Busy Work is Ruining Education
It’s harmful to students, teachers, and our future workforce.
My AP students and I had an interesting discussion the other day. The conversation started around a video featuring Dan Shutes, a 5th grade teacher and content creator, whose “unpopular opinions” went viral on TikTok.
In the video, Mr. Shutes argues that “elementary students should NOT have homework,” and this point resonated deeply with my high school students. This was the ultimate takeaway from our discussion:
A lot of assigned work — in all grades — requires little thought.
Work that doesn’t really strengthen skills is typically deemed “busy work,” or work that is meant to keep students occupied. Despite the lack of skills required and the lack of skills gained as a result of this kind of work, it’s still assigned. Regularly.
Here’s the problem:
When adults are overburdened with work, they begin to hate their jobs, and before long they dread going to work in the morning. Likewise, when students — especially elementary students — are overburdened with work, they begin to hate learning, and they dread going to school.
And if this starts in elementary school and continues up through high school graduation…well, you can see why the…
