What is the one aspect of school that burns students down like a glare of blazing fire? Homework. But isn’t homework supposed to help students understand the perplexing concepts explained in class? Yes and no. Homework can sometimes help the student comprehend what he learned in class, but too much of the same work also interferes with a student’s valuable outside life. Not to mention that sometimes homework does not affect the student at all in the wealth of knowledge he acquires. There have to be some solutions to this. Fortunately, there are, and the solutions are to make homework optional and to also give quizzes on what the teacher is desperately trying to lecture to the class.
Excessive homework causes two consequences: interference with the student’s outside life and sometimes creating an inefficient source for wisdom and understanding. In a case, a student has an audition that could alter his/her entire life and a one-day project due the same day after. The student is restricted in his activities because of this dilemma, and if he/she redundantly chooses the project, he/she has just missed the lifetime chance that could have changed his/her life forever. This is an example of intrusion with the student’s external life. Too much homework could just change someone’s mind about his/her own ambitions, and too much of it could disconcert
that same person for his/her entire life! In addition, some of the homework assigned is useless in terms of helping the student understand what the teacher wanted. The student might be tremendously bright and not learn anything; he/she might also be bewildered by the terms in the schoolwork. What good is there in homework if it cannot help the student? Therefore, there have to be solutions to the excessive amount of work assigned.
The solutions are remarkably straightforward: to make work assigned at home optional and to fabricate quizzes to see if the student has understood the taught subjects. Although many vigorous Advanced Placement courses that give college level credit already follow the optional homework policy, the policy should be carried out into each and every class. This way, the student controls what he/she wants to accomplish and how he/she wants to learn, not the curriculum and definitely not the school. After all, the student’s future is in his/her own hands, right? But some teachers argue that optional homework might corrupt the student’s mind into not doing any homework at all. This can be fixed also. All that teachers have to do is to present quizzes to the students to observe whether they effortlessly know the principles or not. Not only will quizzes force the few obstinate learners to act, but they will also acknowledge the diligent, hard-working students with good grades. Establishing the policy that homework should be optional and providing quizzes will fix the problem of excessive and unnecessary schoolwork at home.
Homework is what shoots students down like a fierce arrow; it conflicts with the student’s outside activities and a portion of it given is unnecessary to facilitate the student in learning. But two necessary steps can fix the problem of disproportionate homework: to have homework as an option and to use quizzes to evaluate whether the student understands what the teacher desires for the student.
