Law Stuff Explained

Is Homework Illegal? (Arguments In Support and Against)

Homework is not illegal in the United States.

But from a legal standpoint, it is a really fun argument to make!

In this article, we’ll cover some points that you could use for or against the question of the legality of homework, whether you are the student, parent, or teacher in this debate.

Is Homework Illegal? (FOR and AGAINST)

The contents of this web page are for informational purposes only, and nothing you read is intended to be legal advice. Please review our  disclaimer about law/legal-related information on this website  before taking action based upon anything you read or see.

Legal vs Illegal vs Unconstitutional

To make the argument that something (like homework) is illegal, there needs to be a law or statute or case precedent or SOMETHING that is the basis for the alleged illegality.

People have argued that homework is illegal because it counts as a form of “slavery.”

And since “slavery” was abolished by an amendment to the constitution, it is therefore “illegal.”

This argument fails.

It is illegal to restrict/control with force the movement/life of other individuals if you do not have authority to do so (as parents do with their minor children).

It is illegal to commit the other acts slavery is well known for (assault, harassment, and more).

And the individual statutes (state and federal) addressing those specific acts are the basis for the conclusion that something is “illegal” and “legal.”

Not everything that would be unconstitutional (or goes against the stated words in the constitution) would be considered illegal, and vice versa.

Instead, if you were going to make the argument that homework was illegal, you’d be better off consulting the various statutes that make certain conduct illegal.

For example:

Let’s accept that homework is an act, and that the victims do not want to commit or engage in this act, and the victims (students) only do the act because of the threat of some other result (punishments, consequences, etc).

Perhaps then you could argue that forcing kids to do homework is an illegal act, assuming that the threats of consequences are coming from an individual or entity that does not have legal authority to provide the threatened punishments, or those punishments are themselves illegal.

Sounds a lot like the crime of coercion , doesn’t it?

If you want to argue that homework is illegal, look for a statute like coercion to support your argument.

And if you want to use the 13th amendment in support of your case against homework, argue that homework is “unconstitutional” rather than “illegal.”

But if you want to argue more about the constitution, you could argue that homework infringes the rights contained in the 14th amendment to the constitution which present the state from depriving any person life, liberty , or property.

Children under the age of 18 surely qualify as “any person.” And they have a right to “liberty” which homework surely infringes.

Consent As The School’s Defense

One of the arguments that homework is illegal or constitutes slavery is that the children do not want to do the homework.

They are being made to do it.

They did not agree to do the homework.

But here’s the thing.

People under the age of 18 in the United States cannot make most decisions for themselves.

While the children may be in school against their will, and the homework is against their will, their parents or legal guardians have consented.

The parents have agreed on the children’s behalf to the homework.

Thus, technically, because the parents have voluntarily sent their children to the school, the parents have voluntarily consented to the homework, and the consequences of not doing the homework.

The child might not consent to the homework, but in the end, the parents have given their agreement.

The parents take the children to the school.

No one is pointing weapons at them to make them.

The parents sign their names to forms.

No weapons there either.

And since a crime like coercion requires that the act (the homework) be an act against the will or interest of the victim, a case cannot succeed because the will of the parents is substituted for the will of the child.

Arguing That Parents Did Not Consent

We just talked about how a debater could argue that homework is not illegal or against the will of the child because the parent’s will is substituted for the child’s will.

But what is the consent of the parent was not voluntary?

What if the parent was coerced to send their child to school, or to the homework?

What is sending their kids to school (and to do homework) was involuntary?

In most states, there are laws covering the attendance of children at school.

Absent an exclusion or a valid reason to opt out (like homeschool), a parent could face criminal prosecution if he/she does not send a child to school.

Think of what it means to make a voluntary decision.

It involves a lot of free will, and no pressure or undue influence.

If the school were to argue that the parents consented for the children to school (and then the homework), the argument against the consent is that the parents cannot voluntarily consent to the homework.

Parents are under the threat of fines and jail time.

Their consent is being obtained essentially by force.

A weapon of a different kind.

After all, a parent who goes to jail might lose his job, his driver’s license, or maybe even custody of his children.

A parent who goes to jail might lose his right to vote, or his position/status in society.

A person cannot consent at the business end of a weapon.

State Laws Do Not Compel Homework, Just Attendance

Another fun wrinkle in this argument, especially as we get down into whether parents have consented or can consent to homework, is whether the applicable laws have any impact on homework.

A student is not lawfully required to do homework.

If you look at the laws about education, there are laws about parents sending their kids to school.

There are laws about kids actually going to school.

But are there any laws that require children to complete the homework.

Like really?

I mean, doing homework is important to getting a good grade.

But aside from showing up at school (and not hurting or disrupting others), can schools actually make children do homework?

Schools can implement consequences for failing to turn in homework.

But they can’t physically punish a child (like hitting him, in most cases), or prevent him from eating or drinking while at school.

And once the child is at home with his homework, he is subject to the will of his parents or legal guardians.

Browse our  free legal library guides  for more information.

You might also like:

  • Can An 18 year Old and 17 Year Old Date?
  • Is It Illegal To TP a House?
  • Is Egging a House a Crime?
  • Is It Illegal To Throw Eggs At a Car?
  • Is It Illegal To Change Lanes In An Intersection In Michigan?
  • Can You Be a Lawyer Without Going To Court?
  • Going 40 Over The Speed Limit (Jail?)
  • Arraignment vs Indictment (The Difference)
  • How Long After Arraignment Is Sentencing?

is homework illegal

Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

  • Posted January 17, 2012
  • By Lory Hough

Sign: Are you down with or done with homework?

The debate over how much schoolwork students should be doing at home has flared again, with one side saying it's too much, the other side saying in our competitive world, it's just not enough.

It was a move that doesn't happen very often in American public schools: The principal got rid of homework.

This past September, Stephanie Brant, principal of Gaithersburg Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md., decided that instead of teachers sending kids home with math worksheets and spelling flash cards, students would instead go home and read. Every day for 30 minutes, more if they had time or the inclination, with parents or on their own.

"I knew this would be a big shift for my community," she says. But she also strongly believed it was a necessary one. Twenty-first-century learners, especially those in elementary school, need to think critically and understand their own learning — not spend night after night doing rote homework drills.

Brant's move may not be common, but she isn't alone in her questioning. The value of doing schoolwork at home has gone in and out of fashion in the United States among educators, policymakers, the media, and, more recently, parents. As far back as the late 1800s, with the rise of the Progressive Era, doctors such as Joseph Mayer Rice began pushing for a limit on what he called "mechanical homework," saying it caused childhood nervous conditions and eyestrain. Around that time, the then-influential Ladies Home Journal began publishing a series of anti-homework articles, stating that five hours of brain work a day was "the most we should ask of our children," and that homework was an intrusion on family life. In response, states like California passed laws abolishing homework for students under a certain age.

But, as is often the case with education, the tide eventually turned. After the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, a space race emerged, and, writes Brian Gill in the journal Theory Into Practice, "The homework problem was reconceived as part of a national crisis; the U.S. was losing the Cold War because Russian children were smarter." Many earlier laws limiting homework were abolished, and the longterm trend toward less homework came to an end.

The debate re-emerged a decade later when parents of the late '60s and '70s argued that children should be free to play and explore — similar anti-homework wellness arguments echoed nearly a century earlier. By the early-1980s, however, the pendulum swung again with the publication of A Nation at Risk , which blamed poor education for a "rising tide of mediocrity." Students needed to work harder, the report said, and one way to do this was more homework.

For the most part, this pro-homework sentiment is still going strong today, in part because of mandatory testing and continued economic concerns about the nation's competitiveness. Many believe that today's students are falling behind their peers in places like Korea and Finland and are paying more attention to Angry Birds than to ancient Babylonia.

But there are also a growing number of Stephanie Brants out there, educators and parents who believe that students are stressed and missing out on valuable family time. Students, they say, particularly younger students who have seen a rise in the amount of take-home work and already put in a six- to nine-hour "work" day, need less, not more homework.

Who is right? Are students not working hard enough or is homework not working for them? Here's where the story gets a little tricky: It depends on whom you ask and what research you're looking at. As Cathy Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework , points out, "Homework has generated enough research so that a study can be found to support almost any position, as long as conflicting studies are ignored." Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth and a strong believer in eliminating all homework, writes that, "The fact that there isn't anything close to unanimity among experts belies the widespread assumption that homework helps." At best, he says, homework shows only an association, not a causal relationship, with academic achievement. In other words, it's hard to tease out how homework is really affecting test scores and grades. Did one teacher give better homework than another? Was one teacher more effective in the classroom? Do certain students test better or just try harder?

"It is difficult to separate where the effect of classroom teaching ends," Vatterott writes, "and the effect of homework begins."

Putting research aside, however, much of the current debate over homework is focused less on how homework affects academic achievement and more on time. Parents in particular have been saying that the amount of time children spend in school, especially with afterschool programs, combined with the amount of homework given — as early as kindergarten — is leaving students with little time to run around, eat dinner with their families, or even get enough sleep.

Certainly, for some parents, homework is a way to stay connected to their children's learning. But for others, homework creates a tug-of-war between parents and children, says Liz Goodenough, M.A.T.'71, creator of a documentary called Where Do the Children Play?

"Ideally homework should be about taking something home, spending a few curious and interesting moments in which children might engage with parents, and then getting that project back to school — an organizational triumph," she says. "A nag-free activity could engage family time: Ask a parent about his or her own childhood. Interview siblings."

Illustration by Jessica Esch

Instead, as the authors of The Case Against Homework write, "Homework overload is turning many of us into the types of parents we never wanted to be: nags, bribers, and taskmasters."

Leslie Butchko saw it happen a few years ago when her son started sixth grade in the Santa Monica-Malibu (Calif.) United School District. She remembers him getting two to four hours of homework a night, plus weekend and vacation projects. He was overwhelmed and struggled to finish assignments, especially on nights when he also had an extracurricular activity.

"Ultimately, we felt compelled to have Bobby quit karate — he's a black belt — to allow more time for homework," she says. And then, with all of their attention focused on Bobby's homework, she and her husband started sending their youngest to his room so that Bobby could focus. "One day, my younger son gave us 15-minute coupons as a present for us to use to send him to play in the back room. … It was then that we realized there had to be something wrong with the amount of homework we were facing."

Butchko joined forces with another mother who was having similar struggles and ultimately helped get the homework policy in her district changed, limiting homework on weekends and holidays, setting time guidelines for daily homework, and broadening the definition of homework to include projects and studying for tests. As she told the school board at one meeting when the policy was first being discussed, "In closing, I just want to say that I had more free time at Harvard Law School than my son has in middle school, and that is not in the best interests of our children."

One barrier that Butchko had to overcome initially was convincing many teachers and parents that more homework doesn't necessarily equal rigor.

"Most of the parents that were against the homework policy felt that students need a large quantity of homework to prepare them for the rigorous AP classes in high school and to get them into Harvard," she says.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.'06, sees this at Another Course to College, the Boston pilot school where she teaches math. "When a student is not completing [his or her] homework, parents usually are frustrated by this and agree with me that homework is an important part of their child's learning," she says.

As Timothy Jarman, Ed.M.'10, a ninth-grade English teacher at Eugene Ashley High School in Wilmington, N.C., says, "Parents think it is strange when their children are not assigned a substantial amount of homework."

That's because, writes Vatterott, in her chapter, "The Cult(ure) of Homework," the concept of homework "has become so engrained in U.S. culture that the word homework is part of the common vernacular."

These days, nightly homework is a given in American schools, writes Kohn.

"Homework isn't limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important. Most teachers and administrators aren't saying, 'It may be useful to do this particular project at home,'" he writes. "Rather, the point of departure seems to be, 'We've decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week). … This commitment to the idea of homework in the abstract is accepted by the overwhelming majority of schools — public and private, elementary and secondary."

Brant had to confront this when she cut homework at Gaithersburg Elementary.

"A lot of my parents have this idea that homework is part of life. This is what I had to do when I was young," she says, and so, too, will our kids. "So I had to shift their thinking." She did this slowly, first by asking her teachers last year to really think about what they were sending home. And this year, in addition to forming a parent advisory group around the issue, she also holds events to answer questions.

Still, not everyone is convinced that homework as a given is a bad thing. "Any pursuit of excellence, be it in sports, the arts, or academics, requires hard work. That our culture finds it okay for kids to spend hours a day in a sport but not equal time on academics is part of the problem," wrote one pro-homework parent on the blog for the documentary Race to Nowhere , which looks at the stress American students are under. "Homework has always been an issue for parents and children. It is now and it was 20 years ago. I think when people decide to have children that it is their responsibility to educate them," wrote another.

And part of educating them, some believe, is helping them develop skills they will eventually need in adulthood. "Homework can help students develop study skills that will be of value even after they leave school," reads a publication on the U.S. Department of Education website called Homework Tips for Parents. "It can teach them that learning takes place anywhere, not just in the classroom. … It can foster positive character traits such as independence and responsibility. Homework can teach children how to manage time."

Annie Brown, Ed.M.'01, feels this is particularly critical at less affluent schools like the ones she has worked at in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and Los Angeles as a literacy coach.

"It feels important that my students do homework because they will ultimately be competing for college placement and jobs with students who have done homework and have developed a work ethic," she says. "Also it will get them ready for independently taking responsibility for their learning, which will need to happen for them to go to college."

The problem with this thinking, writes Vatterott, is that homework becomes a way to practice being a worker.

"Which begs the question," she writes. "Is our job as educators to produce learners or workers?"

Slate magazine editor Emily Bazelon, in a piece about homework, says this makes no sense for younger kids.

"Why should we think that practicing homework in first grade will make you better at doing it in middle school?" she writes. "Doesn't the opposite seem equally plausible: that it's counterproductive to ask children to sit down and work at night before they're developmentally ready because you'll just make them tired and cross?"

Kohn writes in the American School Board Journal that this "premature exposure" to practices like homework (and sit-and-listen lessons and tests) "are clearly a bad match for younger children and of questionable value at any age." He calls it BGUTI: Better Get Used to It. "The logic here is that we have to prepare you for the bad things that are going to be done to you later … by doing them to you now."

According to a recent University of Michigan study, daily homework for six- to eight-year-olds increased on average from about 8 minutes in 1981 to 22 minutes in 2003. A review of research by Duke University Professor Harris Cooper found that for elementary school students, "the average correlation between time spent on homework and achievement … hovered around zero."

So should homework be eliminated? Of course not, say many Ed School graduates who are teaching. Not only would students not have time for essays and long projects, but also teachers would not be able to get all students to grade level or to cover critical material, says Brett Pangburn, Ed.M.'06, a sixth-grade English teacher at Excel Academy Charter School in Boston. Still, he says, homework has to be relevant.

"Kids need to practice the skills being taught in class, especially where, like the kids I teach at Excel, they are behind and need to catch up," he says. "Our results at Excel have demonstrated that kids can catch up and view themselves as in control of their academic futures, but this requires hard work, and homework is a part of it."

Ed School Professor Howard Gardner basically agrees.

"America and Americans lurch between too little homework in many of our schools to an excess of homework in our most competitive environments — Li'l Abner vs. Tiger Mother," he says. "Neither approach makes sense. Homework should build on what happens in class, consolidating skills and helping students to answer new questions."

So how can schools come to a happy medium, a way that allows teachers to cover everything they need while not overwhelming students? Conklin says she often gives online math assignments that act as labs and students have two or three days to complete them, including some in-class time. Students at Pangburn's school have a 50-minute silent period during regular school hours where homework can be started, and where teachers pull individual or small groups of students aside for tutoring, often on that night's homework. Afterschool homework clubs can help.

Some schools and districts have adapted time limits rather than nix homework completely, with the 10-minute per grade rule being the standard — 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 30 minutes for third-graders, and so on. (This remedy, however, is often met with mixed results since not all students work at the same pace.) Other schools offer an extended day that allows teachers to cover more material in school, in turn requiring fewer take-home assignments. And for others, like Stephanie Brant's elementary school in Maryland, more reading with a few targeted project assignments has been the answer.

"The routine of reading is so much more important than the routine of homework," she says. "Let's have kids reflect. You can still have the routine and you can still have your workspace, but now it's for reading. I often say to parents, if we can put a man on the moon, we can put a man or woman on Mars and that person is now a second-grader. We don't know what skills that person will need. At the end of the day, we have to feel confident that we're giving them something they can use on Mars."

Read a January 2014 update.

Homework Policy Still Going Strong

Illustration by Jessica Esch

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Related Articles

hgse shield

Commencement Marshal Sarah Fiarman: The Principal of the Matter

Grace Kossia

Making Math “Almost Fun”

Alum develops curriculum to entice reluctant math learners

Illustration from A Field Guide to Gifted Students

A Field Guide to Gifted Students

StudySkills.com

Selskills.com.

  • (800) 390 SOAR

logo-banner-x-large

  • About SOAR ®
  • What Is SOAR ®
  • Who SOAR ® Helps
  • Why SOAR ® Works
  • Curriculum Pricing
  • Virtual Learning
  • Proven Results
  • How to Get Started
  • Training & Professional Development
  • What Is SOAR ® ?
  • Virtual/Hybrid Learning Skills
  • SOAR ® Learning & Soft Skills App (Home Edition)
  • Special Help
  • Student Articles
  • Parent & Student Store
  • Educator Store
  • How to Order (Schools)
  • The At-Home Solution

Legal Homework Rights: What’s the Limit on Homework?

Hi, I just read your article Titled “Can You ‘Opt Out’ of Homework?” ( Click HERE  for the original article. ) I enjoyed the article but I guess I need a more concrete answer to the question of my legal homework rights: CAN I LEGALLY OPT OUT OF HOMEWORK FOR MY CHILD? – Dawn, SOAR ®  Parent

The answer is a resounding, Yes!

legal homework rights

You have legal rights to put limits on your child’s homework time.

When homework begins to erode family relationships and/or increases the students anxiety, its time to make modifications. First, try communicating and working collaboratively with teachers and administrators.  If that doesn’t work, then you do have legal homework rights…

Legal Homework Rights

You absolutely do have legal rights to put reasonable limits on your child’s homework time. The legal tool you want to use is called a 504. For a link that provides a quick overview to the 504 law, click HERE .

504: The Legal Homework Rights Tool

Basically, the 504 law refers to legal homework rights (known as “accommodations”) that must be made for a child’s “impairment.”  As you’ll read, “impairments” are defined very loosely throughout the law, and this is done purposely to accommodate all students’ various needs. If your child has a diagnosis of ADHD, Dyslexia, etc. that will help, but it’s not necessary.

I have seen the 504 law used throughout my career as an educator for students and families exercising their legal homework rights.  I have also used it with my own children to get schools to accommodate what I felt was appropriate.

The 504 Process

The actual 504 process includes paperwork and a series of meetings. The meetings typically include a school counselor, a teacher, an administrator, and you and your child. In the meeting, all of your concerns will be documented and specific actions or remedies (like limiting homework) will be recorded. This document becomes a legally binding contract that your child’s teacher and administrator are required to uphold.

Legal Homework Rights: What’s a Reasonable Amount of Time for Homework?

So, what is a reasonable recommendation regarding time spent on homework?

We support the “10 Minute Rule.”   That’s a maximum of 10 minutes times the grade-level of the child. So, 10-minute max for 1 st grade, 20-minute max for 2 nd grade, up to 120-minute max for 12 th grade.

The “10-minute rule” is a great accommodation for a 504, because it is set to increase the limit on homework time as the child progresses through school. We’re not talking about eliminating homework just to create an easy path for our children.  Parents that have significant battles over homework, that can easily last an hour or more, understand that homework reaches a point where it is not productive.

Too much homework is destructive t o motivation, self-esteem, and to family relationships.  So, don’t be afraid to exercise your legal rights. This is the point where we want to pursue our legal homework rights.

In addition to pursuing 504 accommodations, you may want to give your students better skills to handle the demands of school.  To learn more about the SOAR ®  Parent Products, click HERE .

Brian Winter, M.Ed.

Co-Author, SOAR Social-Emotional Learning Skills

Six Steps to Conquer the Chaos

notebook24

" * " indicates required fields

SOAR ® in the News

Media Logos (1)

The SOAR ® Curriculum

SOAR 3.0 Curriculum Books, App, Multi-Media Teacher's Presentation

The most critical learning, organizing, and communication skills needed for school. Learn more  here.

Who’s Using SOAR ® ?

map with dots for 4,300 schools in the USA

SOAR ® Guarantee

100 Gold Guarantee Seal

Click here to  learn more .

15 Should Homework Be Banned Pros and Cons

Homework was a staple of the public and private schooling experience for many of us growing up. There were long nights spent on book reports, science projects, and all of those repetitive math sheets. In many ways, it felt like an inevitable part of the educational experience. Unless you could power through all of your assignments during your free time in class, then there was going to be time spent at home working on specific subjects.

More schools are looking at the idea of banning homework from the modern educational experience. Instead of sending work home with students each night, they are finding alternative ways to ensure that each student can understand the curriculum without involving the uncertainty of parental involvement.

Although banning homework might seem like an unorthodox process, there are legitimate advantages to consider with this effort. There are some disadvantages which some families may encounter as well.

These are the updated lists of the pros and cons of banning homework to review.

List of the Pros of Banning Homework

1. Giving homework to students does not always improve their academic outcomes. The reality of homework for the modern student is that we do not know if it is helpful to have extra work assigned to them outside of the classroom. Every study that has looked at the subject has had design flaws which causes the data collected to be questionable at best. Although there is some information to suggest that students in seventh grade and higher can benefit from limited homework, banning it for students younger than that seems to be beneficial for their learning experience.

2. Banning homework can reduce burnout issues with students. Teachers are seeing homework stress occur in the classroom more frequently today than ever before. Almost half of all high school teachers in North America have seen this issue with their students at some point during the year. About 25% of grade school teachers say that they have seen the same thing.

When students are dealing with the impact of homework on their lives, it can have a tremendously adverse impact. One of the most cited reasons for students dropping out of school is that they cannot complete their homework on time.

3. Banning homework would increase the amount of family time available to students. Homework creates a significant disruption to family relationships. Over half of all parents in North America say that they have had a significant argument with their children over homework in the past month. 1/3 of families say that homework is their primary source of struggle in the home. Not only does it reduce the amount of time that everyone has to spend together, it reduces the chances that parents have to teach their own skills and belief systems to their kids.

4. It reduces the negative impact of homework on the health of a student. Many students suffer academically when they cannot finish a homework assignment on time. Although assumptions are often made about the time management skills of the individual when this outcome occurs, the reasons why it happens is usually more complex. It may be too difficult, too boring, or there may not be enough time in the day to complete the work.

When students experience failure in this area, it can lead to severe mental health issues. Some perceive themselves as a scholarly failure, which translates to an inability to live life successfully. It can disrupt a desire to learn. There is even an increased risk of suicide for some youth because of this issue. Banning it would reduce these risks immediately.

5. Eliminating homework would allow for an established sleep cycle. The average high school student requires between 8-10 hours of sleep to function at their best the next day. Grade-school students may require an extra hour or two beyond that figure. When teachers assign homework, then it increases the risk for each individual that they will not receive the amount that they require each night.

When children do not get enough sleep, a significant rest deficit occurs which can impact their ability to pay attention in school. It can cause unintended weight gain. There may even be issues with emotional control. Banning homework would help to reduce these risks as well.

6. It increases the amount of socialization time that students receive. People who are only spending time in school and then going home to do more work are at a higher risk of experiencing loneliness and isolation. When these emotions are present, then a student is more likely to feel “down and out” mentally and physically. They lack meaningful connections with other people. These feelings are the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes per day. If students are spending time on homework, then they are not spending time connecting with their family and friends.

7. It reduces the repetition that students face in the modern learning process. Most of the tasks that homework requires of students is repetitive and uninteresting. Kids love to resolve challenges on tasks that they are passionate about at that moment in their lives. Forcing them to complete the same problems repetitively as a way to “learn” core concepts can create issues with knowledge retention later in life. When you add in the fact that most lessons sent for homework must be done by themselves, banning homework will reduce the repetition that students face, allowing for a better overall outcome.

8. Home environments can be chaotic. Although some students can do homework in a quiet room without distractions, that is not the case for most kids. There are numerous events that happen at home which can pull a child’s attention away from the work that their teacher wants them to do. It isn’t just the Internet, video games, and television which are problematic either. Household chores, family issues, employment, and athletic requirements can make it a challenge to get the assigned work finished on time.

List of the Cons of Banning Homework

1. Homework allows parents to be involved with the educational process. Parents need to know what their children are learning in school. Even if they ask their children about what they are learning, the answers tend to be in generalities instead of specifics. By sending home work from the classroom, it allows parents to see and experience the work that their kids are doing when they are in school during the day. Then moms and dads can get involved with the learning process to reinforce the core concepts that were discovered by their children each day.

2. It can help parents and teachers identify learning disabilities. Many children develop a self-defense mechanism which allows them to appear like any other kid that is in their classroom. This process allows them to hide learning disabilities which may be hindering their educational progress. The presence of homework makes it possible for parents and teachers to identify this issue because kids can’t hide their struggles when they must work 1-on-1 with their parents on specific subjects. Banning homework would eliminate 50% of the opportunities to identify potential issues immediately.

3. Homework allows teachers to observe how their students understand the material. Teachers often use homework as a way to gauge how well a student is understanding the materials they are learning. Although some might point out that assignments and exams in the classroom can do the same thing, testing often requires preparation at home. It creates more anxiety and stress sometimes then even homework does. That is why banning it can be problematic for some students. Some students experience more pressure than they would during this assessment process when quizzes and tests are the only measurement of their success.

4. It teaches students how to manage their time wisely. As people grow older, they realize that time is a finite commodity. We must manage it wisely to maximize our productivity. Homework assignments are a way to encourage the development of this skill at an early age. The trick is to keep the amount of time required for the work down to a manageable level. As a general rule, students should spend about 10 minutes each school day doing homework, organizing their schedule around this need. If there are scheduling conflicts, then this process offers families a chance to create priorities.

5. Homework encourages students to be accountable for their role. Teachers are present in the classroom to offer access to information and skill-building opportunities that can improve the quality of life for each student. Administrators work to find a curriculum that will benefit the most people in an efficient way. Parents work hard to ensure their kids make it to school on time, follow healthy routines, and communicate with their school district to ensure the most effective learning opportunities possible. None of that matters if the student is not invested in the work in the first place. Homework assignments not only teach children how to work independently, but they also show them how to take responsibility for their part of the overall educational process.

6. It helps to teach important life lessons. Homework is an essential tool in the development of life lessons, such as communicating with others or comprehending something they have just read. It teaches kids how to think, solve problems, and even build an understanding for the issues that occur in our society right now. Many of the issues that lead to the idea to ban homework occur because someone in the life of a student communicated to them that this work was a waste of time. There are times in life when people need to do things that they don’t like or want to do. Homework helps a student begin to find the coping skills needed to be successful in that situation.

7. Homework allows for further research into class materials. Most classrooms offer less than 1 hour of instruction per subject during the day. For many students, that is not enough time to obtain a firm grasp on the materials being taught. Having homework assignments allows a student to perform more research, using their at-home tools to take a deeper look into the materials that would otherwise be impossible if homework was banned. That process can lead to a more significant understanding of the concepts involved, reducing anxiety levels because they have a complete grasp on the materials.

The pros and cons of banning homework is a decision that ultimately lies with each school district. Parents always have the option to pursue homeschooling or online learning if they disagree with the decisions that are made in this area. Whether you’re for more homework or want to see less of it, we can all agree on the fact that the absence of any reliable data about its usefulness makes it a challenge to know for certain which option is the best one to choose in this debate.

Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework

Two brothers work on laptop computers at home

H ow long is your child’s workweek? Thirty hours? Forty? Would it surprise you to learn that some elementary school kids have workweeks comparable to adults’ schedules? For most children, mandatory homework assignments push their workweek far beyond the school day and deep into what any other laborers would consider overtime. Even without sports or music or other school-sponsored extracurriculars, the daily homework slog keeps many students on the clock as long as lawyers, teachers, medical residents, truck drivers and other overworked adults. Is it any wonder that,deprived of the labor protections that we provide adults, our kids are suffering an epidemic of disengagement, anxiety and depression ?

With my youngest child just months away from finishing high school, I’m remembering all the needless misery and missed opportunities all three of my kids suffered because of their endless assignments. When my daughters were in middle school, I would urge them into bed before midnight and then find them clandestinely studying under the covers with a flashlight. We cut back on their activities but still found ourselves stuck in a system on overdrive, returning home from hectic days at 6 p.m. only to face hours more of homework. Now, even as a senior with a moderate course load, my son, Zak, has spent many weekends studying, finding little time for the exercise and fresh air essential to his well-being. Week after week, and without any extracurriculars, Zak logs a lot more than the 40 hours adults traditionally work each week — and with no recognition from his “bosses” that it’s too much. I can’t count the number of shared evenings, weekend outings and dinners that our family has missed and will never get back.

How much after-school time should our schools really own?

In the midst of the madness last fall, Zak said to me, “I feel like I’m working towards my death. The constant demands on my time since 5th grade are just going to continue through graduation, into college, and then into my job. It’s like I’m on an endless treadmill with no time for living.”

My spirit crumbled along with his.

Like Zak, many people are now questioning the point of putting so much demand on children and teens that they become thinly stretched and overworked. Studies have long shown that there is no academic benefit to high school homework that consumes more than a modest number of hours each week. In a study of high schoolers conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), researchers concluded that “after around four hours of homework per week, the additional time invested in homework has a negligible impact on performance.”

In elementary school, where we often assign overtime even to the youngest children, studies have shown there’s no academic benefit to any amount of homework at all.

Our unquestioned acceptance of homework also flies in the face of all we know about human health, brain function and learning. Brain scientists know that rest and exercise are essential to good health and real learning . Even top adult professionals in specialized fields take care to limit their work to concentrated periods of focus. A landmark study of how humans develop expertise found that elite musicians, scientists and athletes do their most productive work only about four hours per day .

Yet we continue to overwork our children, depriving them of the chance to cultivate health and learn deeply, burdening them with an imbalance of sedentary, academic tasks. American high school students , in fact, do more homework each week than their peers in the average country in the OECD, a 2014 report found.

It’s time for an uprising.

Already, small rebellions are starting. High schools in Ridgewood, N.J. , and Fairfax County, Va., among others, have banned homework over school breaks. The entire second grade at Taylor Elementary School in Arlington, Va., abolished homework this academic year. Burton Valley Elementary School in Lafayette, Calif., has eliminated homework in grades K through 4. Henry West Laboratory School , a public K-8 school in Coral Gables, Fla., eliminated mandatory, graded homework for optional assignments. One Lexington, Mass., elementary school is piloting a homework-free year, replacing it with reading for pleasure.

More from TIME

Across the Atlantic, students in Spain launched a national strike against excessive assignments in November. And a second-grade teacher in Texas, made headlines this fall when she quit sending home extra work , instead urging families to “spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early.”

It is time that we call loudly for a clear and simple change: a workweek limit for children, counting time on the clock before and after the final bell. Why should schools extend their authority far beyond the boundaries of campus, dictating activities in our homes in the hours that belong to families? An all-out ban on after-school assignments would be optimal. Short of that, we can at least sensibly agree on a cap limiting kids to a 40-hour workweek — and fewer hours for younger children.

Resistance even to this reasonable limit will be rife. Mike Miller, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., found this out firsthand when he spearheaded a homework committee to rethink the usual approach. He had read the education research and found a forgotten policy on the county books limiting homework to two hours a night, total, including all classes. “I thought it would be a slam dunk” to put the two-hour cap firmly in place, Miller said.

But immediately, people started balking. “There was a lot of fear in the community,” Miller said. “It’s like jumping off a high dive with your kids’ future. If we reduce homework to two hours or less, is my kid really going to be okay?” In the end, the committee only agreed to a homework ban over school breaks.

Miller’s response is a great model for us all. He decided to limit assignments in his own class to 20 minutes a night (the most allowed for a student with six classes to hit the two-hour max). His students didn’t suddenly fail. Their test scores remained stable. And they started using their more breathable schedule to do more creative, thoughtful work.

That’s the way we will get to a sane work schedule for kids: by simultaneously pursuing changes big and small. Even as we collaboratively press for policy changes at the district or individual school level, all teachers can act now, as individuals, to ease the strain on overworked kids.

As parents and students, we can also organize to make homework the exception rather than the rule. We can insist that every family, teacher and student be allowed to opt out of assignments without penalty to make room for important activities, and we can seek changes that shift practice exercises and assignments into the actual school day.

We’ll know our work is done only when Zak and every other child can clock out, eat dinner, sleep well and stay healthy — the very things needed to engage and learn deeply. That’s the basic standard the law applies to working adults. Let’s do the same for our kids.

Vicki Abeles is the author of the bestseller Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheduled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation, and director and producer of the documentaries “ Race to Nowhere ” and “ Beyond Measure. ”

More Must-Reads From TIME

  • East Palestine, One Year After Train Derailment
  • The Closers: 18 People Working to End the Racial Wealth Gap
  • Issa Rae and Hollywood’s Unkept Promises
  • Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise
  • Column: Biden’s Gaza Strategy Is an Illogical Disaster
  • The 5 Best New TV Shows of January 2024
  • Taylor Swift Is TIME's 2023 Person of the Year
  • Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

  • Share full article Share free access

Advertisement

Supported by

Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

is homework against the law

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should we get rid of homework? Why, or why not?

Is homework an outdated, ineffective or counterproductive tool for learning? Do you agree with the authors of the paper that homework is harmful and worsens inequalities that exist between students’ home circumstances?

Or do you agree with Mr. Kang that homework still has real educational value?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do? Do you think the amount is appropriate, too much or too little? Is homework, including the projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or, in your opinion, is it not a good use of time? Explain.

In these letters to the editor , one reader makes a distinction between elementary school and high school:

Homework’s value is unclear for younger students. But by high school and college, homework is absolutely essential for any student who wishes to excel. There simply isn’t time to digest Dostoyevsky if you only ever read him in class.

What do you think? How much does grade level matter when discussing the value of homework?

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

If you were a teacher, would you assign homework? What kind of assignments would you give and why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

logo (1)

School Life Balance , Tips for Online Students

The Pros and Cons of Homework

The-Pros-and-Cons-Should-Students-Have-Homework

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

A college student completely swamped with homework.

Photo by  energepic.com  from  Pexels

Why should students have homework, 1. homework encourages practice.

Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .

2. Homework Gets Parents Involved

Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.

3. Homework Teaches Time Management

Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.

4. Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication

Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.

5. Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.

6. Homework Reduces Screen Time

Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

A female student who doesn’t want to do homework.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

1. homework encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework.

While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom.

Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.

2. Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home

While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .

3. Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job

School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.

4. Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results

Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success.

The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements.

It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity.

Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.

5. Homework Assignments Are Overdone

The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however.

On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

Related Articles

Privacy overview.

Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

Mother helping son with homework at home

Getty Images

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful.

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

High angle view of young woman sitting at desk and studying at home during coronavirus lockdown

Tags: K-12 education , students , elementary school , children

2024 Best Colleges

is homework against the law

Search for your perfect fit with the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities.

Top Nav Breadcrumb

  • Ask a question

IB Community Blog

Is homework an unnecessary burden?

Ib world magazine investigates if homework still has a place in modern-day education, in a new series of thought leadership articles.

Homework is outdated , invades valuable family time and serves no purpose – or that’s what many schools in Europe and the US now believe. As a consequence they have publically ditched the after-school tradition in favour of letting “kids be kids”. With no homework to mark, teachers are using the extra time to plan more creative lessons.

Some critics have even gone so far as to call homework a “sin against childhood” . According to author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, the positive effects of homework are “largely mythical.” He says homework in most schools is set just for “the sake of it.”

Kohn’s research found there is “absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary school [5-10 years old] or middle school [11-13 years old].”

At the high school level [14-18 years old], the correlation [between homework and academic success] is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.”

Despite the evidence, homework is still a global practice. In China, 15-year-old students spend, on average, 13.8 hours per week on homework. At the other end of the scale, students in Finland spend 2.8 hours a week. As Finland is regularly used as a positive example for its outstanding educational standards and practices, this highlights a failed link between time spent on homework and academic achievement.

Mental health epidemic

  The homework debate is nothing new, and what constitutes excessive amounts of homework is dependent on multiple factors. However, with the increase in mental health issues amongst young people, scrapping homework could be a step in the right direction towards combating the epidemic.

For PYP-aged students, even 30 minutes of homework a night, if combined with other sources of academic stress, can have a  negative impact on mental health. Researchers in China have linked homework of two or more hours per night with  sleep disruption .

A top school in the UK is in the midst of a five-year review of homework. It is considering replacing it with weekly meditation classes, longer walks between lessons, and flipped learning – an approach where students read up on material before classes.

In France, it’s argued that homework causes inequality. In 2012, French President François Hollande said that homework favours the wealthy. Such students are more likely to have a good working environment at home, including parents with the time and energy to help children with their work, he said.

British author and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen agrees. In a letter to the UK Education Secretary Justine Greening – published in The Guardian newspaper in February 2017 – he explains his belief that homework widens the gap between rich and poor, and gives an advantage “to children who have parents with a lot of education on their CVs and/or a knowledge of how to teach.”

“Hard evidence” for homework

However, while the case for abolishing homework is gathering pace, there is “hard evidence” that it really does improve how well students achieve, says Professor Susan Hallam from UCL Institute of Education, UK.

Spending more than two hours a day on homework is linked to achieving better results in English, mathematics and science, according to a study published by the Department for Education, UK.

Homework also improves memory, encourages independence and develops positive study skills – including how to deal with pressure, various studies have found.

Professor Harris Cooper highlights the positive influence of homework on overall development. He says: “Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue it can have many other beneficial effects, including the development of good study habits and a recognition that learning can occur at home, as well as at school.”

Homework can also foster independent learning and responsible character traits – essential skills later in life when students change jobs or learn new skills for advancement at work.”

Homework also acts as a guide for parents. It helps them understand their child’s academic strengths and weaknesses, says Cooper. “Two parents once told me they refused to believe their child had a learning disability until homework revealed it to them.”

Homework does have invaluable benefits, but the amount of time spent completing it is the clear concern. Assigning too much homework can result in poor performance.

Schools are having to tread the fine line of challenging students academically, but not to the point of overwhelming them.

Cooper acknowledges that some students are bringing home too much work. Setting homework policies can help, he says.

Policies should proscribe amounts of homework that are consistent with the empirical evidence (and most do) but also give individual schools and teachers some flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students.”

For example, his ‘10-minute Rule’ advises homework time should be equal to the child’s grade level multiplied by 10, ie a second grader (a 7-year-old) should have 20 minutes of homework per day (two multiplied by 10).

Above all, homework should be authentic, meaningful, and engaging, according to Stanford professors Linda Darling-Hammond and Olivia Ifill-Lynch in the book If They’d Only Do Their Work !

  “Assign work that is worthy of effort,” they say. “Before teachers give out a homework assignment, they should ask themselves, ‘Does it make sense?’ ‘Is it necessary?’ ‘Is it useful?’ ‘Is it authentic and engaging?’ Students are most likely to do homework when it is part of a meaningful curriculum unit and will actually be used in class the next day.”

Look out for the second part of our series on homework where  IB World speaks to the IB teachers who have opted out of giving students homework, with surprising results

  • Up until fifth grade (age 10), homework should be very limited.
  • Middle-school students should not spend more than 90 minutes a day on homework
  • Two hours should be the limit in high school.
  • Beyond these time limits, research shows that homework has no impact on student performance, says Cooper.

Thought Leadership , Top stories

About the IB

Thanks for visiting! GoodRx is not available outside of the United States. If you are trying to access this site from the United States and believe you have received this message in error, please reach out to [email protected] and let us know.

Resilient Educator logo

ChatGPT for Teachers

Trauma-informed practices in schools, teacher well-being, cultivating diversity, equity, & inclusion, integrating technology in the classroom, social-emotional development, covid-19 resources, invest in resilience: summer toolkit, civics & resilience, all toolkits, degree programs, trauma-informed professional development, teacher licensure & certification, how to become - career information, classroom management, instructional design, lifestyle & self-care, online higher ed teaching, current events, the homework debate: the case against homework.

The Homework Debate: The Case Against Homework

This post has been updated as of December 2017.

It’s not uncommon to hear students, parents, and even some teachers always complaining about homework. Why, then, is homework an inescapable part of the student experience? Worksheets, busy work, and reading assignments continue to be a mainstay of students’ evenings.

Whether from habit or comparison with out-of-class work time in other nations, our students are getting homework and, according to some of them, a LOT of it. Educators and policy makers must ask themselves—does assigning homework pay off?

Is there evidence that homework benefits students younger than high school?

The Scholastic article Is Homework Bad? references Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , in which he says, “There is no evidence to demonstrate that homework benefits students below high school age.”

The article goes on to note that those who oppose homework focus on the drawbacks of significant time spent on homework, identifying one major negative as homework’s intrusion into family time. They also point out that opponents believe schools have decided homework is necessary and thus assign it simply to assign some kind of homework, not because doing the work meets specifically-identified student needs.

“Busy work” does not help students learn

Students and parents appear to carry similar critiques of homework, specifically regarding assignments identified as busy work—long sheets of repetitive math problems, word searches, or reading logs seemingly designed to make children dislike books.

When asked how homework can negatively affect children, Nancy Kalish, author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It , says that many homework assignments are “simply busy work” that makes learning “a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience.”

Commenters on the piece, both parents and students, tended to agree. One student shared that on occasion they spent more time on homework than at school, while another commenter pointed out that, “We don’t give slow-working children a longer school day, but we consistently give them a longer homework day.”

Without feedback, homework is ineffective

The efficacy of the homework identified by Kalish has been studied by policy researchers as well. Gerald LeTendre, of Penn State’s Education Policy Studies department points out that the shotgun approach to homework, when students all receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed individually with the student, is “not very effective.”  He goes on to say that, “If there’s no feedback and no monitoring, the homework is probably not effective.”

Researchers from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia had similar findings in their study, “ When Is Homework Worth The Time ?” According to UVAToday, these researchers reported no “substantive difference” in the grades of students related to homework completion.

As researcher Adam Maltese noted, “Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be.” The report further suggested that while not all homework is bad, the type and quality of assignments and their differentiation to specific learners appears to be an important point of future research.

If homework is assigned, it should heighten understanding of the subject

The Curry School of Education report did find a positive association between standardized test performance and time spent on homework, but standardized test performance shouldn’t be the end goal of assignments—a heightened understanding and capability with the content material should.

As such, it is important that if/when teachers assign homework assignments, it is done thoughtfully and carefully—and respectful of the maximum times suggested by the National Education Association, about 10 minutes per night starting in the first grade, with an additional 10 minutes per year after.

Continue reading — The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.

You may also like to read

  • The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students
  • Ending the Homework Debate: Expert Advice on What Works
  • Advice on Creating Homework Policies
  • Elementary Students and Homework: How Much Is Too Much?
  • Homework in Middle School: Building a Foundation for Study Skills
  • Homework Helps High School Students Most — But it Must Be Purposeful

Categorized as: Tips for Teachers and Classroom Resources

Tagged as: Leadership and Administration ,  Pros and Cons ,  Teacher-Parent Relationships

  • Certificates in Administrative Leadership
  • Teacher Resources for Social-Emotional Develo...
  • Degrees and Certificates for Teachers & Educa...

ct-logo

Is Homework Illegal In The United States?

When Horace Mann invented school, homework became an important part of it. But there is one question in students’ minds “is homework illegal? – because students have to do a lot of homework. They don’t have time to do other things. They want to play outside games and hang out with their friends. But teachers give them a lot of homework to do, and they have to complete it. 

In many American elementary schools, homework has been banned. Because they find it stressful, homework can affect students’ health by causing stomach and headaches issues. 

Homework is very time consuming and stressful for students. The homework issue is still debatable, but to be on the safe side, you have to be open-minded about it because, for many reasons, you could say it is illegal, and for some, it is legal. In this blog, we will start with is homework illegal.

What Is Homework?

Table of Contents

what is homework

It is defined as an out-of-class task that teachers assign to the students to do at home. Students have to complete their homework at home. In the United States, a high school student will usually have several hours of homework per night. Homework is used to test students and see how they learn. It can also be used to make sure they understand their school work.

Why Is Homework Important?

why is homework important

Is homework illegal? Homework is important for many reasons. Here are some reasons why is homework important:

  • It motivates students to structure their time wisely. And it also teaches students to take all responsibility for their work.
  • Parents can also get the opportunity to work together with their students. Through that, parents can develop a strong relationship with their students. 
  • Homework can teach students to solve their problems on their own. 
  • Homework can help students to get ready for the next class.
  •  It can help students organize their thoughts and prepare for tests and exams.
  • It helps students understand a subject better and gives them a greater understanding of the material than they would get from just reading the chapter.

Is Doing Homework a Waste Of Time?

is doing homework a waste of time

  • Yes, it is a waste of time because they don’t have time to do other things when students do homework. Students only do homework when they come back home from school. Students should also have free time to enjoy life. Students should do other activities such as spending time with family, playing outside games, handing out with friends etc. 
  • Many students take pressure to complete their homework every night, whereas they should relax their minds and body. 
  • Many teachers don’t grade papers because they don’t have time as they are very busy designing lesson plans. 
  • Homework can affects the performance of children. 
  • Children should be students at school and children at home because, at home, students are children of parents. Parents should teach their children to be responsible at home as well. You can also read why homework is bad .

Why Should Students Have Homework?

Why Should Students Have Homework

Homework Motivates People To Do The Practice.

Many people believe that homework can motivate the discipline of practice. At the same time, homework can be boring and time-consuming compared to other activities. Homework helps students to make concepts more clear. It also gives them opportunities when they start their careers.

Homework Gets Parents Involved.

Homework is always a source of conflict between parents and children. Parents require their children to complete homework to develop discipline and get a good education. It allows parents to keep up with what children are doing in school. 

It Teaches Time-Management

Homework is not just finishing the assigned tasks. It can also develop time management skills when students require completing their homework on time. They have to make a schedule for their tasks. So they can finish their homework on time. 

Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework gives students more time to complete their studies. School hours aren’t always enough time for children to understand essential topics, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they don’t realize it.

What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Assigning Homework?

Advantages of homework.

Advantages of Homework

Is homework illegal? There are many advantages of assigning homework . Here are some of the main advantages: 

  • Homework can assist students in learning more material. 
  • If students spend more time on their homework, they will be able to improve their learning better. 
  • It can assist students in developing good study habits. 
  • Homework can also prepare children for college and universities workloads. 

Disadvantages Of Homework

Disadvantages Of Homework

There are also many disadvantages to assigning homework to students. Here are some disadvantages of homework:

  • For many students, homework is very stressful. They feel under pressure, and they will never have any free time. 
  • Secondly, when students get more homework, it can be lead to cheating and academic dishonesty issues.
  • Students have a lot of homework, that’s why they don’t have time for outdoor activities. you should also read why homework should be banned .

Is It Illegal To Do My Homework?

Is homework illegal? Legally, you don’t have to do your homework. No law enforcement body can arrest you for not doing homework on any day. But, schools have the right to decide what happens to a student who doesn’t complete homework. 

Homework is an important part of the learning approach in school. If you continuously ignore homework, you can be asked to leave the school. If your parents allow you to ignore homework, they can state their case to the school board and an attempt to get an exemption. But majorly, such cases result in a negative response and the child gets expelled from the school.

So, if you are refusing to do your homework and not breaking any state laws, you have no control over the school’s actions after refusing to do your homework. They have the authority to decide what they deem necessary in any situation.

Is It Worth Buying homework?

Is It Worth Buying homework?

In my opinion, paying someone to do homework is beneficial. Because many students have a busy schedule and can’t do their homework on time, if you are one of them, I will suggest you take help from professional experts who can provide you with the best assignment solution.  

Many students get benefits from homework companies providers. Because they need free time for outdoor games, spending time with family, and hanging out with friends. Reputable homework companies always provide top-notch homework services within the given deadline. 

Is it illegal to do someone’s homework?

No! It is not illegal to do someone’s homework as you know that when we were young, our parents helped us with our homework. They helped us to do our homework on time and correct our mistakes. Even now, many students take help from professional experts. 

But When it comes to ethics, we should remember that students will be independent. When we do homework by ourselves, we can easily create other questions similar to the homework. And it helps us to explain to others and solve the homework ourselves.

This helps students in the long run with academics. And students learn to work well with little supervision. On the other hand, try to teach your friends similar tasks, and they can solve the homework themselves when you teach well to them. 

Can I Refuse For My Child To Do Homework?

Absolutely yes, you can refuse for your child to do homework. Because you have the legal right to put limits on your child’s homework time. 

Sometimes when students do a lot of homework it destroys family relationships. And also it increases the student’s anxiety. That’s why many people think that it times to make modifications. For this first, you should try to communicate with teachers and administrators. If that does not work, then you have legal homework rights. The legal right is also called a 504.

How Is Homework Harmful?

According to the research, when teachers give homework to the students they spend too much time on homework. Because they think that if they can’t complete their homework, then teachers will punish them. That’s why they spend too much time on homework at night. It may affect stress, physical health problems, and a lack of balance. 

Why Homework Should Be Banned?

Here are some reasons why homework should be banned :

  • It is a waste of time for students.
  • It can affect the student’s physical health
  • Homework doesn’t provide student’s practical knowledge.
  • Homework can also affect the student’s mental health.
  • Many students start to hate studying because of homework.
  • Homework force students to work like a robot
  • It is very boring for many students 
  • Homework doesn’t help students that much in the study.
  • Homework can create the habit of memorizing concepts in the students.
  • Many teachers give a lot of homework to the students
  • Students have no time for other activities
  • Students can’t spend time with family because of homework
  • Many students lose their confidence when they can’t complete their homework on time.
  • Many students start thinking of their teacher and parents as a villain

Conclusion (Is Homework Illegal)

We hope you enjoyed our blog post on whether homework is illegal or not. The bottom line is that it depends on the individual circumstances around your case. If you’re looking for someone who will provide you with the best homework help service , please visit calltutors. They have a large team of professional writers who are experts in many subjects.

FAQs Related To Is Homework Illegal

How is homework useless.

1. No efficiency  2. No productivity 3. No agenda

How is homework harmful?

According to the research, students who spend too much time on homework may affect more stress and physical health problems. According to the study, more than two hours of homework a night can be unproductive.

Similar Articles

How To Improve Grade

Top 19 Tips & Tricks On How To Improve Grades?

Do you want to improve your grades? If yes, then don’t worry! In this blog, I have provided 19 tips…

How To Study For Final Exam

How To Study For Final Exam – 12 Proven Tips You Must Know

How To Study For Final Exam? Studying for the final exam is very important for academic success because they test…

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Watch CBS News

The Case Against Homework

By Steve Hartman

February 20, 2009 / 6:31 PM EST / CBS

Even though he's just a fifth grader, 11-year-old Ben Berrafato is challenging - seriously challenging - one of this country's most enduring and widely held beliefs: The belief that kids need homework.

"Where has it been proven, in these many centuries of this work, that it has been good for anyone?" Ben said.

Ben's crusade against homework began with a simple assignment, CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports. For English class at New Lane Elementary in Selden, N.Y., Ben had to write about something he was passionate about - and since Ben hates homework he wrote about that. And he did so quite creatively.

Part of his essay reads: "Homework is assigned to students like me without our permission. Thus, homework is slavery. Slavery was abolished with the passing of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So every school in America has been illegally run for the past 143 years."

On a whim, Ben sent a copy of his essay to the New York Daily News.

"And I got like this humongous section of the op-ed page," he said.

It then circulated on the Internet, Ben started doing talk shows, and a monster was born.

"School should stay at school," he said. "When it is brought home in a backpack, it causes problems."

For teachers and school administrators, Ben's whole argument borders on blasphemy. Certainly most would dismiss it as wishful propaganda - if not for the simple fact that the kid may be right.

"He's really onto something here," said Nancy Kalish, who co-authored a book called "The Case Against Homework."

"As he pointed out, there is almost zero connection, correlation between homework and any type of achievement in elementary school," Kalish said.

In researching his essay, Kalish says Ben really did his homework, so to speak, citing the very latest studies.

"Kids who do 60 to 90 minutes of homework in middle school and over two hours in high school actually do worse than average in standardized tests," his essay read.

How far is Ben going to take it?

"As far as I can," he said. "As far as possible."

Read more about Ben's quest on Couric & Co.

Ben plans to send the signatures to Congress.

He says just about everybody's been supportive. Except … his principal.

"You know, a famous historian once said, 'I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death you're right to say it,'" the principal said. "You know who that was? I believe it was Patrick Henry. I could be wrong. I learned that a long time ago in homework and I've forgotten it."

Ben says she just proved his point right there.

"If you're going to do homework then forget what it is, then why even do it?" Ben asked.

Of course, now he's probably got homework and detention.

"It's an interesting thought," the principal said.

Steve Hartman

Steve Hartman has been a CBS News correspondent since 1998, having served as a part-time correspondent for the previous two years.

More from CBS News

Is Homework Illegal AnyWhere?

is homework illegal

  • Post author By admin
  • September 19, 2022

In this blog, you will learn about is homework illegal? so let’s get started.

Homework has become an important part since Horace Mann invented school. But many students have a query “is homework illegal?” – many students don’t want to do homework, and according to the research, this happens worldwide. 

Homework is time-consuming and stressful for students. That’s why students hate to do homework and want to know is it legal or illegal. We know that you are one of them that want to know is homework illegal or legal. For some reasons, you can say it is illegal or for some, it is legal. 

We will start with the illegal site. Many American elementary schools have banned homework because they find that homework can affect students’ health by causing stomach and headaches problems.

Many students suffer from sleep deprivation because they stay up late at night to complete their homework. It can be harmful to children’s learning skills because sleep has been shown to assist memory consolidation.

Table of Contents

Is Homework Illegal?

While the answer to the question “is homework illegal?” is “no, not yet,” our attitudes toward homework are changing, and the pandemic has caused us to reconsider children’s work-life balance. Some school districts and individual schools have begun to prohibit homework and limit the amount of homework that can be assigned to students. Some schools have said that homework is given out only 2-3 times per week, and others have outright banned homework for students under the age of 15. 

Why Homework Is Not Illegal

Why Homework Is Not Illegal

There are numerous disagreements over the effectiveness of homework. However, after years of debate and research, there is no solid proof that it helps students in achieving higher marks. While some kids dislike homework and perform better in school without it, others rely on it to gain a deeper understanding of certain subjects.

For example, many students gain a better understanding of mathematical ideas through repeated practice. As a result, making homework unlawful may disadvantage more students, skewing the outcomes in favour of children who are born with these skills.

The government recognises this and has not passed any legislation prohibiting schools from assigning homework. Law enforcement will not arrest a teacher for assigning homework to students. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

A short history of homework for you

is homework against the law

There is no definitive answer to the question of when homework was invented and who invented homework .  Pliny the Younger from the Roman Empire, Roberto Nevilis from Italy in 1905, or Horace Mann can all be credited.  In one form or another, homework has almost certainly been around for a long time.  

One of the last two men is supposed to have introduced today’s concept of homework (after all, a woman would have known that there is PLENTY to do at home!). It was created as a punishment or as a way to show students that they can control their time.

As soon as homework was introduced, it was controversial.  In some states, homework bans were already in place at the turn of the 20th century.  The amount of homework given to kids increased as fears of the cold war grew and Americans were concerned about falling behind.  Later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the anti-homework sentiment grew again, and students were given less homework. The country was experiencing an economic downturn when I entered the “workforce,” which means school.  Who else could be blamed but teachers?  There is a suggestion that the amount of homework given to kids should be increased by the Department of Education.

It has been reported that some high school students report having up to three hours of homework per night since then. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

Importance Of Homework

is homework against the law

Improve memory

Whatever students learn in the classroom they can revise while doing homework. It can help them to improve their memory.

Students can learn to make good use of time

When students spend a lot of time completing their homework it helps them to keep away from useless activities such as spending more hours on phones, television or video games. 

Students can become independent

Many students do their homework on their own. They don’t get help from their teacher or friends. It makes them self-reliant and increases their confidence. 

Students learn responsibility

Many students understand that finishing homework is their responsibility. That’s why they do their homework every day.  It makes them responsible as a person.

Students learn to use many resources

When students do their homework they learn to use many resources such as libraries, the internet, etc. it helps them to find more information to complete their homework on time. 

Allow parents to involve in the studies of their child

When students do their homework it allows their parents to know what their child learns in school. And they can get involved with the child in their studies. 

Improves academic performance

Learning in the classroom isn’t enough to get good grades in school. Self-study is very important for achieving high grades.

Increases concentration

When students do their homework they find a peaceful place to study where they can concentrate more to complete their homework.

Why Should Students Have Homework?

Why Should Students Have Homework?

One of the most important reasons a student has homework is that it allows professors to see where students are struggling with the course and assistance. 

At the same time, some students can work from the comfort of their own homes. It also allows teachers to get to know their students because some students are fast learners while others are slow learners.

Teachers can see where their students are lacking. The advantages of homework include teaching kids how to work as part of a group or collaborate effectively with others.

It can help the student in learning how to be self-sufficient. The schoolwork of their children is visible to their parents.

Kids should be assigned homework because there isn’t enough time at school, and some projects must be completed. Homework can increase a student’s self-esteem, but they can immediately identify their issues and get help before it’s too late if they struggle with it. 

One of the reasons professors assign homework is to encourage students to stay on track because failing behind might lead to failure. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

Is It Legal For Me To Do My Homework?

Legally, you are not required to do your homework. There is no law enforcement body that will arrest you for not doing your homework. A student who fails to complete his/her homework has the right to have it dealt with by the school.

The school may ask you to leave if you repeatedly ignore homework in schools where homework is part of the learning approach.  In some cases, parents who let their children ignore homework may attempt to get an exemption at the School Board, but in most cases, such requests still result in the child being asked to leave school.

If you refuse to do your homework, you aren’t breaking any federal or state laws, but you have no control over the actions your school will take. They have the legal authority to make whatever decision they deem appropriate. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

What States Have Illegal Homework Laws?

In all US states, homework is legal because there are no state laws prohibiting it. However, schools in different states are allowed to set their own rules about homework.

Some states ban or limit homework in some schools (or districts) including:

  • Connecticut

20 Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned

Here are 20 reasons why homework should be banned : 

  • Homework Restricts A Student’s Freedom
  • No Time For Exercises 
  • No Time To Play Outdoor Games 
  • Often Breaks Students’ Confidence
  • Homework Doing Not An Achievement
  • Most Homework Creates Bad Habits
  • Less Time To Spend With Family Members
  • Conflict With Parents
  • Homework Can Encourage Cheating
  • Downtime At Home
  • Negative Impact On Tests
  • Writing Has Different Effects
  • Extra Challenges
  • Homework Causes Depression
  • Homework Provides No Real Benefit
  • Too Much Homework Means Not Enough Time For Yourself
  • School Is a Full-Time Job
  • No real impact on performance
  • Irrelevant content

Can Homework Be Considered Slavery?

There is no legal definition that would support the claim that homework is slavery. Even though home assignments are assigned without permission, comparing them to slavery is a ridiculous argument that cannot stand up to legal scrutiny.

If homework is considered slavery, you will need to prove that the teacher or instructor receives economic benefit from your work. However, teachers do not receive any economic benefit from assigning homework. Our sole goal is to help students apply what they’ve learned and become more comfortable with what they know.

Regardless of whether you believe the homework you’re assigned contributes to your career in any way, you can make your case to the appropriate authorities. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

What Is The Legal Homework Rights?

You can limit the amount of time your child spends on homework under the legal homework rights. It is possible to use the 504 law for these purposes, as it has multiple accommodations for children with impairment.

The term “impairment” is loosely defined under this law, which makes it a good legal tool when you’re seeking to accommodate a student’s various needs.

Having a child who has a diagnosis like Dyslexia or ADHD gives you a stronger case. Parents also have the right to exercise these rights with no diagnosis. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

How the 504 Process Works

Meetings with key stakeholders and paperwork are part of the 504 processes. These stakeholders include:

  • The student
  • A school administrator

They will pay attention and document all of your concerns during the meeting. An administrator or the child’s teacher must adhere to the record or document. On some occasions, the case goes to court before it is enforced but typically ends in the meeting room.

What Is The Optimal Amount Of Time To Spend On Homework Each Day?

There is no universally optimal amount of time to spend on homework per day. Most educators suggest using the 10-minute rule. To determine how much time your child should spend on homework, you should multiply 10 minutes by his/her grade level. 

That calculation indicates that a second grader should only have 20 minutes of homework per day, while students in 12th grade can have up to two hours of homework per day.

By using the legal homework rights, parents can get some concessions using the 10-minute rule. If a child has no homework in their academic life, it’s easier to request that the homework time be reduced (which will increase with each passing year). This blog is all about is homework illegal.

The Argument Against Homework

The following are some of the arguments used against homework:

  • This encroaches on family and relaxation time. Students require some time every day to relax, play, connect with family members, get adequate sleep, and more. These activities are essential for a healthy balance between academics and personal life. When you have a lot of homework every day, you spend most of your relaxation time studying.
  • There is a lot of pressure on students. When students know they still have homework to do, they feel an unnecessary amount of mental pressure. In the long run, consistent pressure could negatively affect a student’s performance at school.
  • A child’s self-confidence can be affected by this. Poor homework results and poor results can make a student withdraw from other students and dread meetings with their teachers.
  • Homework isn’t graded quickly (if at all). Teachers are often very busy dealing with different aspects of the academic process, so they glance at homework only briefly. In some cases, the students receive feedback long after the class has changed topics. Poorly graded homework defeats its purpose.

The Argument for Homework

  • It allows parents and children to work together. The relationship between a child and a parent can be further improved by solving homework together. The parent can see how the child copes with schoolwork and address any concerns with the authorities.
  • Students learn how to solve problems through this activity. In addition to learning to solve problems independently, children who complete their homework regularly will also gain valuable life skills. Students will be able to find information through books, the internet, and other sources on their own.
  • It gives students insight into a teacher’s thought process. By doing their homework, students gain a deeper understanding of how teachers think, which can help them prepare for tests and exams. 
  • It can help a child develop a higher sense of self-worth . When students receive high grades on their homework and complete their assignments they might feel more confident, which may lead to them becoming better students. 

Conclusion (Is Homework Illegal)

In this blog, we have discussed about is homework illegal. i hope you have understood about is homework illegal easily.

Homework is not illegal or slave labor. However, you can’t ignore the positive outcomes and the overall impact on a child’s academic foundation, regardless of the valid concerns about the impact on students. Furthermore, homework is not compulsory for students.

It is, however, up to the school to decide how to handle the student.

The school administrators can review your concerns about the amount of work your child has to do or about the relevance of the homework. This blog is all about is homework illegal.

FAQs Related To Is Homework Illegal?

Is it illegal to give homework.

Students are not required to do homework by law. While he does not prohibit schools from setting and enforcing rules and standards, he does provide schools with the tools to help ensure students receive a quality education. In other words, the school has the power to make you do your homework or face school-internal consequences.

Is there a legal limit to homework?

Homework assignments are not regulated by federal law, either. … A first-grader, for example, should not have to do more than ten minutes of homework (10 x 1), and a high school sophomore, a tenth-grader, should not have to do more than a hundred minutes of homework (10 x 10).

  • australia (2)
  • duolingo (13)
  • Education (212)
  • General (42)
  • IELTS (124)
  • Latest Updates (162)
  • Malta Visa (6)
  • Permanent residency (1)
  • Programming (31)
  • Scholarship (1)
  • Sponsored (4)
  • Study Abroad (187)
  • Technology (10)
  • work permit (8)

Recent Posts

microbiology-research-project-ideas

Is Homework Illegal in US States? [Answered 2024]

by E.A. Gjelten July 21, 2023, 8:12 am

Is homework illegal

Have you ever seen that students are suffering from stress and mental health issues due to homework burdens? A lot of problems regarding school homework have been reported in recent times which has led to a debate regarding the unproductivity of school homework. So is homework illegal or unethical? We explore the legal as well as the ethical dimensions of this debate.

Homework is considered one of the most important parts of the schooling process even in the 21st century. It has been an integral part of schooling since the adaptation of modern learning in 1837. Since that, schools all over the world have been putting a great emphasis on it.

Have you thought about this question and want to get the exact answer? Don’t worry as we have wrapped out this article just to clear doubts regarding this question. You will be able to know about the legality of homework by the end of this blog.

We’ll help you in understanding the reasons for getting homework and why it should or shouldn’t be a part of modern schooling.

Is homework illegal?

It’s completely legal to assign homework to students in all US states , however, there are some states that have enacted laws to limit or in some cases, discourage it. Here is a list of US states that have restricted homework in some way.

Homework is something that the teacher assigned to a student for practice purposes to be done from the home. It is done to streamline the learning process of the students and keep them engaged with their studies. Homework is not illegal in most countries because the current educational curriculum won’t be completed without it.

It does not create any discrimination whether you’re a student of a basic level class or an advanced level. The only difference is that you may have to do your homework without any restriction from the teacher if you are a higher education student.

Why is homework legal?

homework legal status

In short, it is neither illegal to assign homework nor a crime. As we have mentioned a student’s learning process won’t be completed without homework with efficient results, as per various school staff. Also, there are many reasons why homework isn’t illegal. The main benefit is that homework will keep the students engaged with studies after school time. Also, it helps them to understand the topics of their books on their own to further their understanding.

Is too much homework illegal?

No, too much homework isn’t illegal as there’s no law that limits the amount of homework assigned. Homework is a legal practice that can be given in any quantity. It does not matter how much homework you are getting from your tutor, there will be no legal issues. But we recommend you to assign not much work to your students if you are working as a teacher. It may be a good gesture for you to keep them away from the depression and stress of studies.

Is homework illegal in the UK?

Is homework illegal in the UK

No, homework is not illegal in the UK. But in contrast to the US, homework is not as prevalent of practice in the UK. As reported by the educational department, homework is not a statutory requirement for students in the United Kingdom. It depends on the teacher whether he/she wants to assign homework or not.

Also Check Is Homework Banned In Ireland?

Can I refuse for my children to do homework?

There is no issue if you are restricting your children from doing homework if there’s a solid reason for it. But keep in mind that most schools have strict policies regarding their standards. Remember to work with the teachers & articulate your reasons for refusing homework for your child.

They can downgrade your children if school policies are violated time & again. So, you should need to keep this in mind while refusing your children from doing their school homework.

Is no homework a good idea?

Is no homework a good idea

If alternate ways of independent learning are introduced in our schooling systems, this can be a good idea. School authorities assume that no homework may hinder the student’s learning process and restrict their learning process. A great change in the schooling infrastructure would be required to abandon the concept of homework completely.

Do Read Is it Illegal to Burn Money?

Does homework cause depression or affect sleep?

is homework against the law

Normally, the answer to this question is no, but it’s certainly a possibility. Some students have reported that getting extra homework from their teachers takes a toll on their well-being. This is the main reason why people are demanding legal homework rights to provide their children with a comfortable way to learn.

Why do some people discourage homework for their children?

The main issue behind this is that most parents consider it an unnecessary burden. As we have mentioned that many students are reporting depression and stress due to excessive homework it’s the main reason why people discourage homework for their children.

Don’t Miss Is Underglow legal in Florida

Is there any no homework law in the US?

Homework is legal according to all jurisdictions of the US and there is no law against it. So, you can say that there is no law that restricts the practice of homework in any state.

Why is homework illegal in the US?

No, homework is not illegal in the United States. Almost every state of the country has no laws to label homework as an illegal activity. With this, you must have got an answer to is homework illegal in California or any other state of the US.

Why should we not ban homework?

ban homework

There aren’t many protests or solid arguments in favor of banning homework, which is a reason it remains unchanged. Banning it may cause your child’s learning skills to deteriorate. It might not be possible for your kids to understand the topic properly and comprehensively for better learning.

Is cheating on homework illegal?

Cheating on homework is not illegal but it can be termed an unethical act, following consequences from school authorities like rustication. If you are copying someone’s homework, it will just waste your time instead of learning. In turn, the core aim of homework will be ruined, which is to aid learning. So, you should do your homework on your own instead of copying from anyone else.

Can I ask someone to do my homework?

No, it isn’t a good idea to ask someone to do your homework as the consequences would be severe if you get caught. It has been seen that students ask their elder siblings or friends to do their homework if they have got excessive work to do, or just aren’t willing to put in the effort. Keep in mind that you should not do this because it will not help you in learning the concerned topic or concept. As a result, you will not be able to secure higher grades in your class.

Who can ban homework for the students?

Normally, the education authorities of the country can ban homework or illegalize it by using legislature. But there is no debate regarding this act because it can damage the learning outcomes of the students. But some schools are free to make their decisions. In all such institutes, the committee can decide on whether they have to ban homework for students or not.

Is homework slavery?

Homework is not a type of slavery if you are asked to do it freely. But it is termed a type of slavery in most regions of the world because it violates the basic laws related to consent. Any act that you have been asked to do forcefully will come under this law. Being a student, you must have been asked to do homework forcefully. In this dimension, you can say that homework is a type of slavery & it’s evident why it’s so unpopular among young students.

In the above blog, we have addressed the debate regarding “Is homework illegal”. We have also discussed almost every aspect related to this topic to make the concept very clear in your mind. You can easily decide whether homework is good for your child or not and understand whether schools ban homework & what would be its consequences.

  • Recent Posts

E.A. Gjelten

  • Are Radar Detectors Legal in Kansas? - October 29, 2023
  • Are Radar Detectors Legal in Louisiana? - October 29, 2023
  • Are Radar Detectors Legal in Michigan? - October 29, 2023

www.whatisnotlegal.com © 2024

CodeAvail

Is Homework Illegal?

Is homework illegal

If you are a student or a parent, you might be wondering about the answer to the question, is homework illegal? Whether you are in the favor of homework or against it, you can use many arguments to make your case.

There are many arguments about the question of whether homework is illegal. They include that it is a source of stress and anxiety for many students and takes away from time that could be used for extracurricular activities or part-time jobs.

Need homework or assignment help? Hire Codeavail experts now!

Arguments that homework is a type of child labor

Table of Contents

If you are a parent or teacher, you have probably heard a lot about the homework craze, but it is worth asking: is it worth it? 

While doing your homework does take time and effort, it can be a lot of fun. Some argue that a homework craze is dehumanizing and violates the student’s right to liberty. 

Only some kids want to do their homework, and there are always the slackers.

The debates have raged for the last couple of decades and are still being contested. It is difficult to know whether homework is a form of dehumanization, but a student’s right to free education is a matter of common sense.  

Luckily, there are laws to protect kids from the evils of the school system, and a parent’s well-being is also protected. 

Arguments against homework

A debate over the importance of homework has been going on for many years. Many people believe it is essential, but others think it is useless.

Homework helps students prepare for their assignments and learn essential life skills. They can also improve their writing and research skills and develop a work ethic.  

During their school years, students must keep busy to stay caught up in their studies.

Students often come home from school tired and overwhelmed. That means they can’t relax, do their favorite activities, or spend time with their families. It can cause a lot of stress and mental health issues.

Studies have shown that too much homework can negatively impact students’ academic performance. 

Often, students need more time to complete their homework and other assignments. This can lead to academic stress and mental health problems.

Another problem with homework is that it takes time away from the family. Many parents feel that it takes away their quality time with their kids.

Arguments that it’s a waste of time

The homework debate has raged for decades. Some parents believe that students need more homework, while others believe homework takes away time from family and other activities.  

However, there are many educators that are against homework.

Educators have long argued that homework has benefits and disadvantages. For example, too much homework activities are bad for student health and can hinder students from participating in sports or other social activities.

Many studies have been conducted, and most found that homework does not improve student grades.  

Even worse, too much homework adversely affects a child’s health and mental well-being.

To combat the adverse effects of too much homework, many educators argue that the solution is to cut the amount of homework.  

If homework were eliminated, students would be left with less time for school, and teachers would need more time to cover critical material. This is a complex task, however. 

It’s a source of stress and anxiety for many students.

There is a growing concern that homework is a significant source of stress and anxiety for many students. 

This problem is especially prevalent among economically disadvantaged youth.

According to researchers, students subjected to excessive homework can suffer physical ailments such as headaches and stomach problems. 

They also need more time to sleep, family time, and social time. This causes them to become overwhelmed and unable to meet their basic needs.

Despite the many benefits of homework, there is a growing concern that it is a major source of stress and anxiety. 

A recent study conducted by Stanford University found that students who spend too much time doing their homework experience stress and physical health problems.

It takes away time from extracurricular activities and part-time jobs.

The amount of homework that students are expected to do can be overwhelming. It takes up a lot of time, and many students find it challenging to manage their time effectively. 

The result is that they spend less time with their friends and family. This can cause stress and anxiety in the home and school, leading to several problems.

Not only does excessive homework take away time from family and friends, but it can also take away time from other activities. 

The best way to combat the effects of time shortages is to prioritize assignments according to difficulty. This will allow students to learn more while getting more done.

Not only does excessive homework negatively affect a student’s mental and physical health, but it can also take away from the other essential aspects of life. 

For example, it may interfere with learning how to cook and eat healthily. It can also keep kids from playing outside and developing creative and social skills, which can improve their lives.

Arguments that homework isn’t legal in the U.S.

Its benefits and disadvantages are controversial. Some parents are convinced that their children are being overworked, while others believe that the time spent on schoolwork is valuable.

One benefit of homework is that it can allow students and their parents to monitor their child’s progress. 

However, homework only works well for some students, and it’s difficult to determine whether or not it’s effective.

Some argue that homework is unnecessary, while others feel that it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to a student. 

Homework can interfere with a family’s social life, and it’s a drain on both teachers and parents.

Some educators claim that students are losing out on quality family time and that homework should be limited. Other studies show that homework has little to do with academic success.

The optimal amount of time students should spend on homework per day

If you are a teacher, it’s essential to determine the optimal amount of time students spend on homework daily. 

There are several factors to consider, including age, gender, and subject. 

However, there is one general rule of thumb that you should follow.

Middle school students allocate about 45 minutes a night to homework. High schoolers should complete about two hours a night.

Homework is an excellent way for kids to learn valuable study skills. It also allows them to discover their favorite subjects. Aside from teaching them time management and studying skills, it helps them develop discipline.

Research suggests that children who receive too much homework can be overburdened with stress. 

It can lead to sleep deprivation, headaches, and exhaustion. 

The link between homework and achievement borders on triviality

There’s been a lot of hype around homework for the past couple of decades. Despite the apparent benefits of an unrestricted education, some parents need more time to get comfortable with it. 

 Luckily, with proper planning you can ensure that students are engaged happily in their work. Also, the task of maintaining discipline while doing homework is not as hard as it seems.

Thankfully, there’s plenty of research to be found on the internet. And a little forethought goes a long way, especially in a high-stress environment. In other words, proper homework can lead to better grades.

The best way to do it is to start with a good homework plan and stick with it. Most importantly, kids will learn to self-manage their time and sanity. 

Moreover, it’s a win-win: parents get to see their kids’ best work, and kids are more likely to put their best foot forward and make it on time.

The link between homework and sleep deprivation 

The link between homework and sleep deprivation is a very real one. Although sleep is essential to the body and can be affected by stress, chronic lack of sleep can also impair concentration, memory, and problem-solving.

Many students complain about not getting enough sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, an average school night requires between five and seven hours. However, this number can vary for a variety of reasons.

Teens can get into a cycle of late-night studying that can affect their sleep. This can lead to physical symptoms and anxiety. In some cases, a student may even become depressed.

Research has shown that adolescents spend about 60 hours a week on schoolwork. This is a huge number and can result in a lack of sleep.

The Bottom Line

 In conclusion, it seems that homework is technically illegal in most cases. However, there are a few exceptions that seem to be tolerated more than others. ( squibler.io ) It is important to remember that homework should not replace actual school work, and should only be used as a supplement.

Related Posts

How to Hire someone to do my Statistics Homework for Me?

How to Hire someone to do my Statistics Homework for Me?

Students ask to do my statistics homework for me. Although there are many online tutors or statistics homework service providing websites available to help you…

Professional Experts Tips On How to Get Good Grades in Exams

How to Get Good Grades in Exams Tips by Experts

Here in this blog, Codeavail professional experts will help you to understand how to get good grades in Exams. Notice that not all the material…

site logo

Partnership

Sole proprietorship, limited partnership, compare businesses, employee rights, osha regulations, labor hours, personal & family, child custody & support, guardianship, incarceration, civil and misdemeanors, legal separation, real estate law, tax, licenses & permits, business licenses, wills & trusts, power of attorney, last will & testament, living trust, living will.

  • Share Tweet Email Print

CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGRATION

What is california's no homework law.

By Teo Spengler, J.D.

August 20, 2019

Reviewed by Michelle Seidel, B.Sc., LL.B., MBA

Learn About Our Review Process

Our Review Process

We write helpful content to answer your questions from our expert network. We perform original research, solicit expert feedback, and review new content to ensure it meets our quality pledge: helpful content – Trusted, Vetted, Expert-Reviewed and Edited. Our content experts ensure our topics are complete and clearly demonstrate a depth of knowledge beyond the rote. We are incredibly worried about the state of general information available on the internet and strongly believe our mission is to give voice to unsung experts leading their respective fields. Our commitment is to provide clear, original, and accurate information in accessible formats. We have reviewed our content for bias and company-wide, we routinely meet with national experts to educate ourselves on better ways to deliver accessible content. For 15 years our company has published content with clear steps to accomplish the how, with high quality sourcing to answer the why, and with original formats to make the internet a helpful place. Read more about our editorial standards .

is homework against the law

  • Pro & Cons of Child Labor Law

Mom helps daughter study for biology test

Don't get too excited, kids. "No homework" laws are not current California homework policy. But there was a "no homework" law in the state at the beginning of the 20th Century that the children of that era probably appreciated. Today the question of whether homework helps or hurts kids is widely debated in California.

No Homework Law in California

Is there a "no homework law" in California today? There is not today, but there was 100 years ago. The Ladies' Home Journal magazine crusaded against homework at the turn of the century, and medical professionals and doctors testified against it, saying that it was harmful to a kid's health. Some say that the actual reason society (and parents) frowned on homework was because school kids needed time to help with chores around the house.

As a result of that, a number of big-city school districts around the country eliminated homework from the school menu. California's three biggest cities – San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento – passed regulations forbidding teachers from assigning homework. And in 1901, the state passed a law banning all homework for school kids in kindergarten through eighth grade and imposing limits on the amount of homework that could be assigned to high school students.

California Homework Policy Changes

California's no-homework laws were repealed in the 1950s. That was the Cold War period and educators and politicians felt that the country needed better-educated students to create a skilled workforce, especially in the sciences. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 boosted the call for homework, since it appeared that Russian students might be more advanced than U.S. students.

The end of the Second World War also brought great changes to the United States and significant upheaval socially. Men in the military returned to their families, more people moved from agricultural lifestyle to urban areas and children were no longer expected to do as much physical work at home.

Since then, homework has crept back into the education system. People attacked progressive education as anti-intellectual, lax and dangerous for the nation. Then, in the 1980s, the United States Department of Education came full circle, publishing a pamphlet about the techniques that work best for creating smarter students, concluding that homework was a must.

California Homework Questions Today

Today, California kids from the youngest age through high school can expect homework assignments. But that doesn't mean that the homework/no homework debate is over. Various school districts or individual schools have eliminated homework in California, and while that approach makes some people happy, it makes others very unhappy.

Some educators and researchers argue that children would be better off if homework were abolished. They argue that the research does not demonstrate any tangible benefits for students, and this is especially true for younger students. In fact, studies have shown that elementary school students get no academic benefit from any amount of homework. And, the anti-homework crowd claims, excessive homework stifles a kid's natural curiosity.

However, not all parents agree. In the competitive atmosphere in schools today, just the suggestion of abolishing homework has some parents up in arms.

And high school students in the United States – who spend 5.5 to 6 hours a week on homework – are in the middle of their peers around the world. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 15-year-olds in Shanghai spend the most amount of time on homework, averaging 13.8 hours per week, while students in Finland spend the least time, at just 2.8 hours per week. It is noteworthy that Finnish kids perform just fine on academic tests despite the small amount of homework they do in comparison to teens in other nations.

  • SF Gate: History of Homework
  • SimpleGrad: Who Invented Homework?
  • Time Magazine: Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework
  • The Telegraph: Homework Around the World

Teo Spengler earned a JD from U.C. Berkeley Law School. As an Assistant Attorney General in Juneau, she practiced before the Alaska Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court before opening a plaintiff's personal injury practice in San Francisco. She holds both an MA and an MFA in English/writing and enjoys writing legal blogs and articles. Her work has appeared in numerous online publications including USA Today, Legal Zoom, eHow Business, Livestrong, SF Gate, Go Banking Rates, Arizona Central, Houston Chronicle, Navy Federal Credit Union, Pearson, Quicken.com, TurboTax.com, and numerous attorney websites. Spengler splits her time between the French Basque Country and Northern California.

Related Articles

  • Factors Influencing the Crime Rate
  • California Education Law: Prayer in Schools
  • Purpose of Criminology

ABA looks to oppose laws that ban teaching about race

Signage is seen outside of the American Bar Association (ABA) in Washington, D.C.

Reporting by Karen Sloan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

is homework against the law

Thomson Reuters

Karen Sloan reports on law firms, law schools, and the business of law. Reach her at [email protected]

Read Next / Editor's Picks

Boeing's new 737 MAX-9 is pictured under construction at their production facility in Renton, Washington

Industry Insight

is homework against the law

Mike Scarcella, David Thomas

is homework against the law

Karen Sloan

is homework against the law

Henry Engler

is homework against the law

Diana Novak Jones

is homework against the law

The experts well detail out the effect relationship between the two given subjects and underline the importance of such a relationship in your writing. Our cheap essay writer service is a lot helpful in making such a write-up a brilliant one.

We do not tolerate any form of plagiarism and use modern software to detect any form of it

Customer Reviews

is homework against the law

  • Words to pages
  • Pages to words

IMAGES

  1. Is Homework Illegal? (Arguments In Support and Against)

    is homework against the law

  2. Top 17 reason Why Homework Should Be Banned

    is homework against the law

  3. Law Homework Help

    is homework against the law

  4. 15 Major Reasons Why Homework Should Be Banned

    is homework against the law

  5. Top 10 Reasons Homework Should Be Banned

    is homework against the law

  6. Write Perfect Law Homework With our law assignment writing tips

    is homework against the law

COMMENTS

  1. Homework Pros and Cons

    In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies' Home Journal, decried homework's negative impact on children's physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917.

  2. Is Homework Illegal? (Arguments In Support and Against)

    September 24, 2021 by LawStuffExplained Homework is not illegal in the United States. But from a legal standpoint, it is a really fun argument to make! In this article, we'll cover some points that you could use for or against the question of the legality of homework, whether you are the student, parent, or teacher in this debate.

  3. Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

    Many earlier laws limiting homework were abolished, and the longterm trend toward less homework came to an end. The debate re-emerged a decade later when parents of the late '60s and '70s argued that children should be free to play and explore — similar anti-homework wellness arguments echoed nearly a century earlier.

  4. Legal Homework Rights: What's the Limit on Homework?

    The answer is a resounding, Yes! You have legal rights to put limits on your child's homework time. When homework begins to erode family relationships and/or increases the students anxiety, its time to make modifications. First, try communicating and working collaboratively with teachers and administrators.

  5. 15 Should Homework Be Banned Pros and Cons

    Banning homework would help to reduce these risks as well. 6. It increases the amount of socialization time that students receive. People who are only spending time in school and then going home to do more work are at a higher risk of experiencing loneliness and isolation.

  6. Why Homework Should Be Banned From Schools

    For most children, mandatory homework assignments push their workweek far beyond the school day and deep into what any other laborers would consider overtime. Even without sports or music or other ...

  7. Should We Get Rid of Homework?

    The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students.

  8. Should homework be banned? The big debate

    For homework to have real value, it needs to be clearly related to what students are learning in class. Students shouldn't be able to look up the answers on their smartphones. And it's important to get the balance right. The US rule of thumb is 10 minutes per grade. And for secondary age students, 90 minutes of homework a day is the ideal ...

  9. The Pros and Cons: Should Students Have Homework?

    Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can't see it in the moment. 6. Homework Reduces Screen Time.

  10. Should Kids Get Homework?

    Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary. "Every child should be doing homework, but the ...

  11. Is homework an unnecessary burden?

    With no homework to mark, teachers are using the extra time to plan more creative lessons. Some critics have even gone so far as to call homework a "sin against childhood". According to author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, the positive effects of homework are "largely mythical." He says homework in most schools is set just for "the sake of ...

  12. Should Homework Be Banned?

    Yes. Generally, the link between homework and achievement scores is stronger for math compared to subjects like English and history. For middle school students especially, math homework can strengthen school performance. There is not a lot of research into the quality of homework. Most experts agree that homework should be reinforcing what kids ...

  13. The Homework Debate: The Case Against Homework

    Gerald LeTendre, of Penn State's Education Policy Studies department points out that the shotgun approach to homework, when students all receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed individually with the student, is "not very effective.". He goes on to say that, "If there's no ...

  14. Is Homework Illegal In The United States?

    The homework issue is still debatable, but to be on the safe side, you have to be open-minded about it because, for many reasons, you could say it is illegal, and for some, it is legal. In this blog, we will start with is homework illegal. What Is Homework? Table of Contents What Is Homework? Why Is Homework Important?

  15. The Case Against Homework

    The Case Against Homework. By Steve Hartman February 20, 2009 / 6:31 PM EST / CBS ... "I have a petition and I'm going to try and get a law abolishing homework," he said.

  16. Is it a human right to not do homework

    The bottom line is yes, you as a human being have a right to refuse to do something like homework, but you don't have the right to do that and remain a pupil of your school. Your school can be seen as a bit like a small-scale version of the country and its rules are a bit like the laws that protect us.

  17. Is Homework Illegal AnyWhere?

    For some reasons, you can say it is illegal or for some, it is legal. We will start with the illegal site. Many American elementary schools have banned homework because they find that homework can affect students' health by causing stomach and headaches problems.

  18. Is Homework Illegal in US States? [Answered 2024]

    It's completely legal to assign homework to students in all US states, however, there are some states that have enacted laws to limit or in some cases, discourage it. Here is a list of US states that have restricted homework in some way. US States where homework is restricted Florida Connecticut New Jersey Texas Nebraska Utah Louisiana

  19. Is Homework Illegal In United States and Other Countries?

    Arguments that it's a waste of time It's a source of stress and anxiety for many students. It takes away time from extracurricular activities and part-time jobs. Arguments that homework isn't legal in the U.S. The optimal amount of time students should spend on homework per day The link between homework and achievement borders on triviality

  20. What is California's No Homework Law?

    "No homework" laws are not current California homework policy. But there was a "no homework" law in the state at the beginning of the 20th Century that the children probably appreciated. ... Journal magazine crusaded against homework at the turn of the century, and medical professionals and doctors testified against it, saying that it was ...

  21. PDF No homework bill

    PEO.GOV.AU No Homework Bill Stuck for ideas? Use this bill for the Make a law - Senate classroom activity. The No Homework Bill works well with primary school classes. This page includes a master script for the teacher and individual scripts for students who have been given roles for this activity. Master script

  22. ABA looks to oppose laws that ban teaching about race

    The American Bar Association's policymaking body is poised to take a public stand on Monday against laws that bar teaching about race or gender, as well as bans on books that cover those subjects.

  23. Is Homework Against The Law

    1513 Orders prepared. The narration in my narrative work needs to be smooth and appealing to the readers while writing my essay. Our writers enhance the elements in the writing as per the demand of such a narrative piece that interests the readers and urges them to read along with the entire writing. View Sample. Admission/Application Essay.

  24. Is Homework Against The Law

    Is Homework Against The Law, Writing A Song Analysis Essay, Executive Mba Thesis Topics, Top Phd Essay Writing Service Au, Cover Letter For Reference List, Resume Geologist Perth Australia, Top Phd University Essay Example 411 . Customer Reviews ...