I don't know about it. It depends. I would be fine with just a little homework, I despise too much homework.
Just to do the homework, I have to work until late at night! And I can't even play computer.
And then, some students are just copying others work and it make homework pointless for people like that. I totally despise people who copy others work. I was like: It was your work, you do it yourself!
Some teachers are also giving us homework and after we sent it to them, they didn't even mark it! I think it's just pointless.

Personnaly i have a record memory. I say something to myself and hardly forget it!

I dont need stupid homework!!!

it is stupid

For me, homework is a bit of a neutral thing.

For some people, like those who have troubles on such things, may get better with it through homework. But, some people who would completely understand such things, I wouldn't think need much to do for homework. Then there are people with after school activities and all that, who possible have most of their days filled with other things, and I wouldn't think they want to spend time with homework then their activities. Then again, we spend like, eight or so hours each day in school. But, then again, some people have may have more troubles with something then others.

So, my vote, I don't like homework. But, eh, it's life.

I hate it. Whoever invented it, i will kill them. Its USELESS! All it does is basicaly lower your grade.

For some reason, this topic and it's posts provoke me slightly even though I'm not academic person at all. I'm not sure if my english writing skills are enough for this discussion but..

I cant help but to feel it's immature and childhish to say homework are "useless" or "stupid". You can say you hate them, but I think you shouldn't call them simply stupid. Ofcourse they aint funny, but life aint all fun.
Maybe it varies on different countries, some countries have ineffective school systems as standard. But still..

On higher degrees of school, main focus is on lectures and independent projects. What else are homework if not independent working?

School systems are meant to include all types of different studing methods from the very beginning, so that all have same possibilities of learning. You know how there are those three main types of learning methods: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Homeworks are heavily based on method of doing something yourself from the information you've gained from hearing and seeing earlier in class. And even if you learn better by some other studing method, doing your homework expands your skills on other methods too. No person learns things only by one method.

If you find homework HARD and timetaking, that's exactly WHEN YOU NEED IT! Cant you see it?
Ofcourse it's always easier to just hang around in the class and do nothing if you don't know the answer right away, teacher will anyways tell the correct answers later - if you didn't bother to try hard enough yourself. Not to mention, children and teens dont really listen much in classes nowadays. When doing strict course of homework, you really have to ATLEAST TRY using your head if you didn't earlier with the concerned subject.

Some school subjects also need repetative methods, math is a great example. Most often math classes only get to go through recapitulation, correcting your earlier assignments and teaching new formulas, so that's when heavy homework is needed. Practise, practise, practise.

Biology, geography, history, social studies, physics-chemistry and math etc each will come handy in life later on. Some more and some less, depending on where youre aiming. It's possible you dont need advanced information on any of those, but atleast you should know the basics! Anything else is a nice extra in life.

Even classes of 90 or 120 minutes have limited time when compared to all the things you need to learn in that time. You might think some subjects are not needed later on life, but that's how we get people who have no basic knowledge of anything. Like those some poor americans who don't have any clue of what's happening outside their country and ie. think that Tibet is country in Mediterranean. Or have no idea what thermal expansion means. Or.. I'll just drop in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE (maybe this is little unfair card to put on table, but demonstrates well what I'm after now)

EDIT: I read some more posts in this topic and something bothers me a lot:
Why do you people think you need reward for doing your homework? It's enough reward that you actually did them and learned a bit more - doesnt matter how much or little but you still learned.

This post has been edited by Messa: Nov 27 2009, 10:38 PM

It's useless when there's a whole lot of it and the entirety of it is boring and pointless and repetitive. I'd gladly take more physics homework, but I definitely don't feel like doing all this stats homework.

The concept is that if you already KNOW the concept well enough, you don't need to practice that much. It should be optional and only exist for those who need it. If you need it and don't do it? Have fun bombing that next quiz.

You don't. You shouldn't.

Its not understandable. Nope,no. Never understood hw,never will.

It is useful if approached properly, but useless if you cheat/copy/ don't bother.

Homework is useless, I don't do it. Never have, never will. I already understand everything in class, there's no reason for me to practice it over and over and over when I know how to do it. I'll forget it in a couple of months, anyways.

This post has been edited by Pilze: Dec 17 2009, 06:01 AM

Personally, the only time I really don't like homework is when there's a ridiculous amount of it, or when it's obvious busywork. It's rarely fun, but I want to make sure that I understand that material so that when tests come around I am capable of passing with a decent score. (Too bad my government teacher never gave us homework. Probably 90% of that class was just each student taking notes without the teacher to make sure we were getting both the info that we needed, and that the info that we got was correct and understandable. Only passed with a C.)

ohhhohohohoho just wait untill you get a teacher who bases the entire grade on 3 exams. You'll be begging him for homework. Trust me.

My American Gov't teacher is like that. We are only to take notes and he gives out 2 homework assignments if anything. I didn't either recently and now I was in danger of failing. I should have at least a C now... Tests and quizes are big.

Homework is very helpful, without it I couldn't remember something I just learned until two days passed after learning it. And its best to be ready for work that requires you to fill something out within a deadline.

Man, I can't wait until some of you guys get into college. Being in uni made me miss high school homework.

I think homework is useful! But only for those who put actual effort into it, and whose teachers actually do something with it. For example, if a teacher assigns homework but doesn't even collect it/look at it, it seems to be. . .rather pointless. I mean, students who do the homework won't know if what they did was correct, so if they've doing the homework incorrectly, they may very give incorrect answers on an exam. Students who don't bother with it will then receive no motivation to actually do it.

Basically, homework, like many things in life, is a good concept that can be executed very poorly. Overall, though, I still think it's useful. No matter how well you may think you know a subject, practice and reinforcement can never hurt.

I hate it and think it is pointless. We should learn what we have to in class and not at home. Studying on the other hand (if you classify that as homework) i think is beneficial.

I guess, reading everything here, it's 50/50.

It is vital, once you get to college, you don't generaly speaking get grades for homework. However, if you do not do it, forget about passing your finals. In highschool it gives you extra pratice, and if you don't understand the work while at home, it gives you a chance to get help. Now days you can get much of no place without a degree, so yea it may be annoying, but needed!

It's taught me a life lesson. If I wait till the last minute to do something, I do better than normal. Yay, homework IS useful after all.

I think the only subject that I've benefited from via homework is math.

Useless. So very useless...


For honors and AP students especially. Does anyone here know how much homework these people get? I'm in all honors and AP classes, and I'll have all of you know that I don't get an hour of homework a night; I receive an hour of homework per subject (on average, and I'm taking 9 classes per day). Oftentimes I'll get more, and I'm lucky to get 4 hours of sleep. I have no lunch period, so when I get home, I have lunch, no objections here, right? We all need food to survive. I also have to go to the bathroom every now and then, I need a shower, have to change, do chores, eat dinner, and many other little things. All of these add up to a pretty good deal of time, then add 8 hours of homework. I get home around 3 PM, add 9 hours. Now we're at midnight, I should probably be in bed by now. Add 2.5 hours to that due to all of the actions that I listed above, now we're hitting 2:30 AM. I have to wake up at 5 AM to get to school, so that's 2.5 hours of sleep per day. When I do homework, I don't procrastinate, nor do I take breaks. I work very quickly, and somehow with so little sleep, I work accurately.

Don't tell me to drop the honors classes either. The problem is, my parents force me to take honors and AP classes, and they're too blind to see what it does to me. I've spoken to my guidance counselor, and nothing can be done to change my classes without parental confirmation. Multiple people in my classes have the same problem; endless homework and the parents want nothing but to be able to say that they have an honors student. Unfortunately, the students have no power over their high school experience unless their parents are willing to be a little flexible. I've tried multiple times to consult my parents about the situation, but they refused to discuss it, as a result, I became suicidal. And you really can't blame me, being dead is a lot less work that what I'm doing endlessly (and don't worry guys, I don't feel this way anymore, that stage of my life is over). So then I got sent to Kid's Peace Hospital for a few weeks, my survival was forced, and I had to go back to school. Now I'm back to the same schedule mentioned above, not much of a life, is it? Homework has not yet benefited me at all, except maybe in the concept that I have a strong hand and can type over 100 WPM from so many typed projects. It turned my whole life upside down, and I'll tell you, it's not a good life I'm living.

This brings me to my first day of high school. The principles were going on and on about how our high school years are going to be the best years of our life, and how we should enjoy it as best as we can. Haha, right, right... I'm enjoying high school very much right now. I have not yet once been able to hang out with a friend the entire school year, we got endless homework over the winter break, and you know what? I was looking forward to a vacation where I could recollect my mind and make up all of the lost sleep. Well guess what, I got 5 hours of sleep each night and was doing yet another long period of endless homework. Not even one day to myself the entire vacation, and I barely got all of my homework done in the end. I was the only one in all of my classes to get all of my homework done for all subjects, because you know what? People were taking small breaks from homework to spend some time with their families during the holidays (Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's, etc.), and as a result, they didn't finish their homework, lost points, and got scolded by their parents. Wonderful thing homework is, isn't it?

I could go on rambling about why homework is useless, but I have homework to get done, so I can't stick around anymore. This weekend is the only one that I don't have endless homework in, I got a fair amount of it done, badly needed a break, so I took a break, Hopefully tomorrow I'll have at least an hour to myself, and to me, that's a lot of free time.

So yeah, judging by my experiences, I can't say that homework is useful. It's only useful in the manner of ruining lives and, when thought through, it kills people. Take me, if I wouldn't have told my guidance counselor that I was feeling suicidal, I probably would have killed myself by now.

i feel as if this is very very variable and dependent on both the class and teacher.

i know ap chemistry teachers from other schools that give metric fucktons of homework -- mine gives a lot of homework, but doesn't give a crap whether or not we do it.
my ap physics teacher gave us virtually no homework both years I've taken ap physics (fyi: ap physics c is essentially a two part course, mechanics and electromagnetism. that's why i took it two years)
my ap calc teachers gave us about half hour homework a night, tops. same with stats this year.

and my GT classes? (since GT here is what you guys call honors, and honors here is the next thing down) didn't generally give much. i remember US History GT was like a reading assignment + notes every other day [since i had the class on a lunch block, so I had the class every other day). chem GT was a ton of busywork but it would take a half hour a night, tops. precalc GT was just as work intensive as calc AP. etc

AP World History I've heard people staying up all night on numerous nights, as well as the first month of ap microeconomics [not sure about macro]. same with AP bio.


so you're just exaggerating. i can probably give you a good idea of ideal workload given the class -- the ideal AP Chemistry teacher will bombard you with homework and labs, for example. but mine's like "you basically did everything in chemistry GT and i don't care much about homework." yeah i got more work in honors world history and even spanish than i did in every single one of my four AP classes this year



finally, senioritis is a LEGIT disease and anyone who thinks they won't succumb to it is an arrogant little bitch lol i had an english paper due on the 23rd of december and due to snow and that shit it got pushed back to yesterday. i started and finished it two days ago. and i thought i would really turn myself around this year.