As a child I hated homework and I know many of us hated it too. So I am perplexed at why we still insist on putting the children of this generation through the same grueling motions! We know full well that Homework sucks! This is a fact that cannot be denied.

Yet some parents even threaten schools for not providing enough homework. Goodness, when will a child ever be able to be a child when they are swamped with so much academic work they have no time for anything else except read eat and sleep!

Here are My 3 Reasons why children can never ever love the way we insist on too much homework:

1. Homework makes life boring: Yes who can see the happy bright side of life when everything is covered up in a haze of homework, homework and more homework. Life is supposed to be fun.For those who know me well, I am a very quiet person, I like to hide (unfortunately I can’t do that anymore – the issues at stake will not allow me to continue to be quiet). But I can tell you categorically that as a child I climbed trees, planted flowers, corn, and tomatoes with my mom in our back garden, we also had first some chicken, and then a poultry farm out back, which most of my siblings and I took delight in helping to look after. Imagine if I had as much homework as children have today, I would not have been able to do all those things, and I hated homework. So how do you think the children are really feeling today. They can’t even go out to play. The only alternative is to watch TV and play games and even that they do not get to do because there is too much work piled on from school that MUST BE DONE! Oh no, what a boring way for a child to spend most of their time.
2. Homework eats deeply into the time children need to assimilate what they have learned: It is important that we start taking cognizance of how children actually learn and bring this to bear in our schools and homes. Children learn through experiences, they need time to think, assimilate, and understand the concepts you teach them. Spending time with others and playing outside enables them to exercise their minds and take in information from the environment. They are able to make the right brain connections and learn new concepts through these kinds of activities. The process of turning the concept into an activity may be the difference between understanding and retaining the information, or completely forgetting all about what they learned that day in school.
3. Homework overload will not create solution providers and critical thinkers: One of the main needs of our society is having solution providers and critical thinkers, we are in dire need of people who can not just see the problem but can move on to solve these problems through critical analysis, to provide solutions to these problems. Homework is usually not concerned with critical analysis neither is the way children are taught commonly directed acquiring this skill.

Nigeria is such a great and endowed nation, but we are not going to make the best of what we have been given if we continue to frustrate our children. Both the government, the schools, and parents need to change their policies and outlook on the use of homework.

My suggestions are to reduce the amount of homework, introduce more practical activities into the classroom and allow children space and time to absorb the information and concepts they are learning. We want the act of learning to be fun, let’s remove homework that sucks from our education setting.