mindless, repetitive task such as physics homework. I believe that if more people were even to review the material learned in class when they did not understand it, and try to understand what was taught instead of wasting their time on the useless homework assigned, this would be a better way to spend their time.
Of course, it is not always about KNOWING how to do it either. I was forced in Grade 11 Math to find out the value of homework (though I clearly didn’t learn any lesson from this), when I got really crappy on the midterm and almost everyone beat me. I understood the stuff definetly, and could come up with and derive many of the formulas on the midterm… hell… i could probably teach the material to some peers, but I just didn’t do ANY homework, and those who did had a slight advantage. You see, teachers take questions FROM the homework, and in DOING the homework, you are learning TYPES of questions. So now, students, instead of reading a question and figuring out how to do it on a test, are reading a question and saying to themselves: “Oh yeah! I remember a question like this one! I did it THIS way…”. I believe this aspect of homework has its up’s and down’s since it seems to propagate memorization, though memorization CAN be a good thing when the underlying concepts are, in fact, understood. Try doing some of those integral quizzes for example without trying Brar’s crazy sheet of insane integrals. You would know where to start maybe, and would come up with some ideas, but without having the practice, and knowing song of the tricks of the trade that come only from homework, you’d bomb pretty easily.
So then, there must be both homework that enhances one’s understanding of a concept as well as homework that is just plain… stupid and repetitive (physics textbook questions anyone?). But wait! Let’s consider a whole new area of study… the humanitites and english. Ah! How we AP’s love to ignore this area in our opinions, and I am no exception to this, as for many years I have thought English to be one of the biggest wastes of a course ever, and believed it was simply BS101. This is starting to change this year with a good english teacher (a rarity, really), Pommie/ Pompom/ Pomakov. English really CAN only be learned through homework, as much as he is really piling it on. While I don’t agree with his method of assigning insane amounts of homework, I do see the necessity of it in an English class. English seems to be more about the skills of writing and analyzing literature, which both are difficult to master, and take time and practice to get down. When you look at a story or novel, unless you ARE Pomakov, you most likely cannot at once deduce that the author is making an extended metaphor comparing hope to the rising sun or whatever until you have studied and though about the novel a bit (and perhaps visited a certain site that we shall just call http://www.sparkn____.com, or no wait… that’s too obvious… http://www.s____notes.com). It is not until you have had enough experience in this field that you can become faster and more efficient at it, and I think that’s his intended purpose for this plethora of journals, though they are rather meaningless in such large numbers… can’t we just analyze more things orally in class… jeez!
Either way, I’d have to partially disagree with you that Homework is Worthless, as it is ALL certainly worth something, though some homework is worth MUCH less then other homework. I think High School focuses too much on homework and assignments as an evaluating tool though, and focuses too little on students’ understanding of concepts. The ministry of education should perhaps think this over a bit since, what is it that will help students more in further education – an understanding of the basic concepts that make up the foundation of the harder concepts, or a mindless ability to crunch numbers in only certain types of problems?
~Badea
PS: Rather ironic that i’m writing this to procrastinate for a plethora of English journal writings and my essay outline, not to mention Data project and economics…
That’s exactly my point… homework should not be the focus of learning, and it certainly has its values, but having it forced on you makes it much less of a learning experience and turns it into a job that you ‘need’ to do. Practice does make perfect, but not when you don’t enjoy it.
It’s the student’s choice to appreciate homework for its true value, its potential to consolidate concepts taught in lectures. It’s the student’s resposibility, therefore, to leap over the procrastination stage and accept that work is being given, and that it is expected to be completed. I couldn’t do a thing without that kind of motivation, that in some way or another I will be enriched by doing problems. If I had the idea implanted in me that homework was useless, I’d be such a different person. But not everyone can do two out of twenty problems and get the idea down pat in their brains. Even I take about three . . .