Running head: HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

HANOI UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH ESSAY
HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

Supervisor : Nguyen Thanh Huong, M.A

Students’ name : Do Thu Chuyen

Nguyen Thi Hanh

Class : 5A18

Hanoi, June 18th 2020

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HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

OUTLINE

Introduction

Homework should be eliminated.

Body

1. Homework puts children under pressure and stress.

 When pupils are constrained to in charge of a workload that's beyond their

advancement level, the critical stretch is incited as a result.

2. Homework has negative impacts on students’ physical development.

 Students glue to their desks to complete assignments instead of taking part in

sports or exercises -> “will miss out on active playtime, essential for learning

social skills, proper brain development, and warding off childhood obesity”

(Cooper, 2001).

3. Homework affects children’s family and social lives.

 Time of doing HW occupies the time of family and social activities.

 HW can cause conflict between family members.

4. Counterargument and refutation

 Counter-argument 1: Homework improves a student's academic achievement.

 Refutation 1: Otto (1950) “Compulsory homework does not result in

sufficiently improved academic accomplishments to justify retention” (cited in

Cooper, 2001).

 Counter-argument 2: Homework allows parents to be actively involved with

their children’s learning.

 Refutation 2: It can cause parents dependence.

Conclusion

Homework should not be excluded.

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HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

Cooper (2001) explains homework as assignments given by teachers to be completed outside

the class. Every week, 5 hours are spent completing assignments by students on average

(OECD, 2012) and this figure tends to increase in lower grades. Despite the existence of

homework for years, the matter of whether to excluded homework or not remains debatable

due to its impacts on students. For its negative effects on mental health, physical health, and

lifestyle of children, homework for schoolers should no longer be continued.

Firstly, homework puts children under stress and pressure. Specifically, research conducted at

Stanford points out that pupils in high-performing groups who spend a great amount of time

on homework sustain more stress (Galloway et al., 2013). When they are constrained to in

charge of a workload that's beyond their advancement level, the critical stretch is incited as a

result. “Homework came to be seen as a symptom of too much pressure on students to

achieve” (Cooper, 2001, p.24). It is also indicated in “Nonacademic Effects of Homework in

Privileged, High-Performing High Schools” that when it came to stress, over 70 percent of

interviewed students said they were “often or always stressed over schoolwork,” with 56

percent indicating homework as a fundamental stressor (Galloway et al., 2013). Manifestly,

homework negatively affects students’ mental health in several ways, creating an invisible

barrier to their development.

Secondly, homework tremendously impacts children's physical improvement. As the

demands and desires from family, children are likely to be forced to complete not only

assignments, which are already set in classes but also handle extra homework in after-school

one. Their heavy workload, as a result, generates serious health problems. For example, a

long duration of stressful homework contributes to higher risks of obesity in children.

Students glue to their desks to complete excessive assignments instead of taking part in sports

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HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

or exercises “will miss out on active playtime, essential for learning social skills, proper brain

development, and warding off childhood obesity” (Cooper, 2001). Undeniably, the

detrimental consequences triggered from obesity such as cardiovascular disease, type 2

diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders, and some cancers namely, endometrial, breast and colon

as World Health Organization (2013) mentioned, would no longer be novel from both

patients and the first-diagnosed one as the influences are hard to ignore.

Last but not least, homework affects children's family and their social lives as the time of

doing homework occupies the time for other activities. Nightly, it takes pupils more than 3

hours to fulfill their assignments at home (Pope et al., 2013), which means they need to carry

more than 21 hours per week, excluding the school-time to handle an excessive amount of

homework. Yet, the consequences seem to the backfire, “Homework not only robs children of

precious free time but also fails to accomplish the goals it purports to achieve” (Cherrill et al.,

2011, p.46), obviously, the assignments unfold tons of repercussions on children, leading to

an inadequate moment for friends, family, and extracurricular pursuits and that is not

matching their natural developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills (Pope et al.,

2013).

Besides, the family’s conflict is one of the fallouts generated from the homework-completing

process. It comes that not all parents have the ability and time after long hours of work to

assist their children with the assignments. Therefore, quarreling is likely to happen unless the

couples find sympathy with each other in dealing with exotic and domestic issues. Parents

find their children’s homework is difficult to cope with due to the academic-weakness, yet

the schoolers often resist these efforts, the tension and boiling debates among family

members can arise (Russell, 2006).

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HOMEWORK SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

Supporters of homework argue that homework helps students improve their academic

achievement. Yet, Otto (1950) indicates that “Compulsory homework does not result in

sufficiently improved academic accomplishments to justify retention” (cited in Cooper,

2001), which demonstrates that the correlation between the scholastic achievement and

homework is insignificant. Therefore, education without assignments for schoolers is totally

practicable.

It is also argued that homework is an effective way for parents to involve their children’s

learning. Nevertheless, parents’ support can provoke children’s autonomous insufficiency. In

2017, a poll opened among more than 27,000 parents in 29 countries showed that it takes

parents in India, Vietnam, Malaysia 12, 10, and 8 hours a week to help children complete

homework respectively (Varkey Foundation). In some ways, it promotes cheating as children

form the habit of asking help from parents instead of dealing with homework themselves.

“Many parents report that they feel unprepared to help their children with homework and that

their efforts to help frequently cause stress.” (Pickering, 2007). Obviously, in these cases,

homework is not an effective way to family-interacting anymore.

In short, homework should be eliminated due to its repercussions on students’ mental health,

physical health, and lifestyle. Instead of assigning children homework, it is better to

encourage outside and social activities to enhance children surviving skills. Besides,

alternating traditional form of homework by compiling entertainment-study activities to

attract the pupils’ interest also need supporting. Nevertheless, the quality of homework is the

main purport of assigning, nor bombard the children with an extravagant amount of

homework, which exhausts them both emotionally and psychologically.

Word count: 864 words

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REFERENCES

Cherrill, P. H., Michael, C. S. & Robert, C. F. (2011) Managing quality service in

hospitality: How Organizations Achieve Excellence in the Guest Experience. Delmar

Cengage Learning.

Cooper, H. M. (2001). The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for

Administrators, Teachers, and Parents (3nd ed.). Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Galloway, M. J., Conner, J. & Pope, N. (2013). Nonacademic Effects of Homework in

Privileged, High-Performing High Schools. The Journal of Experimental Education.

Retrieved May 29, 2020 from tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220973.2012.745469

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2012), Programme for

International Student Assessment. Retrieved May 31, 2020 from https://www.oecd.org/

Marzano, R. J. & Pickering, D. J. (2007, March). Educational Leadership. Retrieved

June 2, 2020 from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-

leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx

Russell, A. B. (2014). Attention- Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (4th ed.). The Guilford

Press.

Varkey Foundation (2017). Programme for International Student Assessment

Retrieved June 2, 2020 from https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/

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World Health Organization (2013, March 14). What are the health consequences of

being overweight? Retrieved June 5, 2020 from https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-

detail/what-are-the-health-consequences-of-being-overweight