Homework is a common form of work used worldwide to help teach students … but does it really help teach them? Do students really try their best when working on homework? Has homework become just another task to mindlessly complete and check off the list? These questions have run through the minds of many students, and today we will answer them.

From a student’s perspective, it may seem that homework is an awful attempt to torture us, but if we take a step back, we can realize what giving us homework is trying to achieve. Homework is given to us to help us retain information that was taught in class. Some students even see the positives, like senior Grant Gamma. “Homework could help us with practice outside of school,” he explained. Homework also is trying to teach us how to work independently without teachers’ help.

But is it really an efficient way to learn and retain information? Freshman Henry Mura wouldn’t think so. “It is too much busy work and doesn’t actually teach us anything new,” he stated.

Homework is supposed to reinforce information we already know, because if we were learning new, untaught material in homework, what would be the point of school at all if we learn everything from a YouTube video outside of school? But a lot of the time that is what homework is doing. It’s reinforcing information, right? Well, not really, because by the time students have sat through an entire day of school, the last thing they can focus on is more of something they just learned about all day. Sophomore Joey Giardina says, “My attention span is, like, five minutes, so I cannot pay attention to homework.”

Many students, when they get home, want to do things they enjoy and don’t want to spend time doing homework, so many students rush through homework so that they can go and do things they want to do. This means that many students do not gain anything from homework, because it is just something preventing them from doing what they want, so it becomes an obstacle that they try to clear as fast as possible.

Students can also be stressed over homework and find it frustrating. Freshman Hunter Lewis said, “It is the bane of my existence.”

Overall, I think homework can be used positively, but the majority of it is sadly put to waste, because the class material can’t grasp students’ attention enough for them to care about homework. Ultimately, if the students don’t want to learn, no amount of teaching can make them.