Unit 7: What is the use of homework?

Homework can be a good experience if it becomes a comfortable way for a parent to spend time with the child. But the problem often is that by about the third or fourth grade the child begins to try to "cut the apron strings" and homework turns into a struggle between the parent and child. That's a bad thing. But if doing homework reduces the amount of time the child spends playing mindless video games or watching TV, that is a good thing.

                          

There are families that are struggling under the current homework system with little power to take charge and turn things around in their own homes. They have been rendered helpless by a larger system that decides for them what will happen in their home. Their children are suffering badly even if other children are fairly well with the homework that is being assigned. If you are a parent who spends hours each night arguing with your child or worrying over his homework, you need help from someone else.

So homework tends to become punishment. Then, if the amount of homework assigned takes very much time to complete, it becomes yet another problem for both student and parent. Teachers who load students down with more homework than that are neither producing much learning nor fostering good work habits.

• ·         Ritual: the prescribed or established form of a religious or other ceremony
• ·         Advocate: a person who upholds or defends a cause
• ·         Fluctuated: to change or cause to change position constantly
• ·         Tangible: capable of being touched or felt; having real substance
• ·         Sacrifice: a surrender of something of value as a means of gaining something more desirable
• ·      Duty: a surrender of something of value as a means of gaining something more desirable or of preventing some evil
• ·         Demanding: requiring great patience, skill, etc.
• ·         Accountable: responsible to someone or for some action
• ·         Distraught: distracted or agitated
• ·         Obedient: obeying or willing to obey
• ·         Outlawed: a person excluded from the law and deprived of its protection
• ·         Foundation: that on which something is founded
• ·         Steadily: not able to be moved or disturbed easily
• ·    Monitor: a person or piece of equipment that warns, checks, controls, or keeps a continuous record of something
• ·         Bored: to produce (a hole) in (a material) by use of a drill, auger, or other cutting tool
• ·         Cinch: an easy task
• ·         Buckle: a clasp for fastening together two loose ends
• ·         Abolish: put an end to
• ·         Heritage: something inherited at birth, such as personal characteristics, status, and possessions
• ·         Promotions: to raise to a higher rank, status, degree, etc.