Students should never have homework on weekends.

I will be arguing that it would be more likely beneficial for the students and the educators if homework was given out on the weekend. My argument is not stating that there is a direct causation of success and homework as that is currently still being debated [1]. However I am stating that homework in general is more likely a beneficial component in education rather than harmful. A. Homework is an important instructional tool. 1. Purpose of homework. There are two types of homework, instructional and noninstructional. In the case of instructional it is: preparation, practice, extension, and integration [1]. The purpose of instructional homework is to further improve on skills, knowledge that was or will be covered, and allow students to utilize their multiple skills to complete a complex project. Noninstructional homework is used to develop social interactions and behavioral skills. 2. Homework is correlated to be a benefiting factor with more positive effects. Extensive studies by Harris M. Cooper continually show a correlation between students who complete homework versus students that do not, especially on test covering direct material on assignments. His research simply states that, despite constant argumentation to dispute any correlation, homework does more good than harm [2]. In general, based on various studies, the effects of homework have shown a gain of 20-30 percentiles [3]. Even though, some may debate the benefits that come from homework, we cannot ignore that it is a potentially crucial and helpful factor in education. It would be like a team of athletes that are expected to perform better than other teams but never have practice after learning a new technique/play. 3. Alternative method that allows practice of skills and teacher evaluation of retention is lacking. Simply put there is currently no other well known method for encouraging students to study material outside of the classroom, as well as encourage self-involvement with learning. Furthermore, a new method would have to allow teachers to track the progress of the students and be effective in flourishing their knowledge. I will further discuss this later. B. Main Reasons that students, and some teachers do not like homework. 1. Time Management is an important factor. On the student side many arguments can be boiled down to homework is limiting to other leisure activities and family bonding that could be reserved for weekends [4]. However, in this article, they give testimony to a child that “can’t usually start [her] hours of homework until 8:30 PM,” meaning that homework is already limiting within the weekday; thus, reserving homework on the weekdays would only cause more stress to the child that has to finish everything during their most busiest of days. Another argument that was given was that the children do not sleep as well during the weekends, which should be a time for resting. However according to a study by Mary Allard, male and female students spend, on average, 5.7 and 4.5 hours a day on leisure activities after school respectively [5]. In addition, the students slept 2-3 hours more on the weekends than on the weekdays, despite jobs, homework, and other social activities. It is odd that even though given homework, children are still finding more ways to rest and be social during their time off of school. On the other side of the argument, some teachers argue about the amount of time spent grading [6]. While some teachers argue that they hate grading, and others say that it is important practice work, they clearly voice that the spend too much time on the homework given back, which causes them to judge student behavior or completion rather than correct methodology of work. On average, teachers spend around 782 hours per school year teaching (in classroom) which means that on average of 180, 6-8 hour, school days, the teacher are teaching for approximately 4.34 hours [7,8]. That is assuming however, that teachers are not distracted, victim’s of Murphy’s Law, or working with one student in particular that really needs help [9]. That is not a lot of time to work with students in-class, as well as grade, if a teacher is not properly oriented, thus they will get backed up on teaching and homework can help keep students if given after school or on the weekend. 2. Students get burned out Some teachers have stated that homework is “time consuming, dreary, and uninspiring,” to the point that children will become less motivated and apathetic toward learning [10]. In so doing, some teachers have done the extreme and do not issue any “homework” for their students. This was done mainly by well time management of the class and the effectiveness of the teaching. However, it is important to note that: a. While teachers claimed benefits of not doing homework, the have no definitive causation that students did better in the same regards as they criticise students that have homework. b. There is more than one type of homework, as stated above, and an assignment that is meant to help children practice a skill is what practice homework enriches at home. Also, children were able to finish “homework” in school just as much as outside of school. Thus all the teachers are doing is allotting more class time to homework, assuming the children are retaining information or completing their work. c. Homework is more than just practice, as stated above, it is important social tool. Otherwise you are limiting a student from learning how to study intensely on their own in higher learning, thus they will also be less likely successful without proper time management skills when they start their careers [11, 12]. Sources1.http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org... 2. http://users.manchester.edu... 3.http://www.ascd.org... 4. http://www.eastside-online.org... 5. http://stats.bls.gov... 6.http://www.opb.org... 7.http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org... 8. http://nces.ed.gov... 9. http://people.howstuffworks.com... 10. http://www.alfiekohn.org... 11. http://www.adi.org... 12. http://www.palmbeachschools.org...