Yesterday, the CBS Nightly News picked up the story of the homework ban at The Oak Knoll Elementary School in Menlo Park, California, and asked whether Oak Knoll is at the forefront of a homework revolution. I hope so. After a short ad, you can watch the story here.
Stop Homework 
Yes I beleive it should be a revolution. I am a student myself and do not belive in homework.
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homework sucks @$$
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I belive that this ban will either end in dispair or greatness both have an equal chance
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HOME WORK IS A WAST OF A KIDS TIME WE GO 2 SCHOOL TO LEARN… BUT DO WE REALLY WANT TO LEARN THIS CRAP AT HOME!?! WHEN WE GO HOME WE WONT TO HAVE FUN NOT DO SCHOOL WORK AT HOME!
THATS MY OPINION BUT THE QUESTION IS WHO IS WITH THE HOMEWORK REVOLUTION?
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MY SCHOOL HAS 30 EXTRA MINUTES OF SCHOOL AND WE HAVE ABOUT 2-3 HOURS OF HOMEWORK EVERY NIGHT AND WE HAVE ABOUT 4 HOURS ON THE WEEKENDS! ITS NOT RIGHT!
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tu cutta hai jo tu homework deta hai
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home work takes away time with our family and causes kids to much stress and makes kids to hate learning
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we have about 7 hours of school a day which is 35 hours a week and at least 2 hours of homework a day for 10 hours a week of homework which is crazy because school work should be done at school and not at home because students need time with there family and friends and homework causes stress because not all student learn the same and need some time out of school to work on it.
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ANOTHER THING IS THAT KIDS LEARN MORE WHEN THERE OUT SIDE BECAUSE WHEN WE ARE DOING HOME WORK WE
ARE JUST LOOKING UP ANSWERS AND WRIGHTING THEM DOWN BUT THE ONLY THING WE LEARN IS HOW TO USE A BOOK AND NOTHING IN IT.
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homework causes writers cramps, stress, and a diseas called SITTING IN A CHAIR FOR TWO HOURS AND WORKING UR BUTT OFF
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i hate it!
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homework causes cancer and one kid died of it, it is so stupid
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I found grammatical or spelling errors in nearly ever comment posted.
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Ban it. I got no more time from school and work to do it. I need money to do what i want not what teachers want.
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Obviously, MORE homework is needed since almost every post on here has poor spelling, poor grammar, and poor sentence structure!
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Anonymous, if you read The Case Against Homework, and follow it up with The Homework Myth (by Alfie Kohn) you can read hundreds of pages with no errors and an entirely convincing argument. Good writing comes from wide reading, which most of our kids don’t have time for anymore.
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I think homework should be banned because for me i have like 2 hours of homework an it’s really a big stress and i know how everyone feels. Homework SUCKS. =(
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Homework should be banned no matter what
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I disagree with teachers giving out homework. The definition of homework from the encyclopaedia refers to tasks assigned to students by their teachers to be completed mostly outside of class, and derives its name from the fact that most students do the majority of such work at home. If a teacher gives out homework the teacher is obviously not doing a good job teaching. A sign that you have too much homework is if you hate school. Homework steals time out of a student’s day that could better be spent. I think homework should be banned because it affects kids negatively because kids get stressed out; not all kids are capable of doing homework and homework overload is also affecting their family life.
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I HATE HOMEWORK VERY VERY VERY VERY MUCH AND I EVEN HATE SCHOOL MORE
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i stopped believing in homework a long time ago and its turned out great
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whoever this Anonymous is pissing me off!!!
these are comments, not essays they don’t need to grammatically correct. you can save your grammar for actual school work where we need it. oh and by the way Anonymous check the 4th one down your grammar sucks
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I get about 4 hours of homework every night. Thats about 28 hours of homework a week. I don’t feel like I learned anything from it. On 1 week vacations we have to do a whole textbook and copy all the Q&A’s on looseleaf. What a waste.
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most people do not want homework because they are lazy. it is a proven fact that homework greatly improves a students, who is in junior high and up, knowledge. however homework might improve stress, but it will not enough to effect a students behavior nor mental or physical health
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Homework might improve your writing. Or better yet, no homework would give you time to read. You know what they say, good readers make good writers. Unless homework overload has caused you to lose any interest in it.
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I HATE FUCKING HOMEWORK I AM IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND IT SUCKS
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I would think that if you want to be taken seriously about your thoughts and feelings on homework, and the issue that this website brings to light, then you would use thoughtful more appropriate language.
Or perhaps some homework in social skills would be suitable for you.
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I feel that if any of the students wish to be taken seriously about their feelings, then it would behoove you to check your grammer, spelling and punctuation. Otherwise, you do not have a case that will ever be taken seriously. Perhaps you are the ones who would benefit from homework….
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I can’t argue with you. I’ve made this case many times before. If you post here as a beleaguered student and your grammar and spelling are pathetic, you lose your case. Detractors will cry that you are desperately in need of homework! I would counter that homework hasn’t done you any good. Better someone should have cultivated in you the love of reading and writing. And dare I say some of the worst mechanical error offenders on this forum have been teachers?
Anonymous, I urge you to please pay attention to the eloquent writers on this blog. We’ve had some high achieving teens submit well crafted guest entries where they make their case persuasively.
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Remember that on the internet, we have no idea who any of these people are. The folks sending in badly spelled messages full of profanity could easily be 45 year old men with nothing better to do than to stir up a little trouble. Or it might all be the same person! I second HomeworkBlues’ point that this site has had several very well written, thoughtful posts from concerned students.
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FedUpMom, exactly. We don’t know if the vulgar posts are legitimate. I wouldn’t put too much weight on them. Sara might want to take them down as soon as they appear but just like the useless reading log, she has better things to do.
Let’s focus on the well written passionate testimonials that appear here instead.
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as your mother i forbid u from doing homework
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Immature rantings of kids (who just don’t want to do homework) aside, I hate that my first-grader is in school for seven hours and then on top of that there is at least an hour of homework (usually a math sheet and some chapter-book reading). So he’s home around three-thirty, done with homework around four-thirty or five, then it’s dinner time. Then he has about an hour of playtime before he has to get ready for bed.
Reading homework?? I love to read to my son, and I have my OWN selection of books from which I want to read. So now our reading time is forcibly doubled — or I have to give up our personal reading time so that he’s not behind in his school reading group. As for the math homework, I can understand that they want to give us an idea of what and how they are learning in the classroom, but a quick memo or a look at completed schoolwork does that.
And this is first grade. What will it be like in the future? Will we have any time together at all on a school night? Granted, bedtimes will be later, but kids need down time.
If my son ever threw up on a book just because of stress – as described elsewhere – I would seriously consider home-schooling. And I DON’T want to home-school!!
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I think as parents we are the best advocates for our children and it’s our responsibility to stand up for them when they can’t. I think we need to take a stand against so much homework and add recess (unstructured playtime back into everyday school life of our children.
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I believe some homework is beneficial, but the kids today have way too many expectations and too many demands on their time. They are not allowed to just be kids anymore!
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Tricia, maybe, but not in kindergarten. There should be NO homework in kindergarten. The risk is too great, the benefits too little. The risk is simply not merited.
The teacher’s main reason is not to inspire and create a lifelong learner, but to get ready for first grade. This endless obsession of treating school as merely a stepping stone to the next level is to quote the above, beyond absurd.
The teacher looked young. It may be she just doesn’t know. I hope a volley of comments will cause her to rethink her position. If she has no children, some day when she does, she’ll cringe in horror, we hope, when she looks back at her ignorance of homework and its damaging effects.
“It is a miracle creativity has survived formal education”
Albert Einstein
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I think homework should be limited down to a lower amount because I have spoken with many people that are well into their careers and have commented me on the amount of homework that my teachers have assigned. Increasing the amount of homework does not bring up national standards unless every student always has a personal tutor at all times of assignments.
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Homework causes students to turn to drugs and alcohol to try and force themselves to relax after a stressful day.
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listen. if you try to blame your student’s drug or alcohol use on HOMEWORK, maybe you should look at the WAY you parent first. pay attention to your kid man, and spend some quality time HELPING them with their homework, not dismissing it.
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This is fucking stupid. I am a ninth grader in high-school and just to be brief, homework is absolutely terrible. There is not one normal human being that remotely likes homework. If your an adult, don’t bother trying to respond with something like, “LOL YEZ THER ISZ R U KRAIZ-EE”. The only thing homework does is cause a load of stress and make people wish they weren’t born. Something I noticed nowadays is that adults don’t know SHIT. Adults think they know their children and how adolescents act but the truth is, THEY DON’T KNOW FUCKING SHIT. My mom barely knows anything about me after 14 years of living together which I might add is pretty sad. I find it appalling America is run by fat obese old hippos. Every politician is an old fuck, and if old people don’t know jack shit about what youth want how can they ever hope to make this country better. Now, obviously we can’t have everything we want or anything too radical but for FUCKS SAKE, why should we have to go WORK at a Inshitution of Learningnothing for the whole god forsaken day, only to come home which is our haven to do MORE WORK? MORE POINTLESS FUCKING WORK. ARHGHHGHGGTSNOGHSOIGGPIJOPERJGIE!!!!!!!!!!
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@Anonymous (#13)
Do you assume that the grammatical errors are a result of not doing homework, cheating on homework, or actually having do English/Language Arts homework?
Homework as an educational behavior is up for discussion just because of the correct observation you have made here.
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@PamelaKL
I appreciated you comments. I feel like teachers use large amounts of work as an insurance policy in case their state test scores come back with poor ratings. The principals simplistic solution would, among other questions, no doubt be “So you gave the same amount of homework as the other teachers?”
I would hate to be the teacher that would have to say “No”, thus the homework keeps going home.
Are you in a position to homeschool? That is the only thing that was left to us here in Central California. But I know that is a big step emotionally and financially for many families – though it was the calmest time of our lives so far.
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Homework is to much of an important factor in our society and should be partly banned.
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Homework is one of school’s most controversial aspects, and is where teachers and students can converge and have an interesting debate. In this essay I am going to express my thoughts on why homework should be banned. One of the reasons that will be talked about in this essay is about physical activity, and how it is being lessened because of this homework issue.
One of the first reasons that homework should be banned is that homework is cutting down our exercise time which is making obesity become an epidemic. As kids spend more time doing their homework, they are less able to go outside and get some exercise. Also, because of the stress that so much homework brings, kids have to find something to release their stress on, in this case that something being food. It would be much easier for us to get exercise if we didn’t have to worry about all this homework that is sometimes assigned as due the next day.
The second reason is that sometimes we get more homework than the amount we need. My sixth grade teacher would say time and again that, “I would rather give you 5 problems and have you get them all correct, than give you 50 and have you get them all wrong.” This is true because sometimes we get more homework than the amount we need, even if we already understand the concept. As past teachers have said, “Practice makes perfect,” is perfection achieved through 50 or more math problems?
Overall, homework descends a negative impact on kids. When Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, authors of, “The Case Against Homework”, were asked if doing homework really could have a negative impact on a kids’ health, they answered that because homework involves sitting down and not doing much action, it really actually has the same impact as watching television. So, “Is it just coincidence that childhood obesity, diabetes, and other health problems have steadily increased along with homework loads?” Nowadays, homework is done in order to simply complete it, which takes away from real study time that we can be taking advantage of.
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Homework makes kids hate learning. I think that children would have a much better time at school, and have much more time to do more important things at home. Homework doesn’t make you learn, its honestly usually just busy work. It supposedly makes a kid responsible, but its gone too far. There are many other things that a kid has to do that require responsibility. I think our youth would be loads happier if there were more bans on homework.
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homework is not neccessary; e.g. maths, homework is pointless, you learn it and they tell your to learn it again after school, (why learn what you already know) and the next day you still learn about the same thing and it repeats over and over again, until you start a new subject.
It wastes our time for relaxation, we spend 6-7 hours at school…isnt that enough for them…NO!
They shove more and more at us…my plan, they give us a chance to choose not to do homework, if we fail and suck at school when u graduate, you can go and research on your own or if you graduate with out doing homework(like me), try to get it banned for good….SAY NO TO HOMEWORK
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I think homework is stupid people r wondering y kids r so unfit now ittls because kids have so much homework the don’t have time to exersize or b healthy O and annoumus F U u sound like 1 of those british nannys that say do this that way do that this way nag nag nag nag nag
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As much as I disliked homework when I was in school, I did respect that it was to discipline me for post-high school. We are in an a fast-paced information age that it is not acceptable to make mistakes, when making mistakes are where some of the most valuable lessons are learned.
I think homework should be made optional, except for large projects which encourage group participation. If the student does the homework consistently then it might reflect on their final mark as a bonus. This would encourage students that have difficulties in the classroom environment, but can work alone better, to go for these extra marks. Because they would be wanting to do this, they would naturally become better at it.
As far as spelling goes, I think teachers should be encouraged by parents to correct all spelling mistakes. Spelling is a foundational stepping stone to any language. If children don’t understand the basics of spelling and grammar when they are young, it will be very difficult for them to understand in their later years. Up to and including grade 6, teaching spelling should be necessary and it should be corrected at all levels of education.
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I AM A STUDENT MYSELF AND I THINK HOMEWORK SHOULD BE BANNED BECAUSE WE DO ENOUGH WORK AT SCHOOL ALSO IT WASTES MY FREE TIME WHEN I COULD BE DOING SPORT IM DOING HOMEWORK SO A BAN SHOULD BE DONE
HOMEWORK IS SHIT
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I think homework should end for good! We do enough work at school! Home is meant to be fun, but instead your stuck doing what you’ve been doing for the whole day at school. We get given homework about stuff we haven’t even covered in school- so how do you know what to do?!
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