Homework: Helpful or Pointless?
After a long school day, millions of students across the country head home only to face more schoolwork: homework. But is it truly helping them learn, or is it just draining their time and energy? Teachers assign it because they believe it reinforces lessons. Students everywhere, from middle schools to high schools, debate whether it’s worth the stress. The conversation has been growing louder in recent years as researchers, parents, and students alike question whether homework is an effective tool or a relic of the past.
Teachers often defend homework as essential to student growth. Mr Krajcsovics, a History teacher at Leonia High School, explained “Homework is a way of reinforcing various ideas and or concepts discussed in classrooms and a way of staying on top of your topics and providing students with necessary skills to hopefully grow and succeed after high school.” For him, homework is helpful and crucial to education. However, he included that he is an advocate for no homework on weekends and added, “enjoy your days off. Be well. Be good. Be safe.”
Students however, see things differently. Dean Scarcella, a senior at LHS, said “Homework is not very good because it leads to stress and is not always effective and usually makes you want to learn less and do less work.” . Their opinions reflect a growing frustration among students who feel buried under assignments that may not truly benefit them.
The evidence shows both sides have valid points. Supporters of homework argue it builds responsibility, while critics point to stress, cheating, and limited family time as serious downsides. What’s clear is that homework affects nearly every student, teacher, and parent, and the debate is unlikely to end soon.
In the end, homework remains one of the most controversial traditions in education. As a minor but fascinating detail, many schools in Finland—known for some of the best education outcomes in the world — assign very little homework, yet their students perform strongly. This raises an important question for American schools: maybe the real issue isn’t whether homework exists, but whether it’s designed to truly help students learn.
