Math Homework Should Be Illegal

Math: "the systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities expressed symbolically."[1]Illegal: "forbidden by law or statute."[2]1. Math hurts the Brain:I ask the audience to please take a look at the research:"The latest research shows that even the thought of arithmetic can trigger a physical reaction that looks a lot like pain in the brain."[3]"...they noticed increased activity in the dorso-posterior insula (INSp), the fold of tissue in the brain that is activated when a person experiences physical pain like burning his hand...It’s also the area that lights up in response to severe social rejection such as a bad romantic breakup, which can result in symptoms of physical pain as well."[3]Furthermore, anxiety caused by math disrupts memory in the brain:"Worries about math can disrupt working memory, which students could otherwise use to succeed. Beilock and other scholars have studied this impact of anxiety on working memory on older students, but her current work is the first to explore the impact on students as they begin school."[4]" “Early math anxiety may lead to a snowball effect that exerts an increasing cost on math achievement by changing students’ attitudes and motivational approaches towards math, increasing math avoidance, and ultimately reducing math competence,” Beilock writes in the article."[4]2. Math causes Brain Damage:Math causes anxiety and stress in students, and homework can only make it worse.Late-night math homework often leads to sleep deprivation. Recent studies show that sleep deprivation causes permanent brain damage:"In mice, prolonged lack of sleep led to 25% of certain brain cells dying, according to a study in The Journal of Neuroscience."[5]Stress, another manifestation from math homework, also damages the brain. Doing math homework on a regular basis, therefore, can cause chronic stress:"Long-term stress damages the brain, impairing everything from emotion and impulse control to certain big-picture analytical thinking. “In essence, with chronic stress, you become more primitive,” says Amy Arnsten, professor of neurobiology at Yale University."[6] 3. Homework Not Necessary Anyway: A study in 2012 showed that homework is not beneficial to students: "Researchers in Australia discovered that hitting the books at home offered no real benefit to children, and only slightly helped junior high students."[7]More research confirmed these findings:"First, no research has ever found a benefit to assigning homework (of any kind or in any amount) in elementary school."[8]"even at the high school level, the research supporting homework hasn’t been particularly persuasive. There does seem to be a correlation between homework and standardized test scores, but (a) it isn’t strong, meaning that homework doesn’t explain much of the variance in scores, (b) one prominent researcher, Timothy Keith, who did find a solid correlation, returned to the topic a decade later to enter more variables into the equation simultaneously, only to discover that the improved study showed that homework had no effect after all"[8]Homework effectiveness is "least tenuous - with math":"when homework is related to test scores, the connection tends to be strongest — or, actually, least tenuous — with math." [8]Conclusion:Math homework is unnecesary and causes brain damage, so it should therefore be made illegal. [1] - http://dictionary.reference.com...[2] - http://dictionary.reference.com...=/[3] - http://healthland.time.com...[4] - http://news.uchicago.edu...[5] - http://www.bbc.com...[6] - http://www.washingtontimes.com...[7] - http://rev967.com...[8] - http://www.washingtonpost.com...