A Freeze On Homework — Why?

 After reading this KFOX-14 article, regarding the El Paso School District's  freeze on homework in order to reduce unnecessary stress, the question this writer has is, why bother with learning at all if there is no homework? And as far as learning is concerned, there will always be some stress (it's called mental "effort" and yes, it's work!).

Homework is a reinforcement of whatever children are learning in a classroom environment. Homework is not "busy work" as some folks might think, but is a tool designed to indelibly place whatever information is being taught by the teacher in the learning center of the mind to be recalled at a later time. The  school district's "experts in learning" (here is a good definition of the word "expert") obviously do not fully understand the value of reinforcing the learning process through repetition, i.e. homework.

In Romans 2:17-22, the Apostle Paul states, "Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law. You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

What Paul is saying in his above response to the Jews, is that when we teach someone the gospel of Christ, are we not reinforcing our own learning process? Look at the above questions that Paul asks. To ask the above questions is to answer the above questions if an individual has truly learned the answers through constant study and repetition, making application of them in their daily living (2 Timothy 2:15; Acts 17:11).

Question: How can we as God's people do what Psalm 78:1-8 instructs us to do if we don't teach ourselves and the lost-in-sin folks the precepts found in God's Word? The simple answer is that we cannot. Now do we see the value of homework?

---Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets