<p>I don’t know…I know a whole bunch of kids who given more free time would fill it with first person shooter gaming…and between that and homework, I’ll take homework.</p>
<p>I’m in 8th grade right now at a public school. I don’t agree with homework in most subjects. For example, I strongly support homework in math classes. When learning formulas and such, it can be hard to drill them into your head in a 45 minute class period and then recall them correctly the next day. Having 30 minutes of problems reviewing what you’ve learned can actually really help. </p>
<p>However, in Science, we recently had an assignment where my teacher made us write a list of basically 100 words that can be written using symbols from the periodic table. That was one of the most pointless assignments I’ve ever had. It took those that actually scoured the table a LONG time, and for those that simply looked up a list of words online, it still took a long time. We learned absolutely nothing and wasted almost 45 minutes if we actually tried to come up with words.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the “limit” concept of 10 minutes per grade level. I don’t think there should be any connection between grade and time spent on homework. If you are in more advanced classes, you may have more work, but that does not correlate with your grade level. Also, at least in my school, teachers would not accept the fact that I didn’t finish filling in my literary terms sheet because I had spent over an hour and twenty minutes on homework. I would still have to do it the next night, adding to my workload, and would get a zero on that assignment. Maybe at private schools it is different but at my school you cannot be “exempt” from homework because your family does not support it. My mom is strongly against busy-work type homework but no teacher at my school would accept that excuse. </p>
<p>True, SevenDad, a lot of kids would spend time playing video games. But a lot of those kids are the ones that need the re-teaching homework can provide. When students cannot focus on their other activities or interests, such as sports, because of their homework, I think something is wrong. School is extremely important, but it is not everything. Kids need to have a chance to relax and stop worrying about tests and homework. </p>
<p>I missed a few days of classes recently because I was involved in an art program, and I collected all my classwork and homework after school each day. I realized that I could finish 6 periods of classes’ work in an hour. At school this takes from 7:45-2:45. It’s not like we even have interesting discussions in class, or learn anything that cannot be filled in from the textbook. That’s why I believe that, except for math, my classes are EXTREMELY un-efficient and waste my day. And they wonder why we talk so much…</p>