In the past, getting an education was nothing like we picture it today. No chalkboards, no recess, no assemblies or pizza parties, even no schoolhouses. For most of history, children would receive their schooling at home, and only the wealthy families and lords could afford to educate their kids. The last one would pay tutors to come to their home to teach their kids. Back then, children were not getting any at-home tasks. If you think about it, it is kind of hard to assign homework to a kid when the whole thing is happening at home.
So, when has all of that started? Why do students hate homework even more than exams? The team of professional experts from coolessay.net has figured out.
History of Homework: For and Against
We would wager that almost every single one of you have said “Oh, my Goodness! Why so much homework?” According to Stanford University researcher, too much homework can seriously affect our health, some side effects include sleep deprivation, exhaustion, headaches, weight loss, and stomach problems. Moreover, 56% of Stanford University students think that homework is a primary source of stress. When students get back home, they are already exhausted from a long day at school, and the last thing they want to do is more work, so it practically cuts into the rest of the day.
They say homework does not make you smarter it is just putting more pressure and stress on you, it is just extra work after school, not some formula to turn students to geniuses. All these endless assignments should have a purpose, it should cultivate learning and development. Nowadays, homework discourages learning and instead promotes writing history papers or college essays just to get points. It is not actually the homework that is causing the lack of interest, it is the amount that students are expected to do. And one of the options is in-school study sessions. But why should we look for ways out of this problem? How all of that has started? What is the history of homework? Let's dive into the problem to understand whether it is worth hundreds of our sleepless nights or not.
What You Should Know about the History of Homework
So, who did ruin your life? What was his or her name? The history of homework and the concept of at-home activities appeared in antiquity. However, the real inventor of homework was an Italian teacher - Roberto Nevilis. In far 1905, he assigned three additional tasks to his students to do at home as a punishment for lazy work in class. This is how history has started. And as you have already noticed, it was not the end of the story, and this practice has become popular around the world.
In general, the start of the 20th century was the time of significant changes in the education system. And following the approach of Roberto Nevilis, teachers considered the fulfillment of homework as a necessary part of the training. During the century there were also some changes in terms of how frequently and what kind of homework was given to a student.
Yes, historically, the practice of homework has been shown to have started at the beginning of the 20th century. But all of the essential events of its legitimization took place in the second half of the 20th century. There were a number of campaigns against and laws the homework. Some school districts even banned homework. However, even at that period of history, there were teachers who believed that the best method to remember facts given at school is to keep repeating them at home.
History of Homework: What Has Happened Next?
The approach to homework has always reflected societal trends and the educational philosophy of a particular period of history. Also, homework very much reflected the area of the school in which student went to school in. For instance, during the 1940s homework was used as both drill and kill (rote learning) or as a form of negative punishment.
It was in the 1950s that the things started to change in the U.S. and homework finally “reared its head”. After the launch of Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957 by the Soviet Union, the attitude toward homework has changed since the United States was competing with the Russians. They fear that children were unable to compete in the future which would definitely be dominated by technology, so teachers, as well as parents, thought of homework as a means for accelerating children's knowledge. The same point of view managed to stay over the decades.
The Lessons from the History: Should All the Assignments Be Banned?
Homework may not be the funniest thing in the world, but most of you would be pretty used to it by now. So, is it worth the hassle? While we are deciding on this whole homework thing, it is actually the choice of every school to make its own policy according to the children's performance, their psychological health, stress level, etc. But the main thing we have to learn from decades of history is that homework should never be treated as a punishment but as a process of making the children consolidate what they have learned at school, not to burden them with loads of useless tasks.
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