Name: CRISTELYN E. GUIPO Course: BS-ENTREP.

=II Date: SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

WHY BOTHER?
AN EVALUATIVE ESSAY

We grow up spending most of our time in school. From our primary, secondary,
and tertiary days, homework is always a part of our nightly routine as we go home
from our school.

But the question is; Does homework matter? We have witnessed the effect of
homework to our lives as a student. And up until today, there are several people who
wished to abolish the essence of homework. Thus, some people also want their children
to experience some homework.

According to Ruth Mitchell, who designed a protocol for analyzing tasks in her
book Font-End Alignment (1996), she has an answer to this question, “…students can do
no better than the assignments they are given.” And she stated also that any assignment
admittedly will not improve any achievement, but a well-crafted assignment hold the
potential to make learning and teaching more focused and relevant because in the
crafting process teachers must be aware of the context and content involve in an
assignment. And according to the study of the National Center for Family in 2013
(Scoon 2013) about homework, 50 percent of the parents says that they have trouble
helping their kids with homework, 46.5 percent says they don’t understand the
material, 31.6 percent says their kids don’t want help and 21.9 percent says they are too
busy to assist their child in doing their homework. But on the other national survey of
parents conducted by the polling agency Public Agenda, in October, 2000, revealed that
64 percent of parents felt their child was getting "about the right amount" of homework,
25 percent felt their child was getting "too little" homework, and only 10 percent felt
"too much homework" was being assigned to them. In accordance to the research on
homework from 2006 meta-analysis by the Duke University psychology professor
Harris Cooper says that students who did homework performed better in school and he
also acknowledge that some students really are bringing home too much homework
that their parents are right to be concerned.

But for me, I can say that I am not in favor of the removal of homework to the
primary and secondary students. Homework must not be removed but rather be
lessened. Students should not be doing more than three hours of homework every night
but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework, or we can follow the “ten-minute rule”
of Robert Marzano wherein he examined the researched and suggested an ideal amount
of time for students to engage in homework. Marzano said that per the rule, students
should be assigned no more than ten minutes of homework per grade level.

Homework can improve the student’s retention and understanding, skills and
attitudes toward school and most of all, teaches students that learning can takes place
anywhere, not just inside the school. On the other hand, homework can also cause
emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and also limit free time for
children to enjoy but as long as we know how to manage our time in doing homework
and at the same time enjoying, so why bother?

REFERENCES:

Retrieved from: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/112048/chapters/Why-Assignments-

Matter.aspx retrieved on September 2, 2019.

Retrieved from: https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2051/Homework.html

retrieved on September 5, 2019.

COOPER, HARRIS. 2001. The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for
Administrators, Teachers, and Parents, 2nd edition. Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.

Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/117012/chapters/The-

Case-for-Flipped-Homework.aspx retrieved on September 2, 2019.