Thank you to our Moderator, esteemed Opposition, and my loyal colleagues.

This house believes that homework should be banned in public schools in the
Philippines. Now before I start my speech, I would like to make a clarification, this
being that our motion is strictly about the abolishment of homework on the
weekends only.

Homework has been a perennial topic of debate in education, and attitudes

toward it have been cyclical. Throughout the first few decades of the 20th century,
educators commonly believed that homework helped create disciplined minds. By
1940, growing concern that homework interfered with other home activities sparked
a reaction against it. This trend was reversed in the late 1950s when schools viewed
more rigorous homework as a partial solution to the problem. By 1980, the trend
had reversed again, with some learning theorists claiming that homework could be
detrimental to students' mental health. Since then, impassioned arguments for and
against homework have continued to proliferate. We now stand at an interesting
intersection in the evolution of the homework debate. Arguments against homework
are becoming louder that presented these arguments as truth without much
discussion of alternative perspectives. And I think it might be said that all of us
present here have experienced the rigours of doing homework, and most of us
hated, to use a strong word, even the thought of such. Although many people think
that homework is a tool to enhance student achievement, our house thinks
otherwise.

Today we are at a crossroads regarding homework. Traditional education

underlines the value of doing homework as a tool for expanding the students
knowledge. Our house begs to differ. Although the research support for homework is
compelling, the case against homework is strong. The End of Homework: How
Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning by
Kralovec and Buell (2000), considered by many to be the first high-profile attack on
homework, asserted that homework contributes to a corporate-style, competitive
culture that overvalues work to the detriment of personal and familial well-being.
The authors focused particularly on the harm to economically disadvantaged
students, who are unintentionally penalized because their environments often make
it almost impossible to complete assignments at home. And since the economy of
the Philippines is not entirely strong, some students might have a difficulty in
accomplishing their assignments. The authors of this book called for people to unite
against homework.

A similar call for action came when Bennett and Kalish, authors of the
book The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and
What We Can Do About It criticized both the quantity and quality of homework.
They provided evidence that too much homework harms students' health and family
time, and they asserted that teachers are not well trained in how to assign
homework. The authors suggested that individuals and parent groups should insist
that teachers reduce the amount of homework, or even avoid giving homework
altogether. Think about it: students come to school and learn for an average of five
hours a day. Its counterintuitive to make children spend too many hours studying.
Something that they could do in thirty minutes if fully rested and energized will drag
on for four hours if theyre restless and cant focus because they left seven hours of
school to directly jump into three hours of homework.

It has been concluded that research fails to demonstrate homework's

effectiveness as an instructional tool and recommended changing the default
state from an expectation that homework will be assigned to an expectation that
homework will not be assigned. It was stated that teachers should only assign
homework when they can justify that the assignments are beneficial ideally
involving students in activities appropriate for the home, such as performing an
experiment in the kitchen, cooking, doing crossword puzzles with the family,
watching good TV shows, or reading. It makes good sense to only assign homework
that is beneficial to student learning instead of assigning homework as a matter of
policy. A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications
or dietary supplements. If you take too little, theyll have no effect. If you take too
much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, youll get better. Which is why
the amount of homework given to students should be reduced to an acceptable
amount.

To add to that, homework has already been proven to be a major cause of

stress of students. A study by Stanford University has found that 56 percent of the
students considered homework a primary source of stress, forty-three percent
viewed homework as a primary stressor, and less than 1 percent of the students
said homework was not a stressor. Now if you think about it, so many students
consider homework as a stressor. This says a lot about what homework brings to us
students. This point will be explained further by our Deputy Prime Minister.

Another study found that students experience physical symptoms of stress,

such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach
problems. More than 80 percent of students reported having at least one stress-
related symptom in the past month, and 44 percent said they had experienced
three or more symptoms. Many students felt they were being asked to work as hard
as adults, and noted that their workload seemed inappropriate for their
development level. They reported having little time for relaxing or creative
activities. The researchers expressed concern that students can get burned out
because of the pressure and stress that homework brings to them. Weekends should
be a time to go out, exercise, have a little bit of Vitamin D, do whatever you want to
do to relieve stress, and you cant do that if youre cooped up in your room doing
school works. Because of this, students can possibly develop poor health.
 In summary, our house believes that the giving of homework on weekends to
students in public schools should be discontinued in the Philippines. With that, I rest
my case.