A New York state school district is considering a student proposal to do away with homework assignments after receiving a petition started by a few elementary school students.
The school district in Rockland County is considering a proposal from two fifth-grade students who began a petition to ban homework because of the stress it causes students, NBC New York reported.
“I got stressed by homework a lot, so I just — it took me a minute of thinking — I want to get rid of homework,” Niko Keelie, a fifth-grade student at Farley Elementary School in Stony Point, New York, said.
The district listened to the students’ concerns and is actively discussing whether to change its homework policies. The assistant superintendent for the school district, Kris Felicello, said that while the district does want to present the change as a “ban” on homework, they are hoping to change the current homework policies by the start of the next school year.
“I hope that kids would go home and they would read and they would discover things that they’re interested in doing, and go on YouTube and figure out how to play the ukulele, or go and research what’s going on with Space X, or talk to their friends or get outside and play,” Felicello said.
The district is reviewing several proposals, including one that would leave it up to the parents to ask the teachers to give homework to their children, the Associated Press reported.
Calls to ban homework in schools have surfaced around the world. In 2015, a school in the United Kingdom proposed banning homework to keep its students from getting depressed.
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