The word ‘homework’ has always been a debatable issue among educators, parents, and students. Homework generally means a work or a task given by the teachers or educators for students to do at home or anywhere outside of school hours. According to an article from BBC online news, ‘Is homework a good idea or not?’, the timeline of homework in the United Kingdom, started in the year 1997, where only over 6 out of 10 primary schools made their students do homework. However, in 1998, the government advised the primary schools in England and Wales about homework setting such as to only allow students aged five to seven, to do 10 minutes of homework once a night. In the year 1999, 9 out of 10 primary schools started giving homework to their students. In 2012 until today, the government got rid of all the guidelines about homework setting and decided that it is up to the teachers and the school to decide about the homework given to the students.
The issue about whether homework is a burden or a help to students has been debated for decades already. It is arguable that students should not be given homework as they needed time to spend with their family and to polish their skills and talents. Logically thinking, of course, students who do their homework perform better at school as they revised what they had learnt at school and have a clearer understanding of the topic. Based on an article by Nicole Schrat Carr, a research has found a positive evidence about the correlation between students and homework, in other words, proved that students who did their homework tend to perform better at school (Harris Cooper, 2006). However, the real question is, are their skills, passion, and emotions well developed? People need to realise that there are more to a person other than just their academic performance or how smart they are. When the children are starting to take a step into the world of adulthood, they would soon realise that there are more jobs that require skills than knowledge. Although, by the end of the day, both skills and knowledge are just as equally important as the other.
For years or even decades already, teachers have been given homework to students to finish and settle, claiming that it is to ensure that students revise their lessons at home. However, the education system who stresses teachers to give homework to students does not understand how much pressure the students are carrying, especially children. Childhood is the time to be young and carefree, to have fun, to learn new skills and explore new talents and passion. Not only that, childhood is also the time for them to do the things that they might not get to do again once they enter adulthood ‘ full of responsibilities and work, such little time to themselves. Children should be exposed to enhance their talents rather than making them labour their day into doing hours and hours of homework. Children are expected to attend lessons for an average of 7 hours a day, spare an hour to do homework and revision for every subject, learn new skills and spend time with their families, and still have 8 hours of sleep per day. However, many people still believe that children do not go through any pressure as ‘they have no responsibilities to think about’. According to an online article, retrieved from Edudemic by Michael Sledd (2015), traditional education only focuses on three basic aspects which are reading, writing, and arithmetic. Thus, teachers should re-think if the students are receiving the appropriate skills needed in order for them to perform better at school, the workforce, and in life generally.
Homework also has its negative effects on students. Kohn (2006) argues that homework is only a burden, not only to the students but also to the parents as well. Not only that, it can be stressful to students, children especially, and could even lead to family problems. The main point of giving homework is to help students to learn better. However, homework does not help to adapt the love for learning into children and it also does not teach children higher order thinking skills. What exactly does it teach? Generally speaking, homework only teaches students how to follow the rules, the ability to understand instructions and orders, and the skills to remember facts to put onto tests and exams. Some even argued that homework can differentiate the children who came from different family environments as they tend to have different achievement results. High achieving students have extra sources at home thus making them benefit more in the homework. However, it is very much in contrast with low achieving students that came from poor families, who mostly have more responsibility to take care of. Children from this type of family often have parents who had to take on many jobs just to feed the children, or families who experienced frequent moves, or even had to live at crowded homes that could lead to unconducive environment for students to learn. ‘Specifically, compared with low-achieving students, high-achieving students reported more frequently working to manage their workspace, budget time, handle distraction, monitor motivation, and control emotion while doing homework’ (Xu, 2009, p. 37).
We cannot deny however, that students who do their homework, do score better in exams. This statement can be supported based on an article in Singapore’s online news Straits Times, where a survey was carried out in the year 2012 for the OECD’s Programme for International Students (PISA), in order to measure academic achievements for 15-year-olds. Through this study, it is proven that students who did their homework and studies do perform better academically. As an example, in Shanghai and Singapore, the students in both of these countries, who spent almost most of their precious time in doing homework, came in first and second place respectively in the PISA mathematics test in the year 2012. Although, some people might protest, saying that students in South Korea or in Japan, did not ‘learn any less’ even though they were assigned with much less homework. Associate Professor Jason Tan, an education policy expert at the National Institute of Education, explains that the students in South Korea and Japan can still perform better in school because they attended cram schools, in other words, tuition classes to make up their time for having less homework to do.
Homework is not all about exams and test. Teachers should also understand the non-academic benefits of homework. By giving homework to students, children can also learn values and skills that could teach them to be a better person later on in the future. The benefits of homework differ at different grades. Copper (2007) stated that in the lower-grade levels, homework taught positive values, habits and traits, and also allowed more parents or involvements. However, in the higher-grade levels, homework played a more vital role in academic performances and helped students to improve their knowledge and understanding in subjects. Corno and Xu (2004) discovered that by assigning homework to students, it could teach them better time-management skills, independent problem-solving skills, and also teaches them the habit of completing one’s responsibility. Homework gets to adapt positive values into students and update teachers and parents on a student’s knowledge and learning. However, despite all the benefits of homework to students, it does not precisely include children too, in other words, elementary school students. Most researchers only support homework for middle and high schoolers (Cooper, 1989; Kohn, 2006). This could be because ‘younger children are less able than older children to ignore irrelevant information or stimulation in their environment’ (Muhlenbruck, Cooper, Nye, and Lindsay, 2000). To add, Hoover-Dempsey and colleagues (2001) states that younger children’s study habits is not as essential if compared to older children as they tend to have the inability to focus on something.
Therefore, it is very much advisable for teachers to follow the ’10 minutes per grade homework’ rule for students who are still considered as children. The ’10 minutes per grade homework’ rule is where teachers can only assign homework that takes about 10 minutes of the children’s time. However, the time increases as the students enter a new grade. Meaning that, first graders can only be assigned with a 10-minute homework, while second graders can be assigned with a 20-minute homework, and the pattern continues. Despite that, problems often caused when the teachers failed to do so. A lot of teachers or educators tend to give more homework than they should, causing sometimes young students to end up with an hour amount of homework. An article by Marcia Clemmit mentions that Sara Bennet, a New York City lawyer states that assigning that much amount of homework to students can only cause students to cheat later on. This is because they would either asked their parents to help with their homework or they would just copy down the answers from their friends before class starts. To clarify, it is not wrong for students to ask for help from others especially from their parents. However, the children would later be confused and feel that it is okay for them to always ask for help. Instead, students should be taught to solve their own problems and do their work before asking for help. Allowing students to cheat at that age only makes them become more dependable on their work than they should. There is no good that comes from teaching students to depend on others, especially in terms of completing their responsibilities as a student or as a human generally.
To have or to not have homework, both of it has its own positive and negative consequences. While having homework can help them in their academic performance, not having homework can help them balance their health, mind, emotion and talent. Different researchers have different views on whether or not children should be given homework. For instance, according to Hoover-Dempsey et al. (2006), homework has a positive effect on the relationship between parents and their child as it shows their parents’ interest in their child’s academic progress. On the other hand, Cooper, Lindsay, and Nye (2000), found the negative effects of homework which is that if parents were to involve in their child’s homework, their child tend to have lower grade in school. This mostly happens among elementary school students. A study by Balli, Wedman, and Demo (1997) was reported to have mixed reviews on the impact of parents’ involvement in their child’s student achievement.
To come to a conclusion, it is advisable for children to receive and to do homework every day as long as the amount of homework given to the children must be appropriate. This means that the homework must be effective enough for the children to gain its positive consequences, while avoiding the negative ones. Effective homework is a ‘homework with a purpose’. It does not really matter how much children receive their homework as long as it is quality enough to make them learn something. In this case, it stresses on the concept of ‘quality versus quantity’. The most quality kind of homework is where the students receive a little amount of it, while getting to learn a lot from it. A study by Cooper and colleagues discovered that the amount of homework received by students have no correlation at all with a student’s achievements (Cooper et al. 1998). In contrast, a study by De Jong, Westerhof, and Creemers (2000) clearly stated that ‘teachers giving less homework are less effective’ (152). Therefore, research is inconsistent in determining whether homework affects a student’s achievements and academic performance. How do we know if the homework is effective and doable enough for the students? In this case, it is up to the educators to think about how frequent, how much, and the aim of the task whenever assigning students their homework as to ensure the students’ well-being. According to Epstein and Van Voorhis (2001), if teachers were to design homework that meet a specific purpose and aim, thus more students would be able to complete their homework and get to benefit from the results.