MOTION INTRO
HOMEWORK IS A We all hate homework, but is it
WASTE OF TIME really important that we do it? Is
doing homework good for us or is it
simply a waste of time? This
debate sets out the arguments on
both sides.
Homework is an assignment that
students are given to do at home. It
might be a continuation of
classwork or a new piece of work. It
may also be preparation for the
next class. The amount of
homework school students get
varies a lot not only from country
to country, or from school to
school, but often from day to day.
For most the amount of time spent
on homework gets longer as we go
through our school lives. At the
start of primary school we get
almost no homework but it is often
several hours a day by the time we
finish secondary school.
The most important thing in this
debate is not so much how much
time is spent on homework but
whether that time is wasted. If it is
time well spent then having a lot of
homework to do may not be a bad
thing. The debate should therefore
consider what else school children
would do with that time. Another
POINTS FOR
1. When out of school we should have time
to ourselves
POINT
Time is valuable. We all need some time to
ourselves. School already takes up a lot of time
and it is necessary to have time which does not
involve concentrating on learning. Education is
not the only important activity in everyones day;
physical activity, play, and time with family are
just as important as all teach life skills just in
different ways. The internet makes it possible to
be learning at home, there are even many
computer games that help with learning.
Homework clashes with these other activities. It
can damage family relationships as it means
parents have to try and make their children do
their homework.
COUNTERPOINT
We should expect to get a certain amount of
homework per day and build other activities
around the homework. Homework can be a useful
part of time with family as it provides a chance for
parents and other relatives to take part in
schooling.
2. Homework takes up class time
POINT
Homework does not only take up time doing the
homework at home but also takes up time in
class. First there is the time that the teacher takes
when explaining the task. Then more time is taken
going through the homework when it is done and
marked. This time could be better spent engaging
with the class to find out what they do and dont
understand. The answer to this is to have more
POINTS AGAINST
1. Homework teaches us to
learn on our own
POINT
The main aim of education is to
prepare us for the rest of lives.
Homework is teaching us a key skill
that we will need in the future.
When we do homework we are
learning to work on our own, the
discipline to get the work done
without the teachers prompting,
and when we come up against
difficulties we learn how to
overcome them without our
teachers help. Millions of people
work for themselves (self-
employed), or work from home,
they are using exactly the same
skills doing homework teaches us.
This is not a waste of time.
COUNTERPOINT
Most homework is simply fulfilling a
task that has already been
explained so not truly teaching you
to work on your own. Working on
your own means setting your own
targets, and working out how to
overcome obstacles.
2. Doing our homework means
we are taking responsibility for
ourselves
POINT
We are the ones who gain from
learning so we should take
responsibility for some of our own
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angle would be to look at whether
school could replace homework
with something that makes better
use of time. For example in Britain
the education secretary (the
member of the government who
controls education across the whole
country) wants schools to scrap
homework and instead have longer
days in school.
time in class rather than boring homework.
COUNTERPOINT
When homework does take up time in class it is
helpful for learning. And when it does not then it
does not harm the classwork. Homework aids
classwork by providing a space for those who
have not finished the work to catch up and by
helping us to remember what we did in class.
3. Homework wastes teachers time
POINT
We are not the only ones who take a lot of time on
homework, our teachers do as well. The teacher
needs to design the homework, explain it, mark
each piece individually, and tell everyone what
they got right and wrong. If all this is not done
then the homework loses its value as we need to
be told individually what our mistakes are to be
able to learn from homework. Teachers could as
easily use the classwork to find out who knows
what they are doing and who are making mistakes
and it would save them time.
COUNTERPOINT
Teachers will need to mark and go through work
whether it is classwork or homework. It is better
that the teacher should spend their time in class
teaching so leaving practising the methods taught
to homework.
learning. We can take responsibility
by doing homework. When we dont
do our homework we are the ones
who suffer; we dont get good
marks and dont learn as much. We
also lose out in other ways as
taking responsibility means
learning how to manage our time
and how to do the things that are
most important first rather than the
things we most enjoy like playing.
Homework then does not waste
time; it is part of managing it.
COUNTERPOINT
The same kind of responsibility is
given to us no matter the kind of
work. When given classwork we are
responsible for completing it rather
than playing around. The only
difference at home is that it is our
parents telling us to work not our
teachers.
3. Homework makes sure we
remember what we have learnt
POINT
One way we learn is by repetition,
another is by doing things, when
doing homework we learn in both of
these ways. When we are taught a
method at school, such as how to
do a type of sum, then we need to
practice using that method to make
sure we know how to so that we
can remember it. If we just learn
the method and dont practice it we
will soon forget how we do it.
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THIS HOUSE Corporal punishment is best
WOULD BRING defined as the use of physical pain,
BACK CORPORAL injury, discomfort or humiliation to
PUNISHMENT penalise unruly or criminal
behaviour. It has been widely
applied in the context of criminal
justice throughout human history.
Where liberal democracies now
overwhelmingly favour custodial
sentences as a response to
criminality, sentences incorporating
flogging, whipping, beating and
disfigurement were much more
COUNTERPOINT
We dont spend all of class time
learning new methods so there
should be time in class to practice
any new method that is taught.
Once some repetition has been
done in class how much more do
we really need at home? If we have
not successfully learnt the method
in the class then we will be simply
repeating the mistake.
States' duty to avoid the use of force when
solving social problems
POINT
How will the severity and legality of flogging be
monitored? How will it be reconciled with existing
liberal democratic value sets? The majority of
western liberal democracies are party to inter-
governmental and supranational agreements that
expressly forbid states from using torture or
degrading or inhuman punishments in any
capacity.
The mark of a modern, liberal state is that it uses
authority and engagement rather than raw power
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common before the nineteenth
century.
Many non-western and non-liberal
states retain corporal sentences.
Saudi Arabia, Iran and Singapore
are notable examples. Singapore
uses caning to punish a wide range
of criminal infractions, including
motoring offences. Iranian and
Saudi sentencing practices,
drawing partly on conservative
interpretations of Islam, include
both flogging and permanent
physical disfigurement
to protect its citizens. The use of force or power
by the state and its agents is harder to regulate
and costlier to compensate when it is misapplied.
Liberal democracies, apart from being agents of
realpolitik, are also aspirational bodies that should
strive to reflect and adhere to the values they
were created to defend. Arbitrary, coercive force
and violence is one of the core harms that a state
must guard against. Violence is said to be the
preserve of criminals and those acting against the
values of society. Therefore, as an aspirational
body, the state should hold itself to a higher
standard of behaviour than such individuals.
Violence, as most liberal constitutions make clear,
should only ever be employed by the state as a
last resort. Where a state has the means to do so,
even if those means are costly or politically
contentious, it should endeavour to achieve peace
and order within its own borders without wielding
power.
At its broadest, the liberal democratic ideology
holds that the rights and autonomy of individual
citizens should be only be infringed in order to
protect the rights and autonomy of other citizens.
This principle would be violated if the state
resorted to corporal sentencing as a way of
satisfying a mob-like demand for visible and harsh
criminal sentencing.
No citizen of a liberal democracy has a right to
demand that another citizen, criminal or not,
should be subjected to unnecessary pain and
suffering by the state.