This House Believes that Homework Should Not Be Banned

Nevertheless, I will do my best to rebut them and make my own points. Rebuttals: 1. "Homework should be banned because of the enormous stress it gives students. If there is a lot of homework, it makes students work late into the night, and that could be unhealthy for them, and it could also disturb their studies, since they would be tired. " Here we are talking about an all-out ban of homework. Too much of anything, including homework, is harmful. However, giving too much stress to students and making them work late into nights with the reason being homework only occurs if homework is assigned in an overly large amount. Con states these negative effects under the assumption that too much homework has been given. This "over-assignmen" of homework can be easily solved b a few rules or laws. For example, homework guidelines have actually been made. For Years Prep to 4, it is stated that homework will not exceed 30 minutes per day. For Year 5 it should take around 30 to 45 minutes per day, and for Year 9 45 to 90 minutes per day. There are many more details as to these guidelines. If schools or teachers do not follow them, it is merely a matter of law enforcement and should not lead to homework being banned as a whole. According to a study by the National Center for Educational Statistics, white children actually spend only around 6.8 hours on homework per week, which is less than an hour a day. 2. "The work can always be done in class, so why let it be a burden on students go complete them at home? " All students and teachers alike know that class time can be very much limited, and thus it is difficult to complete all work during class time, as the teacher has to set aside time for teaching, reviewing assignment, etcetera. As quoted from Andrea Townsend, a science teacher at Ohio Dominican University, "I learned in college that hands-on work is the best way for students to learn, and that"s certainly true. However, it"s definitely not the most efficient way. So, if I"m going to offer interactive activities in class, I need students to put in some time and effort studying outside of class as well. " As quoted from Lisa Garner, an elementary school teacher, "Class trips, pep rallies, magazine drives, fire drills, lock downs, birthday parties, parent conferences, book fairs, H1N1 assemblies, class photos, and three day weekends are sucking up our precious class time like a sponge. As a result, many teachers feel pressured to send home unfinished class assignments for homework in addition to practice sheets to help improve their students" standardized test scores. " 3. "The homework nowadays are usually done by computer, so it is both a waste of energy, and there is a chance that the student could get damaged eyes from staring at the computer screen to long. " Firstly, I do not understand how Con thinks that homework being done by computer is a waste of energy. Practically everything we do, from playing soccer to watching TV, takes up energy. Again, while there is a risk of students getting damaged eyes from staring at the computer screen for too long, the underlying reason behind students or children staring at screens is usually leisure, such as watching TV or playing video games. Homework is not the major cause in this. It is stated that "vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of childhood blindness, responsible for an estimated 70% of the 500,000 children who become blind each year" (Thylefors, N"grel, Pararajasegaram, & Dadzie, 1995; WHO 2010) It is also stated that cataracts are the leading cause of visual impairment and blindness in young children. Cataracts are in turn caused by ultraviolet radiation from sunlight and other sources, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, smoking, prolonged use of corticosteroid medications, statin medicines used to reduce cholesterol, previous eye injury or inflammation, previous eye surgery, hormone replacement therapy, significant alcohol consumption, high myopia and family history. Using computers for too long is not a cause. Again I must make it clear that the effects of doing homework on eyes can be controlled and greatly minimised through various measures such as taking short breaks and having a suitable distance (30cm) between the eyes and the homework/computer. Points: 1. Homework causes a positive effect on academic achievement. Two meta-analyses by Cooper and colleagues (Cooper, 1989a; Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006) are the most comprehensive and rigorous. The 1989 meta-analysis reviewed research dating as far back as the 1930s; the 2006 study reviewed research from 1987 to 2003. Commenting on studies that attempted to examine the causal relationship between homework and student achievement by comparing experimental (homework) and control (no homework) groups, Cooper, Robinson, and Patall (2006) noted,'With only rare exceptions, the relationship between the amount of homework students do and their achievement outcomes was found to be positive and statistically significant. Therefore, we think it would not be imprudent, based on the evidence in hand, to conclude that doing homework causes improved academic achievement. " Paschal, Weinstein, and Walberg (1984) discovered through a meta-analysis of fifteen quantitative studies that homework did have a positive effect on achievement, especially in certain grade levels. Specifically, traditional, daily, and graded homework had the greatest positive impact on student achievement in the fourth and fifth grades. 2. Homework helps all-rounded development in a child's character Corno and Xu (2004) call homework the job of childhood. By examining taped sessions and interviews with parents and students, they discovered that homework helped third graders learn responsibility and develop time-management and job-management skills. The students also learned to work on schoolwork when they did not want to and to adjust their attentiveness to the demands of a specific assignment. These and similar benefits, such as good study habits and independent learning, have been found by other researchers as well (Johnson and Pontius 1989; Warton 2001). 3. Homework has positive effects on parent-children relationships Some researchers have found that homework has a positive effect on parents and families by allowing them to show an interest in their children's academic progress (Hoover-Dempsey et al. 2001). Balli (1998) discovered that when parents help their sixth-grade children with homework, the students believe they do better in school"regardless of how they feel about working with their parents. 4. It reflects a child's progress in learning Homework allows parents to see how their children are being educated so they can develop a better idea of how they can help their child. It also allows teachers to see how individual students are progressing so that they will know which topics to cover more on. I look forward to seeing Con's arguments. References: . http://www.education.vic.gov.au... . http://www.lighthouse.org... . http://www.tsbvi.edu... . http://www.ascd.org... . http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org... . http://www.theatlantic.com... . http://www.nerdel.com... . http://www.ascd.org...