Sadie Kavalier -Jeff Barker photo

Imagine being one of the millions of children who will come home and do homework tonight. If you don’t know how to complete the assignment, you probably won’t ever learn the information because the teacher will most likely move on to something different tomorrow. In a panic, you hurriedly copy the work of another child just to have something to turn in. In today’s world, this is the reality of homework. These assignments do not lead to increased learning.

According to Alfie Kohn, there is absolutely no relationship in elementary and middle school students between homework and test scores. If homework doesn’t have any positive affects on learning, why are almost all students still bogged down with it nightly?

Homework also hasn’t been proven to increase good study habits (Chick and Haller 2010). However, the negative habits caused by homework are quite obvious: procrastination, skimming, and cheating, just to name a few.

Homework also gets in the way of other activities a child might be involved with outside the school environment. Natasha Lindstrom, journalist for the Victorville Daily Press, agrees, “Too much homework can kill a child’s love for learning while forcing him or her to sacrifice time for family, sports, and extracurricular activities.” If a student doesn’t have time to participate in groups and play sports, they can suffer both physically and emotionally.

These points clearly prove that homework does not have a positive affect on learning. Then why is homework still considered a crucial part of a classroom’s curriculum?

Editor’s Note: Sadie Kavalier is a student at the South Tama Middle School in Toledo. She is one of five students taking part in the National Day of Writing Program in the class of Laura Edwards. Assisting in the project are teachers Amy Stotts and Shanna Goos. Photo by teacher Jeff Barker.

One of the projects was to write an editorial.