The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It

by Sara Bennett

that the overwhelming majority of teachers have never taken a course in homework,

Many parents know intuitively that something is very wrong with the system, yet might feel unqualified to challenge it. But the truth is, we’re more than qualified to advocate for our kids, and there’s plenty we can do to bring an end to this mess.

“It seems like the more homework a nation’s teachers assign, the worse that nation’s students do on achievement tests,”

“There’s been no research done on whether homework teaches responsibility, self-discipline, or motivation. That’s just a value judgment. The counterargument can just as easily be made that homework teaches kids to cheat, to do the least amount of work, or to get by.” With parents increasingly involved in assignments every step of the way, we think homework undermines the teaching of responsibility.

in-class study with a teacher proved superior to homework in terms of learning.

Japanese teachers assign less than an hour of math homework per week to seventh- and eighth-graders.

“Learning is maximized and made most efficient and effective when you allow a period for consolidation,”

And when parents are told that their children’s skills will slip during the break, we have to wonder: If those skills are so fragile, what kind of education are they really getting?

“Human development comprises a great deal more than working on specific academic skills,”

according to a University of Michigan study, family meals are the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores and fewer behavioral problems for children ages three to twelve. That’s right—a better predictor than the amount of time spent studying.

“When kids have a long leisurely conversation over dinner that’s full of lots of different topics, that’s going to be much better for their education than doing homework and memorizing vocabulary words.”

One unrecognized side effect of homework is that it isolates siblings from one another. A sixth-grader who is stuck at her desk doesn’t have time to play with a younger sibling.

A 2006 national Scholastic/Yankelovich study found that reading for fun declined sharply after age eight. The number one reason: too much homework.

“Play is what will get your children into Ivy League schools.”

To succeed, you need not to just simply memorize, but to be creative and imaginative.”

Research shows that the adults who end up being successful in business, the entrepreneurs, are the ones who formed the garage bands as kids, who did self-directed stuff that let them follow their passions. But few kids are passionate about homework.”

“If I could make one request to teachers, it would be: Please value my children’s time,”

“Please do not give out thoughtless, repetitive homework with the misguided sense that you are saving them from too much television. As a parent, I will take care of what happens with their free time, so don’t think you are helping by simply filling it.”

“Schools shouldn’t make the assumption that they are the only ones who can make a decent person and decent society, that parents are clueless.

Like miniskirts and peasant blouses, homework has gone in and out of fashion. Right now, of course, it’s in. And economic concerns—not educational ones—are behind the current thinking that more is better.

homework was once decried as child labor. In the early 1900s, doctors led a movement to abolish it, insisting that children needed at least five hours of fresh air and sunshine each day.

Just as workers were winning rights to a forty-hour work week, children were winning the right to a childhood, secured in part through stricter child labor laws and a school day that ended at the schoolhouse door.

there is no correlation between increased homework loads and any nation’s economic success,

After all, homework is such an enormous part of our children’s education, we assume that teachers have studied how best to design worthwhile assignments that will truly promote learning. We assume that they wouldn’t waste our family’s limited time with anything less.

“[H]omework practices tend to be based on individual teachers’ beliefs rather than on consensually agreed upon or research-based practices.”

So what’s going on here? Haven’t teachers been trained to make homework an effective learning tool that’s worth all the time and trouble? Isn’t there a well-thought-out, well-established homework system in place at our nation’s schools? Not quite. “There is no homework system or explicit rules for homework,”

“It is surprising how little attention is paid to the topic of homework in teacher education.

“I often hear from starting teachers that they never realized what a big issue homework would be—until they have their first parent-teacher conference,”

Most surprisingly, many teachers never learn about the myriad studies showing that homework has little correlation with academic success in elementary school and only a moderate correlation in middle school.

“When I speak to teachers, it’s always remarkable to me how unaware they are of the research literature—especially young teachers or student teachers.” Yet when it comes to homework, most teachers are true believers.

“These teachers have no data to support their assumptions that homework is beneficial, they simply think it is beneficial,”

“I think there is an increasing push for our students to do more, instead of focusing on doing better,”

During training, teachers aren’t taught how to determine how long their assignments actually take.

“Teachers tend to dramatically underestimate the time that homework takes.

In fact, giving lots of assignments might be one sign of a weak teacher.

“Effective teachers may cover all the material in class without the need to assign a large amount of homework, especially drill and memorization assignments.”

Another assumption many teachers make about homework is that in order for it to be worthwhile, it must be graded and count toward a student’s final marks. Many education experts, however, think that homework doesn’t have to be graded to be useful. In fact, it’s better if it’s not.

American teachers have the dubious honor of leading the world in grading homework, with 82 percent giving it marks, according to professors Baker and LeTendre. Only 22 percent of teachers in Hong Kong grade homework, and that figure drops to 14 percent in Japan, and to 6 percent in Germany.

In addition, when a grade is assigned to homework, there’s a tendency for parents to fix their kids’ mistakes and “edit” their work.

Evaluating homework—not grading it—is key. “It may be that teachers who use homework to identify skill deficits—and then provide feedback to students about how to build up their skills—are using homework in the most effective way,”

“if a child is not getting feedback on his homework and he’s making mistakes and not getting caught, then he’ll continue to practice the skills incorrectly until he takes a test and gets a bad grade,”

“Homework is making learning a miserable experience,” says professor of psychology William Crain. “I wish schools would place a moratorium on it until they can figure out how to make it a positive and creative experience from the viewpoints of both students and their families.”

a majority of parents: • proofread • edit • help prepare for tests • brainstorm on projects or papers • explain math concepts More than a third of parents: • help decide what order to do homework in • type or handwrite assignments • read aloud required reading • help design projects • help complete projects • help create sentences for spelling words • go over work and correct errors

Most of our own lucky parents spent their evenings blissfully homework-free. It wasn’t that we didn’t have assignments. But much of the time, our moms and dads didn’t feel the need to get involved.

“The whole point of homework is for a child to become an independent learner,” explains Mary Leonhardt, a teacher for more than thirty years in Concord, Massachusetts, and author of several books on education. “If he’s got to have his mother or father sitting beside him, it defeats the whole purpose.”

when parents issued commands about assignments or took over part or all of a task for struggling kids, the kids disengaged from their work, became more reliant on their parents to feel competent, and did even less well in school. Yet when parents stepped back, and were available for discussion but allowed their children to take the lead (what researchers call an autonomy-support approach), school performance improved.

“Kids’ relationships with their parents are more important than anything. As these same kids get older, we’re going to want them to open up to us about the important emotional and life struggles they’re having. But they are not going to open up to us if all we do every day is yell at them to do their homework.”

Tutors used to be reserved for kids who were truly struggling. Now there are tutors for kids who are performing at grade level, as well as for high-achieving kids seeking an extra edge.

“A tutor shouldn’t become a crutch.” But often, that’s exactly what happens. Some students no longer bother to pay attention in class because they know the tutor will cover the material with them later.

A class of tutored kids (and Jacobson reports there are indeed classes where most or all of the students are being tutored) might also make the teacher think he’s doing a better job than he actually is.