Responce to the "Busy Work" Article

Well...I really can’t give a definite, concrete answer to the question posed, "is homework a good or bad thing" but I can sure give my opinion from a few different standpoints. When I see this question AS a student FROM a student prospective my first instinct is that is bad, a total waste of my precious free time. Of course I am not speaking for everyone when I say this but I’m pretty sure a good chunk of the student population around the world could agree with me. Homework sucks. Cause really, what would you rather be doing. Going for a nice dirt bike ride down the Cowan trail with a few friends on a beautiful fall day, or sitting down in the basement in a little room at a desk studying Romeo and Juliet. The choice is pretty clear. Now to the other side of the argument, homework is really a good thing. How can it possibly be a good thing you may ask? Well, from a teacher perspective homework is essential to a students success in developing good study habits that will be beneficial in years to come, and esp. in university's. The plan is to start giving them bits of "homework" early off in grades 1 and 2 and slowly progress to the point where it is a lecture in class and the actually bookwork is left up to the student to do on his own time. I can see where this last line can make sense, but really, how is Romeo and Juliet going to be in any way useful to me in pursuing my future goals in becoming a mechanical engineer? This is where the issue of is homework a good thing or a bad, unless way of just getting students off teachers back must taken into perspective. I believe that homework is not too bad of a thing, but it must be given out in decent amounts and the teacher must filter out the repetitive stuff and just give the important stuff. For example. I took an English class with a teacher when I was in grade 9, and it was a class that consisted of a ton of tedious assignments that usually consisted of drawing posters and coloring pictures and that sort of stuff. It would have been alright except for the fact that almost 75% of the work was done off campus, and at home. Now this kind of work would definitely be considered "busy work" and I am completely opposed to this kind of homework. If I take an English class, I expect to do english related material, not art class. At this point I look back at all the homework I have done over the years and ask myself if it was all really necessary. After much consideration and thinking, I was actually quite surprised to find that the answer to this question is YES. Homework has been a pretty large part of my life all through the years, sure I missed a few days or forgot my stuff at school but for the most part I got all my school work done, and Homework has kept me from getting lazy. So to sum it up, homework is an excellent tool and it teaches students time management, helps them to develop study skills, and lets teachers to put a little more effort into their lesson plans. If there wasn't any homework, our classes would be much harder and for the time a student is at school he/she is working their butts off. So I think that after considering this article and what i wrote down i have come to the conclusion that, for the most part, homework should live on in out schools today!

stevalknieval