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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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