Is Homework Beneficial To Students: Pros and Cons

Nowadays, the educational system develops fast because of global education trends and needs. Creating and implementing various modern methods to the studying process teachers try to make it more effective and productive for students.

Simplifying studying materials and adding interactive tasks attract students to study better which in turn helps most of them to have higher results. All these modern methods refer not only to classroom work but also to homework that is integral to the studying process for almost all teachers. So, is homework is essential and how it influences the results of studying?

Researches and history of inventing

According to the latest researches, most teachers from all over the world are sure that homework is important and gives a lot of benefits for students. Home assignments done successfully can help students develop useful habits and attitudes. And it can also awake students’ desire to learn new things that will follow them throughout life that will be useful not only for studying but also in general.

The necessity of giving some of the tasks as homework exists not only because of the huge amount of tasks or the short time of classes. Researchers say that one of the main benefits of homework is practicing new studying material without the help of the teacher, it helps students to improve thinking and teaches them how to solve different tasks and problems on their own.

According to one of the most popular theories of homework inventing, it was invented by an American politician Horace Mann in the 19th-century. Horace had visited Prussia, where he saw compulsory homework among the students of the Folk High Schools. They were invented out of a sense of patriotism, to demonstrate the excellent training of the younger generation, who studies even in private time. This prompted Mann to implement the system in his home country. Gradually, homework in education appeared all over the world.

Later, teachers from all over the world started to practice implementing homework into the school curriculum, and later it comes an essential part of it. Despite its worldwide popularity, many students and some of the teachers, not regard it as a universal and needed part of studying. Homework has both pros and cons and we should learn more details about it.

Pros and Cons of homework

Pros include:

• Equalization of the student’s knowledge and skills, his skills in case he was sick for a long time and missed a lot or did not learn some rather complicated topic being at home without the help of the teacher. This aspect is really important nowadays because of the COVID-19 pandemic when many students could become ill and skip some of the classes.
• As we mentioned before, another important positive aspect of homework is the stimulation of students’ cognitive interest and desire to know as much as possible about the subject or topic. This skill will be very useful for them in their future life, and especially in their career. In this case, a huge, positive role is played by differentiated homework. It is a type of homework where a teacher giving tasks depending on the personal knowledge level of each student.
• Development of the student’s independence, assiduity, and responsibility for the academic task performed. Many teachers are sure that one of the main functions of studying, and homework as well, is to teach students to study. Even after finishing school, college, or university, this skill will be very helpful for living in the modern world, because students will be able to deal with a large amount of different information in a short time.

Cons include:

• For some of the specializations, homework has low effectiveness. For example, it could subjects that require some specific equipment or space for training some skills or knowledge. In this case, leaving these tasks for homework makes no sense and reduces the effectiveness of the studying process.
• Homework sometimes can be an irrational waste of time for students in case of studying some highly specialized terms or knowledge without a teacher. Students and teachers are both sure that some of the topics it is better to learn in a class because an opportunity to communicate with a teacher whenever a student needs a piece of advice, could save a lot of time, and it makes it possible to learn more information during the class time.

Conclusion

Summarizing all facts we can conclude that homework is still an essential part of the studying process and should be used because of the high average effectiveness and positive influence on both studying results and future perspectives of personal development of students.