Homework

"Homework, O Homework, I hate you, you stink.

I wish I could throw you away in the sink.

I'd rather take baths with a man-eating shark,

or wrestle a lion alone in the dark.

Eat spinach and liver, pet ten porcupines,

than tackle the homework my teacher assigns."

-Shel Silverstein

Homework:

work assigned by teachers to their students; expected to be completed at home and meant to review the information learned in the class or to preview the information to be taught the following day

Three Types of Homework

1. Purposeful written work, meant to either elaborate on or confirm the information learned in class and assigned the same night; often given in "chronic" classes, where the information must be repeated and soaked into the mind to be perfectly understood, e.g. Spanish class, science class; assigned approx. 20.4% of the time

2. Busy work, causing irritability in its victims, is often assigned as 'review' for information that students have already learned and could recite perfectly at a moment's notice, e.g. definitions of literary terms (all one thousand and two of them) four times a year or listing all the prime numbers from one to three hundred; often deemed as completely useless; assigned approx. 51.6% of the time

3. B.S. work, done twenty or thirty minutes before the class for which the work is assigned; often assigned in classes in which the students have a) no idea what's going on or b) could care less about the information the homework is meant to confirm; often assigned by an unpopular teacher who glances cursorily at the work and grades for completion; assigned approx. 28% of the time