Busy work

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Busy work is a critical term for schoolwork, coursework, or homework that keeps students occupied without teaching anything constructive or interesting. Examples might include word searches featuring lists of specialized vocabulary words or lab assignments with many questions that only serve to take up time: while exposure to jargon or terminology may be important, using a word search as a teaching method is unlikely to help students appreciate and comprehend the meanings and contexts of the words.

Some critics have charged that busy work can cause problems for teachers: "When busy work becomes 'institutionalized,' among other teachers or the entire school, it creates such an overload of work for the slower students, that they have to 'buy out' of the system. They will always have more work than they can do because the work is assigned for control and not learning." [1]

People often have a negative attitude toward busy work, and some high school teachers have gone so far as to pledge to avoid the practice: "Homework is given to practice, review, preview, or simply provide more exposure to the topics covered in class—you will not be given homework for homework’s sake or as busy work."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Workplace busy work

The term has also been used by employees who feel their assigned duties are useless or unproductive, and intended only to occupy their time. Busy work of one form or another often features in workplace humor, such as the comic strip Dilbert, or the movie Office Space (see TPS report (Office Space)).