Homework has long since been a heavily debated topic. Schools often assign homework that can take students several hours to complete. While homework is intended to educate students, many people wonder if it is actually beneficial to them.

Schools should largely minimize the amount of homework students have in a day.

While homework was originally intended to help students develop an understanding of the course material, technology has made all the answers to the majority of homework assignments accessible on the internet. The assignments no longer pose as beneficial to the students when they aren’t doing any of the work. Inventions such as search engines and artificial intelligence have allowed students to get answers without gaining any sort of insight or knowledge.

In addition, homework can massively contribute to burnout and stress in students. Massive amounts of homework can overwhelm students and can consume a large portion of their day, leaving little room for leisure or relaxation. Stress can even result in slower progress on homework as a result of the mental exhaustion that comes along with it.

One might argue that homework helps students develop intangible abilities such as time management and discipline; however, many students often end up procrastinating these assignments until the last minute, which can even pose as detrimental to their ability to manage their time effectively. In terms of discipline, students often lack discipline when doing these assignments, as many can easily get distracted and fail to maintain focus on the assignment they’re currently working on.

When looking at homework, it is important to remember that there are still viable solutions to minimizing the workload of students. One way to go about this is particularly limiting homework as an optional format of schoolwork. There is no point in assigning large amounts of homework if students aren’t learning anything from it. If homework were to be optional, it would allow struggling students to gain a better understanding of the concepts, while also not being bombarded with work. In this format, the students who complete the assignments are likely to intentionally do the work on their own because the sole reason they are doing it is out of a desire to understand the material, rather than turning in an assignment on time for a grade.