Homework In Elementary School: An Unnecessary Evil

It's normal for parents to assume that the teacher is right. As soon as the kids start going to school, parents become pure conformists to the teachers' commands. If the teacher assigns homework, parents almost always ensure that the kids finish up with what's demanded by the teacher.

As far as elementary school is concerned, research has disagreed upon the notion that homework helps in the child's grooming. Even though schooling may be essential for a child, giving them homework isn't.

According to the Huffington Post, what's in school should remain in school and that home time ought to be purely family time. As much as it's important for children to be studying at school, it is equally important for them to have sufficient time to jump around the yard and reboot for their next day in school.

On the contrary, what parents actually do is that they nag and fight their children to finish their homework. Perhaps part of the reason of this robotic attitude arises from the school's certain demands that have to be met by the next day. In the context of working parents, such attitude is expectable.

However, there's another way that schools and parents have been oblivious to entirely. Dr. Harris Cooper, a renowned neuroscientist and psychologist at Duke University, comprehensively researched and discovered that doing homework has absolutely nothing to do with the academic benefit of elementary students.

Copper's findings, however, might startle most parents But what's more surprising is the report saying homework still is impactful, only in harmful way. It has shown to arouse a myriad of emotional problems in children including having a negative attitude towards school and developing a conflicting relationship with family members.

According to Dr. Cooper's research mentioned in Community Today, benefits that come from doing homework are very age-specific. So much so, enforcing homework for elementary school students is just a waste of time and effort. Homework belongs to middle school, where enforcing it yields a slight academic benefit.

Given these facts parents might want to reconsider their options for elementary-school children. Saying no respectfully isn't a bad thing to do. In fact, more schools should be made aware of this to help them escape their delusions.

Parents' ultimate priorities should be the well-being of their children. If breaking the status-quo seems to be the only option, one should not hesitate to act out and bring awareness to the world at large.