Should homework be banned?

Homework is a way to encourage both student and parent participation

Question: Should homework be banned?
Position‹2 of 2: No, homework should not be banned
Argument1 of 2›: Homework is a way to encourage both student and parent participation

Students learn in a myriad of ways, and many use homework to prove their participation instead of in-person commentary. Restricting all children to the singular form of in-class contributions can alienate many. Parents, too, can use this time to participate in their child's education.

The argument

Homework teaches skills like self-disciplining and allows students to put in effort outside of class. Many students face participation anxiety or require extra time to process information. Homework allows them to practice. In addition, homework is also extremely helpful as preparatory materials for reviewing and tests. Here, especially under parental guidance, children can continue to review and learn outside of class without increasing anxiety around participation. Parental figures can be great teaching aids once they become familiar with the student's learning process. This allows parents who cannot participate in school associations and activities to still be helping their children.

Premises

[P1]Homework teaches self-discipline and lets students put in effort and practice outside class. [P2] It especially helps students who face participation anxiety or need extra time to process information. [P3] It also lets parents support and review with their children at home, even if they cannot join school activities. [C] Therefore, because it encourages both student and parent participation, homework should not be banned.

Counter-arguments

Students who struggle with class participation should work on improving that skill rather than finding an unrelated method (like homework) to make up for it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Both claims are asserted rather than evidenced, and the research is unfavourable where the debate is sharpest. Meta-analyses find little or no association between homework and achievement in primary school and only a modest one in secondary, and the self-discipline claim assumes a transfer effect that has not been demonstrated. Practice can also be provided within lesson time. [Rejecting P2] The mechanism does not require homework. Extra processing time can be given in class through wait time, written responses, small-group work and differentiated tasks, and the premise treats an unsupervised task at home as though it were the only alternative to speaking up. As the counter-argument puts it, the participation difficulty is better addressed than routed around. [Rejecting P3] Parental involvement is the premise most likely to backfire. It presumes a parent with the time, the language and the subject knowledge to help, which is exactly what varies with income — the effect is to convert a home advantage into an assessed one, and the literature on parental help finds mixed results and, where the help is directive, negative ones. The conclusion also outruns the premises: showing that homework has benefits does not settle how much, of what kind or at what age, which is what the question actually turns on.