Homework is a bitter pill to many a student. Schools, as a rule, set home-tasks. They are given to make the student work at home. It serves another purpose as well. It is to help the student to revise what has been done in the class. All schools set home work for students, some more and some less.
However, bitter it may be, there must be some home-task given. Education and mastery of knowledge is a matter of skill. There are subjects to learn a skill and others just to acquire knowledge. Both these groups require drill and repetition. The teacher, to some extent, drills the student in the class. But in the classroom, each individual student cannot experience the same amount of drill as each one may require. so the student will have to do that at home.
Homework need not necessarily be repeating what has been done in the class. It may be more study. The student goes through references and acquires more and better knowledge. The world of knowledge is so wide that the class study cannot bring everything into the grasp of the student. So the student must take up some initiative of his own. This may be one of the purposes of homework.
The school also must see that the student is not overburdened on one day and left free on other days. The teachers must see to it that the homework is distributed throughout the week. Still, there are subjects like mathematics in the lower classes which require daily attention. There are others which can be attended to during the week end, for example, map making, drawing diagrams and so on.
Simply because there is difficulty for some students, homework cannot be abolished. If some students find it inconvenient to do their homework, the school must come to their rescue. They must provide some facilities in school, so that the pupils may conveniently attend to their homework. Boys do not like homework because some of them are too playful to do them. In such cases, teachers must come willingly forward to help such boys, who need encouragement.
It is not a question of abolishing homework. It is a question of making it sweet and workable to the student. Teachers in good faith must solve this problem.
drill exercise
abolished ended
