Who invented homework and why was it invented?

Who Invented Homework And Why Was It Invented?

Have you have thought about it – Who invented Homework? If yes, I am going to answer your question in this article. What is homework? It is different from housework, certainly. You get homework when you are in school or college.

At many places, it is also called an assignment. A teacher gives you homework when he or she wants you to study at home, outside of school. Homework may consist of solving mathematical sums or problems, writing an essay, doing research, writing answers to questions in English, history, or science, or simply reading a book and writing a review of it.

If you are studying computers, your homework may involve programming. Homework is ubiquitous. If you remember school, even if your grandparents remember school, they also remember doing homework.

It seems, as long as there have been schools, homework has been around. But, do you know who invented homework and why it was invented? You will be surprised to know that there was actually a person who invented the concept of giving homework to school kids.

In fact, there are conflicting claims on exactly who invented homework. Some claim that homework was invented by a 19th-century politician and educational reformer called Horace Mann.

He got introduced to the idea of giving homework when he visited Prussia. When there, he attended the People’s School. In that school, students were given mandatory assignments that they had to complete at home, on their own.

Some say it was done to achieve political propaganda because, at that time, homework mostly consisted of thinking and writing about the greatness of German power. The reference to the activity called homework goes back to ancient Rome.

In the first century A.D., there was a teacher called Pliny the Younger. He used to instruct his students to improve their speaking skills at home amidst a casual environment. The results were quite remarkable.

Students who practiced at home developed their speaking skills quite fast and quite efficiently. Another person who is credited with having invented the concept of homework is Roberto Nevilis.

It is claimed that back in 1905 he invented the concept of giving homework to lazy students who wouldn’t do their work in the class, though, this is disputed by many as just an Internet legend.

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What is the purpose of giving homework?

Homework assignments are given for many purposes. Listed below are a few reasons why homework is given to students.

Preparation

When the exams are approaching students need to study extra. They have to make up for all the time they have lost during the semester or during the year. Since in the class most of the teachers are busy completing the syllabus, they want their students to prepare for the exams through homework assignments.

By telling them what problems to work on while doing their homework, teachers also help students focus on the right topic instead of wasting their time pursuing subjects and topics that are not relevant to the upcoming exams.

Practice

Most of the teachers agree that in the class they spend most of their time introducing concepts and clearing the doubts. A class is normally 40-60 minutes long. That is not enough time for practice.

If the students want extra practice, they have to study outside of school. They can work on the problems in the library, somewhere on the school premises, or at home. When they practice at home, they’re doing homework.

Take for example programming. You have just learned new commands in C++ programming. Unless you use these commands repeatedly, you’re not going to retain them. You will not get into the habit of constructively using those commands to solve real-world problems.

In the classroom, since the teacher has to cover multiple topics, he or she cannot give you enough time to work on programming problems just for the sake of practice. This is something that you must do at home because there is no time limit.

Also, at home, especially these days, you have more resources at your disposal, especially when you’re learning how to program. So, your teachers believe that you can practice better at home rather than in the class.

Having said that, homework doesn’t always mean that you have to work at “home”. Any work that you do outside of your school but is related to studies, is considered homework. Even when you are studying in your library or at a café, you’re doing homework.

Personal development

How does homework help you in personal development? You learn to take responsibility. A problem is given to you and without the assistance of your teacher, you must solve that problem.

You must learn how to be resourceful. Whether you decide to do your homework on your own or you decide to get it done by a service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io, you take responsibility for your own actions.

Homework for peer interaction

A lot of times you need to do homework by partnering with one of your classmates. There are many joint exercises. This helps you learn to work with other team members.

As a policy

In some schools and colleges, even if the teacher doesn’t want to give homework, it is the policy of the institution that the students be given homework.

As punishment

Many teachers give homework as punishment when some students don’t work in the class or when some students distract other students.

In what cases homework does more harm than good?

Can homework be harmful? It depends. Every good thing, when it is untimely or when it is done in access, can be harmful. In its true spirit, the practice of being given homework and doing homework isn’t as harmful as it may seem, especially to those students who don’t want to do homework or the parents who think that giving homework causes unnecessary pressure.

But think it this way: studies at school sufficient? Remember when you are in school or college, you need to spend time on multiple subjects or multiple topics. Even when you’re learning to program, for example, you’re learning how to program in C++, there can be hundreds of concepts that need to be covered in the class.

Do you want to spend your time in the class getting those concepts cleared or working on individual lines of code? Also, when you work in the class, you have this tendency to approach your teacher at the slightest pretext.

This is something that you cannot do when you’re working on your homework. You have to solve your problems on your own. There is a Stanford study that shows that students who receive lots of homework experience stress, physical health problems, lack of a balanced perspective, and even social alienation.

For example, the study has found that more than 2 hours of homework is counter-productive. A sample of 4370 students was taken from 10 high-performing high schools with a median household income exceeding $ 90,000 per annum.

56% of students suffered from more stress. A majority of the students said that homework led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. Their social lives were severely curtailed because they were spending most of their time doing homework.

The parents were equally stressed. The students were getting 3.1 hours of homework every day on average. How do students end up getting so much homework? A big problem is that before giving homework, teachers of various subjects don’t coordinate with each other.

They simply give homework. For example, your computer science teacher gives you programming homework. Your English teacher gives you English homework. Your chemistry teacher gives your chemistry homework.

On their part, they are giving you homework just for their own subject. But you are accumulating homework from multiple subjects and since every homework assignment can affect your class grades, you need to work on all the homework assignments.

This can be excruciating for students as well as their parents.

Why is programming homework difficult?

You may be getting homework in different subjects but why is it that your programming homework may prove to be the most difficult homework? A big answer lies in the fact that it is very difficult to find solutions for your programming homework.

Compare with your biology homework. Suppose your teacher tells you to study plant cell structure. Now, most of this information is already there in your coursebook and even if all the information is not available in your coursebook, you can find the answer in many books in your library.

Even if you don’t want to go to your library, these days, you can find every possible information on the Internet. No matter how difficult the biology assignment is, you can complete it in an hour.

The same goes for your English-language homework. There are many websites with complete answers to all the standard questions. You don’t necessarily have to copy the answers, but the answers are there.

On the other hand, when you get programming homework, it is usually a unique form of homework. Even for a small programming homework assignment, you may have to write hundreds of lines of code.

This code cannot possibly be included in the coursebook unless you’re learning beginner programming. You may end up with a very big and thick programming book if complete code examples are published. Normally, they give you a link to visit to access the complete code.

For example, your teacher wants you to build a scientific calculator using Java. Although you can find many code samples on the Internet that can help you build a scientific calculator application in Java, if you can pick up those lines of code, so can the other students in the class.

Every line of code needs to be unique for you to be able to get good grades for your homework. What do you do? You need to write the program on your own. As mentioned above, even for writing an average program, especially in a language like C++, you may have to write hundreds of lines of code.

Along with the lines of code, you may also have to write comments and provide explanations of individual chunks of code. In most cases, teachers give unique assignments. They simply write something on the blackboard and then ask you to work up a program, whether in C++ or Java or any other language you happen to be learning in your computer class.

Another problem is that when you work on your programming homework, it is not just the commands that you need to learn. You also need to figure out how to use those commands logically to arrive at a solution.

It’s like mathematics, but much more advanced. Just like in mathematics it is not just about knowing the formulas but also about which formula to use at what time, you must know which programming command to use for what purpose.

You cannot simply learn to program. You also need to develop a sense of logic. This takes effort and practice. Hence, you may end up spending lots of time working on your programming homework.

Additionally, at every step, your class teacher expects you to explain why you are using certain logic. Hence, without understanding the entire logic, you cannot explain to your teacher why you are writing what you are writing.

Eventually, it is very difficult to work on a programming assignment unless you have fully understood the dynamics of the language.

Why do a greater number of students take help from programming homework online services?

Irrespective of the fact whether certain online services that do your programming homework are reliable or not, the fact is, such services are proliferating on the Internet. Just the fact that they are proliferating means there is lots of demand for such services.

It means a lot of students are opting to get their programming homework through online services. Why is it so? One reason is that most of the students no longer believe that when they get their homework done through an online service they will be learning less.

In fact, many students have learned that their understanding of their programming language has improved manifold once they have got their programming homework done from a service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io.

This is because the experts who work at services like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io work on the assignments from the perspective of the students. They work on the assignments in such a manner that the work is easily understandable to the student.

Hence, even the concepts that don’t become clear in the class, become clear after they get the homework done. This is one reason: they get the concepts cleared when the homework is completed by an expert.

Second, lots of students are taking up computer courses as add-on subjects. Suppose, you are in university and you are already doing your major in a subject like law. But you also want to learn about computers.

The problem with a typical computer course is that you don’t just learn about information technology, one way or another, they also make you learn at least one programming language, whether it is C++, Haskell, Python, or Java.

But you never intend to become a programmer, or at least, a professional programmer. For example, if you are studying law at the university, you intend to become a lawyer and not a programmer.

Nonetheless, you must work on your programming assignments because your grades will suffer if you don’t turn in your homework. What if you’re not in college or university? What if you’re in a school?

Even then, computer science is just one of your subjects. You may have to concentrate on many other subjects. Programming can be a full-time activity even if you need to write programs as school homework assignments.

If you’re into games or fine arts, you may have to spend lots of time practicing your art and you cannot devote much time working on your computer programming homework. What option has got you?

The best option is, getting your homework done from an online homework service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io. As mentioned in the above Stanford study, lots of students feel that their quality of life deteriorates when they spend lots of time doing homework.

Since doing homework cannot be avoided, they would rather get their homework done from an online homework service. In many cases, even the teachers know that the students are getting their homework done from an online service but it is just that since it’s obligated for them to give homework to the students, they don’t mind, as long as the homework is not plagiarized and the quality of the homework is good.

Then there are people who may be doing jobs and in between, they are also doing some computer course so that they can get a promotion or they can switch jobs. They don’t intend to become programmers but it is important to put some sort of computer knowledge on their resume.

Even the teachers know that although doing homework is unavoidable, it is not that necessary for them to complete their homework and hence, it is perfectly fine if they get their homework done from an online service.

Is getting your programming homework done from an online service bad?

We have already dealt with this topic slightly above when we mentioned that some people believe that getting your programming homework done from an online service is like shrugging off your responsibility.

There is always a good use and bad use of any facility or any tool in the world and the same goes for an exceptional online homework service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io. Using your car, you can reach your destination or you can ram into someone or something and cause grievous injury. It’s all in your hand.

We never suggest that you outsource your homework requirement to avoid studying. In fact, we strongly believe that outsourcing your homework must be complemented by your desire to properly understand the concept and enhance your learning experience.

You should use your homework assignment service as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. The problem also lies with the grading system. Many schools are using homework assignments for grading their students and this necessitates getting external help.

As mentioned above, when you outsource your homework to save time so that you can productively use that time doing something worthwhile, it is good to outsource your programming homework.

On the other hand, if you are outsourcing your homework simply to avoid working, we suggest that you reconsider your priorities. As a responsible homework delivery service, we don’t want you to lag behind in your studies simply because it is easier these days to get your homework done from a service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io.

Parents also put lots of pressure on their kids. For example, they don’t just want their kids to excel in studies, they also want their kids to excel in sports because it’s easier to get admission into Ivy League colleges through sports quotas.

Hence, many students need to devote their time in the court or at the playground practicing. If you are on your school’s football team or basketball team, you need to spend lots of time practicing and also in the gym or spending time with your coach or your teammates.

At the same time, you cannot afford to mess up with your grades, especially when your grades depend on the quality of your homework assignment. Keeping all these things in light, we don’t believe that outsourcing your programming homework assignment to homework services is a bad idea.

In fact, it may be the best way of using your time.

What is the best way of utilizing programming homework help services?

There are multiple ways you can benefit from a quality homework help service like DoMyProgrammingHomework.io. When our experts work on your program, they thoroughly explain all the concepts.

So, once we have delivered your homework, make sure that you go through the entire assignment. Don’t just blindly deliver the assignment to your class teacher. Study it carefully. This is one way of benefiting from our online programming homework help service.

Another way of utilizing our programming homework help service is by saving time. Doing your homework might be essential, but you have got a lot on your plate. Maybe you’re doing a job.

Maybe your major is another subject in college. Maybe you’re lagging behind in your studies and you need to catch up. Maybe you are into sports or performing arts. Maybe you need to take care of your kids or aging parents.

By outsourcing your work, you can save a ton of time and at the same time, exceptionally improve your grades in the class.

1 thought on “Who invented homework and why was it invented?”

  1. Pingback: The Pros and Cons of Giving Homework - We have listed both

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