I Declare My Independence From Homework Essays - Education Reform

I Declare My Independence from Homework In class, October 22, 1997. The almost unanimous declaration of the two-thousand students of Glenbard West High School. We declare our independence from any homework; we will no longer tolerate its injustice. When in the course of scholastic events, it becomes necessary to discontinue certain ineffective practices that have limited the extra-curricular activities of the student bodies, we, the students are forced to speak out against these practices,and rebel for the greater good of humanity. I, therefore, have been chosen to convey to the faculty the reasons to discontinue the practice, and in doing so to justify the pending rebellion. Homework causes undue stress at an early age, leading to premature death of many students. It has limited the time that students have to work, participate in extra-curricular activities, and furthermore it creates a less friendly student- teacher relationship, thus causing inter-personal stress. Homework causes overall dislike of the school system by students. Uncompleted homework forces many students to miss undue amounts of school in order to finish impossible work-loads assigned by teachers. It forces students to do repetitive work, even if they already understand the subject matter. The concept of homework is so ingrained into the minds of teachers that they do not see that it is even bad from their prospective. Assigning homework means that a teacher must waste valuable class time going over it when they could be lecturing and teaching the subject matter just as effectively. In the cases of larger homework assignments, teachers waste their valuable time grading it. Homework adds to an already inordinate amount of time spent on education of young America. The facts of the matter are that many people who are home-schooled spend from one to two hours on school work a day and still often end up ahead of those in the public school system. With this fact in mind, shouldn't a seven-hour school day be long enough to do whatever learning we need to do? At all times during our school careers, we have protested civilly the injustice of homework. But the faculty and the state law-makers have never once listened to our pleas for no homework. We have had petitions, and we have presented arguments to teachers, but to no avail. Based on the above facts, we the students of Glenbard West High School are forced to rebel against the very concept of homework, unless you, the faculty, put into action a change of policy regarding homework immediately. We will as of the signing of this document no longer complete assigned school- work at any non-class time.