Homework Causes Over Exhaustion In Young Children example essay topic

" A fifth-grade student comes home almost every night in tears; she has so much homework that she can't play in the town soccer league anymore. At a meeting of the third-grade class, a teacher admonishes parents that homework needs to take priority over outside music lessons and religious education". Every night, homework episodes are erupting across the country. These stories as well as many others illustrate the disturbing portrait of our contemporary educational landscape.

Further, homework is overwhelming student's lives, creating an unneeded stressful burden that is unnecessary and unhealthy for young children to bear. Homework in elementary schools and middle schools should be banned. Homework should be banned for children in primary school levels because they are not developmentally ready for homework. After coming home from a long exhausting day at school, athletic practices, and other extra curricular activities, young children are left listless and fatigued. Therefore, coming home to study and do piles of homework is useless because they do not study well. Further", students actually study materials wrong and have to spend time in class correcting their mistakes".

(The End of Homework: A Brief Forum-November 20, 2000). In addition, it is unhealthy because young children over exert themselves by staying up later, depriving themselves of the many hours of sleep a youthful body demands in order to function properly. Moreover, homework causes severe damage to children's family life, which is crucial in their youth. Homework squeezes family life because all parents have morals, important life skills, cultural heritage, and relationships they want to establish with their children.

Because an average middle-income family works 4,278 hours per year, parents have a limited amount of time to spend with their kids, which primarily is only available in the evening and on weekends. However, these essential life lessons are pushed aside because their children have too much homework, and more homework " makes parents put their own agendas on hold even as they often struggle to help their children cope with homework assignments". ("End Homework Now" by Kralovec and Buell) Furthermore, homework disrupts family life because it creates disputes and stress within the household". According to a 1998 survey by Public Agenda, nearly 50 percent of parents reported having a serious argument with their children over homework, and 34 percent reported homework as a source of stress and struggle". ("End Homework Now" by Etta Kralovec and John Buell) In addition, when time is taken away from the important elements of family life, children are robbed of a relationship with their parents, which can drive them to make bad decisions as adolescents. For instance, because a child is too busy doing homework, they will not have a chance to talk to their parents about drugs, sex, and violence, topics which they will inevitability encounter soon.

If they do not have the proper information regarding these dangerous obstacles, they might make poor decisions leading them to a life or substance abuse or sexually transmitted diseases. Furthermore, Homework should be banished for lower level education because it discriminates against children in poverty stricken families who lack the resources and opportunities that education today demands. Homework punishes poor children because homework often requires access to computers and the internet. Therefore, students who do are not able to use a computer are often embarrassed due to their families financial situation or punished academically because they were not able to finish an assignment. Further", close to 20 percent of children in the United States live in poverty" and if there is not a problem concerning computer access, they often are at a disadvantage because their parents work long hours or work two jobs in order to support a family. With the children alone at home, they have no help with their homework if they have questions.

Therefore, they either study materials wrong or they do not complete their assignments because they simply didn't know how. Also, without parents at home, poor students are often responsible to run the household or take care of their siblings. This provides as a great distraction from homework and creates an unfair and unfit studying environment. Not only should homework be banned for younger children because it discriminates, but it also should come to an end because there is no evidence that it is effective. Several studies have been conducted in the past twenty years and " most researchers now concede that homework does not improve academic achievement for elementary students". (Cooper, 1994).

In addition, a middle school in Piscataway, New Jersey, even tried banning homework and the trial proved to be effective. The principle reported", 'There was no appreciable difference in our test scores, at all. ' " (Our Schools: Is Less Homework Better? , August 17, 2001) Further, many parents stated that their children were doing much better because they are not tired or frustrated due to too much homework. This bold experiment proves that there is no correlation between assigning homework and performance. Therefore, homework is useless and should be abolished for younger students.

Another example, which proves that homework is ineffective, is the comparisons between the performance of children in the United States and students of other countries". The 1995 Third International Math and Science Study found that 8th graders in Japan and Germany are assigned less homework but still outperform U.S. students on tests". (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2001) Not only does this data prove that no correlation exists between homework and test scores, but it also shows students perform better when they receive less homework. Clearly, homework proves to be detrimental in myriads of ways. Homework causes over exhaustion in young children, damages essential family relationships, and does not even aid in academic performance.

Because of all the negative outcomes of homework, many might ask themselves, what is even the purpose of having it? The only truthful answer is there is not any valid reason for burdening young students with hours of frustrating homework. In order to alleviate the unnecessary detriment homework causes, homework should undoubtedly be banned for primary school levels.