Raider Reflections: Schools Shouldn’t Give Homework To Students in Lower Grades

When kids are in the lower grades like 1^st through 6th, a lot of them do not pay attention when doing homework. Homework causes students stress when they do not get it done and they get a lower grade because of it too. Some students aren’t very good with time management and it reflects badly on how smart they are using their grades so there should be a separate assessment for it. Kids should not have homework when they are younger because it has more disadvantages than benefits.

When kids are out of school, they need time to have fun and they can’t do that as much if they are worrying about homework. I did a survey at our school that I gave to students in the 9^th through 12^th grades and it asked them if they would be willing to have less vacationing time if that meant that we would have no homework. At first, I thought that everybody would want to get rid of homework. However, as the participants got older, they said no to it more. Some of them had good points about why. All of the freshmen said yes to getting rid of homework and making the school year longer. This is probably because when people are younger, they just want to do things that they think are fun.

   Only two out of the seven tenth graders said yes and zero eleventh, twelfth, or teachers said yes on the survey. Most of the people that said no said that they answered that way because homework is important and helps you to learn the material. One of the people that I surveyed that said no to the survey said, “I wouldn’t because homework is what helps you practice your lesson.” This is true for some people but other people do not learn well that way and it causes more stress for them than it benefits their learning. It also causes some students to stay up late and not get enough sleep. This causes them to not retain as much information the next day at school. It also can decrease their overall health and make school more stressful than it should be.

            I believe that as you get older like around the 10^th grade, you realize that homework helps you. Until then, a lot of students just think of homework as a burden and stresses them out. At first, I was going to try to get there to be no homework but now I think that it should just be graded as a separate assignment from your intelligence. This means that there would be a grade for tests, a grade for how well you do on the homework that you get done, and how much homework you actually get done.