To some extent, looking back, I think homework is necessary.
You only have so much time with teachers during your normal school day, and it’s really not enough to teach each individual subject. So, I think homework can be a useful way of making up for lost time.
HOWEVER
And this is a big HOWEVER
There are only four kinds of homework I consider legitimate:
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Learning vocabulary (for languages).
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Practicing the skills you have already learnt.
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Reading a book (mainly for Literature, History and other subjects like that).
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Essay writing.
When a teacher makes you learn things for your homework, I consider that to be laziness or a poor use of your time.
So let me explain what I mean by each individual type of homework.
Learning Vocabulary
It is a waste of your time and the teacher’s time for you to be learning vocabulary for languages in the class. You should learn the vocabulary at home and how to use it in the classroom. Then you get to choose the vocal you want to learn and you aren’t wasting your time memorising things when you could actually be learning grammar, speaking, listening and other stuff that you can’t do at home.
Practicing Skills
This one is mainly for subjects like maths, where you are given skills you need to practice to maintain. With maths and higher level physics and other stuff like that, you can learn how to solve a problem in class, but you’re likely to forget if you don’t practice that skill.
However, it can be time-consuming to do all of that practice in the classroom, especially considering the fact that students work at different paces with stuff like that. You do a few examples in class and then take the work home and do a few more to show the teacher that you understand the problem even when they’re not there.
Practicing is not learning, and it can be done on your own if the teacher prepares you in advance.
Reading a Book
For essay-based subjects like English Literature, English Language, History, Theatre Studies and Politics, reading a book isn’t actually learning in any way, shape or form.
The point of history as a subject in any good education system is to prepare you with historiography. To teach you things that you can’t acquire from elsewhere very easily.
Like, we can all pick up a book and read it. Well, most of us, at least. However, it takes coaching, training and discussion with teachers to learn how to analyse, critique, extract the information, draw conclusions, make inferences and actually use the information.
History as a school subject should be about learning how to make good arguments and research topics, not just reciting boring facts. The former will prepare you for the real world. The latter? Well, you’re likely to forget about it as soon as you leave school.
I don’t remember much at all about Italian Reunification. However, I do remember how to find the bias of a source and use its nature, origin and purpose to assess how it will be useful to me when collecting information. Plus, I definitely remember how to use the information I have and the sources I have access to in order to formulate a coherent and convincing argument. That’s stuff I can take into many jobs, even if it has nothing to do with history directly.
For English Literature, I don’t remember the exact details of every book I read. However, I definitely took on board the lessons I learnt in how to assess the messages and themes in a story and how the context (both of when the story was written and when we’re reading it) can affect this.
So the reading and the finding out boring facts or discovering the plot? That is a waste of time in the classroom. You can do it at home! You can research a time period on your own. You can read a book on your own. That’s the homework they should give you so that you can do the hard stuff with them in the class.
FYI this is how most universities work: do the reading and be prepared to discuss the reading and take down points in the class.
Essay-Writing
This is another example of an assignment where the teacher can’t really be directly involved. It’s a waste of time to do this in the classroom when you could do it on your own at home. You’re not learning anything. You’re just consolidating your skills, very much like the Practicing Skills thing I mentioned a little earlier.
I tutor and I run my classes very much like that: you read 1 chapter of The Handmaids Tale by next week. Then, we can discuss that chapter in the class and I can help you learn how to interpret it!
Homework should never be a way for teachers to offload their work onto students. It should be a way to make sure that the time in the classroom is used efficiently and effectively. If you can do the work on your own in your own time, then it is a waste of time and resources to make you do it in the classroom.
Not exactly. I mean, people in an office work for longer hours than most school children. Plus, people at school also have more holidays. If you want to compare things to working a 9-5 job, then a child who comes home from school at 3:30 should so an hour and a half of homework each day!
Plus, many people in work only get one 20 min lunch break. Loads of the schools near me get at least 45 mins for lunch, but most get an hour. Plus, they get 15 mins break in the morning, too!
Most adults work at least 40 hours if they’re working full-time!
I have to wake up at 6 and I get home at 7:30! My journey takes me 4 hours total each day!