When you finish your homework...

"I spent six hours doing my chem homework and didn't finish."
"It was that long!?"
"No, I was watching paint dry."
User alexandrovna on urbandictionary.com
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If a student (any sort of student, that is, from grade 1 to college graduate) were to be asked
about what they associate school with, the probable answer would consist of three big Ts
Teachers, Tests and Tasks. The first two are things that one may consider inevitable; no matter
what kind of school we follow, there will always be teachers to share their knowledge and tests
to verify that the respective knowledge has found a recipient in the students mind. On the
other hand, a much controversial issue is that of school tasks and especially that of homework,
which is as easily contested as it is avoidable. For the right reasons, many say mainly those
who are directly affected by this extension of school into their own time. As such, the party that
supports not having any kind of homework gains more and more popularity and followers
worldwide in its quest for complete homework abolition.
The greatest argument that homeworks supporters bring about is that practice makes
perfection. While this is unquestionably true in some other aspects such as sports, where it is
simply impossible to reach any kind of performance without constant training (since the
muscles literally cannot do anything without practice), it apparently is only of minor importance

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Definition #5 of the word homework on urbandictionary, retrieved on 12.11.2013 from
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=homework
when it comes to intellectual activities. The reason, studies say, is that while speed and habits
developed by training is required in most kinds of physical labour, they are virtually useless in
case of mind work, since the only thing they help is routine
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. To put it bluntly, doing the same
math exercise many times only helps the student do it faster. It isnt of any help otherwise,
since there can always be found a calculator for the difficult operations and a manual if one
forgets a formula which cannot be the case with sports. Re-thinking the same thing over and
over again became simply redundant in the last few years, when the access to the Internet has
made memorizing certain things useless. This way, there is more time left for what is
irreplaceable by todays technology: imagination.
The most powerful fact against homework, though, is one that nearly every student
confronted more than one time during his school years. It is not the existence of homework
itself that affects students. A certain amount of it could very well have positive results. But it is
the excessive amount of it that can literally destroy ones life. Within cultures that promote
extremely hard and prolonged intellectual and physical labour, such as China and Japan, there
have been reported cases of students committing suicide because of failure in completing their
homework
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. Of course, this is not a very common occurrence, but there are other things, such
as fatigue and sickness due to excessive work, that are omnipresent as well as the exact
opposite effect to the one desired by students: a significant drop in grades
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. And while the

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Wallis, Claudia, The Myth About Homework, Time Online, posted on 29.08.2006, retrieved on 11.12.2013 from
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376208,00.html
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Ryan, Cassie, 2 Nanjing Teenagers Commit Suicide Over Unfinished Homework, posted on 3.5.2013, retrieved on
12.11.2013 from http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/38709-2-nanjing-teenagers-commit-suicide-over-unfinished-
homework/
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Wallis, Claudia, The Myth About Homework, Time Online, posted on 29.08.2006, retrieved on 11.12.2013 from
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376208,00.html
happiness of the childhood leaves room for the gloomy look of someone who has prematurely
faced the hardships of a 9-to-11 schedule, procrastination takes over and even if there is
homework, no one remains to care about it.
Practice makes perfection, they say. That is true. But one needs not be perfect. A
more precious thing in life is time, and homework takes away precious time. For now, one
could paraphrase a famous quote of Batmans enemy, Bane
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: When it is over and you finish
your homework, then you have my permission to sleep. In the future though, one can hope
that after school, the workbook shall await the next day in the bottom of a locker.


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Bane, played by E. Thomas Hardy in Batman 3: The Dark Knight Rises: []when it is over and Gotham will burn,
then you have my permission to die.