4 reasons to stop assigning school homework to students

Healthy Lifestyles and Wellness Living | COVID-19 Mental Health impact on kid and teenager students’ 

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4 reasons to stop assigning school homework to kids and teenage students

Teachers are turning to social media against school homework

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against assignment of school homework. Why would teachers take to the social media platform to speak against homework in the COVID-19 pandemic era?

Is it time schools and parents should start listening to the teachers’ demands who are saying, ‘No more homework’ even on platforms? Even though the debate is still ongoing, this is a question for another day, but first, let’s explore the reasons for their actions:

1. No longer a good way of assessment

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn’t assign it because the “whole premise of school homework is flawed and grading homework on “even playing fields” when students’ home environments can be vastly different appears unfair.

He said his campaign video against homework has garnered 1.6 million likes on TikTok.

Recent research also shows that distress school homework is no longer as useful as many may think, considering its limited benefits for the elementary school-aged students, but rather recommends school classroom work

2. Negative COVID-19 mental health impacts

Several studies, cited by a good number of medical experts, have shown heavy workloads or working at odd hours can result in mental health issues for kids, teenagers, and students. Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor at Humantold, and Cynthia Catchings, a licensed social worker and therapist at Talkspace, agreed that heavy workloads can be detrimental for students and cause result big impact on their mental, physical, social, and emotional health, including stress, disruption of sleep, anxiety, and depression.

Mental health experts agree heavy workloads have the potential to do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic, even though they don’t agree to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor at Humantold said the answer may be to substitute meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework with mindfully- and thoughtfully planned important assignments that would take little time to complete

3. Disengages students from friends and families’ relationships and from extracurricular activities

Doing school homework up to three hours per day disengage students from friends, families, and extracurricular activities and can induce distant relationships between friends and family members, a factor that can affect children’s mental, social and emotional health negatively.

4. Kids, teens, and students hate school homework and regard it as ‘busy work’

It’s no secret that kids and students hate doing school homework, regarding as ‘busy work’. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of negative mental health impacts, many of them are increasingly kicking against it.

More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies,” she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher also said that even students who enjoy peace at home do not want to spend their time on school homework let alone those who experience occasional parental quarrels at home.

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This blog content on ‘Healthy Lifestyles and Wellness Living against COVID-19 impact on students: 4 reasons to stop assigning school homework to kid and teenage students’ is categorized under Children’s Mental and Physical Health Education.

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