'Homework revolt': Time to give kids a break?

According to the article on June 16, 2011, in The Week magazine, some American school districts are considering slashing homework demands. For example, the school board in New Jersey’s Galloway Township might even restrict the amount of homework to 10 minutes per grade and eliminate any weekends or holiday homework. This issue is controversial because some people, represented by Erin Kurt, insist that this consideration will be helpful for children’s mental health while others such as Carl Lewis argue that the thoughtfulness would rather be an obstacle to raise children appropriately.

I understand the feelings of parents who don’t want their children stressed out because of homework. And I’m also aware that much amount of stress is critical to one’s health. However, I cannot agree with the idea that school should not give children homework. There are two brief reasons why I believe this isn’t right.

First of all, the one who believes children got too much stress for their homework does not show objective or meaningful data. The author says that 8 to 10% of North American children are seriously troubled by stress of their homework. The author doesn’t show the sample size, the age distribution of the group, and the data of the comparison group. Without the support of these data, commonsense tells that the author cannot insist “8 to 10%” are statistically sufficient percentages to be considered as majority. Also, the author tells nothing about how children are “seriously troubled” by their homework stress. The author only mentioned that “Too much homework” is the number one of many reasons why children are stressed out. It cannot be a sufficient supporting detail of how children are seriously troubled without following data: the data of comparison group, the percentage distribution of the reasons which affect to children’s stress, the examples that show seriousness.

       

Furthermore, homework is not something we can avoid for our entire life, and childhood is the most important period for someone to be used to this unavoidable type of stress. Homework might be stressful for children. But would it be delightful for them when they go to high-school if they are grown up without homework? Would they enjoy it when they go to college? They will probably get much more stress than someone who grew up with homework. And then, the stress might be really lethal to their mental health. I don’t want to say the banal proverb that what’s learned in the cradle is carried to the grave. But if your children aren’t used to homework in their childhood, they will never get used to homework. If you cannot avoid homework for life time, it would be better to be used to it in your childhood.

It is generally accepted idea that childhood is the most important period of life in building up one’s characteristics. For the two reasons I mentioned above that there’s no proof that children are severely stressed because of homework, and children had better to be used to homework because they cannot avoid it for their lifetime, I assert that the school board should not limit school giving their student homework. The importance of homework at childhood is too much to be ignored.