Homework places undue pressure on children of any age. The value of a balanced work and home life as means of managing stress and improving quality of living is well recognised. This has been highlighted by the recent need to work from home where possible: while some find the opportunity to exercise autonomy in their working day beneficial, others find that it is much harder to set boundaries between work and personal time. Your office is your home and you cannot leave it. The two things become enmeshed and it makes it very, very difficult to detach yourself at the end of the working day. So why then do we assume that this is a good thing for children? It’s the worst of both worlds: not only are they required to work a six hour day, they are then required to bring that work into their home and are penalised when they don’t deliver. There is none of the autonomy that may benefit an adult working from home. There is also an inherent inequality in it. While some students might have access to a dedicated workspace; a quiet environment and technical resources that allow them to produce a ‘higher’ quality of work more easily, others do not. The pressure to succeed can foster stress and anxiety that negatively effects wellbeing and sleep which will have a knock on effect on engagement in class, overall hindering learning. Taking a very cynical view of education, this sets a poor precedent for a child’s expectations of working life. In a broader and more damaging sense it establishes this anxiety as a norm. School is a formative experience and should be a place where children feel encouraged to learn and grow- not somewhere that they learn to meet often arbitrary targets for the sake of avoiding admonishment. SOURCES: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/working-from-home-mental-health_n_5afd88e2e4b0a59b4e014602 https://news.stanford.edu/2014/03/10/too-much-homework-031014/

I completely agree with this statement. Extra curricular education forms the bedrock for building passions for subject areas and develops self discipline in students that enable them to be better prepared for future studies in higher educational fields. Additionally, ‘homework activities relate what is learned in school to children's lives outside of school’ (Atkinson, 2021) and thus contextualises their learning. Something that then solidifies their understanding and contributes to increased attainment rates. As a result, this enables students to develop further and achieve more. Although value should be placed upon a consistent work and home life balance, one hour of homework in a specific subject area throughout a period of five years study, equates to an extra year in education in that particular focus area. The benefits of producing home based work however does have its limits and a balance must be achieved for it to be effective. For example, students according to figures last year, students were committing to ‘two and half hours of homework a day’ (UCL, 2020) and this is rather excessive. Overworking contributes to disengagement and then the whole positive idea of encouraging students to develop their passions at home becomes redundant. In order for homework to be a successful component for any educational curriculum there must be balance and considerations when it comes to deadlines. If these key pillars are met, homework most certainly is a positive part of any students educational diet. Why Homework Is Important | Scholastic. 2021. Why Homework Is Important | Scholastic. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/homework-why-it-important/. [Accessed 30 January 2021]. UCL. 2021. Children doing 2.5 hours’ schoolwork a day on average | UCL News - UCL – University College London. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/jun/children-doing-25-hours-schoolwork-day-average. [Accessed 30 January 2021].

The ability to control a kid OUTSIDE of school is just not the type of power teachers should ever be allowed to have. edit: At the very least, we shouldn't be handing it willy nilly to any old teacher of any old subject. I understand that you can't dedicate the school day to reading an entire book; They need to take it home. Some science research can only be done outside the school. Some art projects, like involving paint that must dry, are best worked at intermittently over time in a home environment. But homework in compulsory schools should be a practice used very sparingly, only with certain subjects, and only with teachers who have proven themselves especially respectful with their students time. Remember, we're talking about the literal, and unregulated ability to control a kid outside of school. We take this reality WAY too lightly. When you get 7+ new teachers each year, all giving homework with basically 0 regulation to its fairness, the odds that one of them will singlehandedly ruin your entire year with their overinflated sense of worth of their pet subject is WAY too high. Some of the homework practices I needed to endure were downright cruel and I really really didn't need to lose my entire childhood to this bullshit. I should emphasize, this is for compulsory school. You know, the one that's 40% education and 60% babysitting... You already consume a ludicrous amount of a child's time. You shouldn't have the power to ruin a kid's entire day AND their entire evening, every single day. Fucking pick one. At least a schoolday can END... There is no way to escape from the agony that is a ludicrously unreasonable homework assignment. You will be anxiety ridden until you either complete it at which you will be exhausted so fuck the rest of your day I guess, or resign to not fully completing it, take the loss to your grade, and suffer the fate of having everyone in your life call you a bad student because you couldn't emotionally cope with a fourth page of trinomial equations. The problem with teachers, is that most of them liked school growing up. That's not your only demographic, teachers. You are literally hurting people with your unethical homework practices and any time anyone tries to talk about it they get called whiny. Talk about a feeling of powerlessness.

School should stay at school, work should stay at work. Kids need time to relax and enjoy their time.