I Declare My Independence From Homework

I Declare My Independence from Homework


In class, October 22, 1997. The almost unanimous declaration
of the two-thousand students of Glenbard West High School. We
declare our independence from any homework; we will no longer
tolerate its injustice. When in the course of scholastic events,
it becomes necessary to discontinue certain ineffective practices
that have limited the extra-curricular activities of the student
bodies, we, the students are forced to speak out against these
practices,and rebel for the greater good of humanity. I,
therefore, have been chosen to convey to the faculty the reasons
to discontinue the practice, and in doing so to justify the
pending rebellion. Homework causes undue stress at an early age,
leading to premature death of many students. It has limited the
time that students have to work, participate in extra-curricular
activities, and furthermore it creates a less friendly student-
teacher relationship, thus causing inter-personal stress.
Homework causes overall dislike of the school system by students.
Uncompleted homework forces many students to miss undue amounts
of school in order to finish impossible work-loads assigned by
teachers. It forces students to do repetitive work, even if they
already understand the subject matter. The concept of homework
is so ingrained into the minds of teachers that they do not see
that it is even bad from their prospective. Assigning homework
means that a teacher must waste valuable class time going over it
when they could be lecturing and teaching the subject matter just
as effectively. In the cases of larger homework assignments,
teachers waste their valuable time grading it. Homework adds to
an already inordinate amount of time spent on education of young
America. The facts of the matter are that many people who are
home-schooled spend from one to two hours on school work a day
and still often end up ahead of those in the public school
system. With this fact in mind, shouldn't a seven-hour school day
be long enough to do whatever learning we need to do? At all
times during our school careers, we have protested civilly the
injustice of homework. But the faculty and the state law-makers
have never once listened to our pleas for no homework. We have
had petitions, and we have presented arguments to teachers, but
to no avail. Based on the above facts, we the students of
Glenbard West High School are forced to rebel against the very
concept of homework, unless you, the faculty, put into action a
change of policy regarding homework immediately. We will as of
the signing of this document no longer complete assigned school-
work at any non-class time.

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