19 ms·

More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

• tjr 11y ago
  Hmm. The article alludes to some studies that back up their point, but, anecdotally, I think I got more out of doing homework than I did out of sitting in class...
  • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Exactly! This dovetails with the Khan Academy approach, of listening to lecture online, then doing homework in class with the teacher there as tutor. Public school is usually run upside-down from what makes sense.
    • JadeNB 11y ago
      I don't agree with this comment, but it's a shame that it was downvoted. It seems to me like a productive contribution to the discussion.
    • s73v3r 11y ago
      What data do you have to back that up?
      • fineman 11y ago
        Believe it or not, but I did a fairly detailed study of public schools. I spent nearly two waking years over more than a decade auditing and participating in 50+ classes at levels from K to pre-university, across ten or more schools. I know people will respond with "Anecdotes aren't data", but that's incorrect - they're just really badly sampled. Even if my experiences are uncommon they're enough for me to recognize errors and overly broad assumptions in other people's work.
  • wvenable 11y ago
    I tried to do all my homework while in class. But I hated and did terribly at doing homework at home.
  • Retric 11y ago
    This right here is the core of a world of problems. Data contradicts gut feeling. Data must be wrong.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • Retric 11y ago
      PS: In response to a deleted post. As a counter argument, doing homework can easily train people to do thing wrong thing which takes a lot of effort to correct. That does not preclude doing. In many cases mixing in 'homework' with class work is probably a much better use of time. AKA ask everyone what 57+49 is give them 30 seconds. Collect answers. Fix errors. Repeat.
      • tjr 11y ago
        I deleted the post because after 30 seconds I thought it was insufficiently well thought out and written. :-) In many cases mixing in 'homework' with class work is probably a much better use of time. AKA ask everyone what 57+49 is give them 30 seconds. Collect answers. Fix errors. Repeat. Agreed. My school classroom experiences were mostly passive listening. The few that mixed listening with reading with doing, right there in the classroom, were marvelous. Little if any extra homework needed. If that would be done? I think that'd be great. But if the proposal is just passive lectures in class and that's it, I remain unconvinced.
    • comex 11y ago
      Data and anecdotes are rarely actually contradictory; by combining data, which can demonstrate broad trends with authority (while taking special care to avoid giving extrapolated conclusions the same authority as what is actually shown), with anecdotes, which can fill in detail by suggesting what factors may cause some cases to defy the broad trends, one can come to a broader understanding of a situation.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • onewaystreet 11y ago
    That's more of an indictment on how bad classes are than how beneficial homework can be.
  • mikeash 11y ago
    IMO the problem is not work, the problem is homework. It's pretty well accepted that the sweet spot for working a job is around 40 hours a week. Go beyond that consistently and your productivity starts to fall off, to the point where you may well get less done than you would have if you worked less. School is basically a student's job. Their output is learning. Surely the same thing applies? Yet we have the students "work" 40 hours a week at school, then have them "work" even more once they get home. If you go to school for 8 hours a day, then you have two hours of homework a day including weekends, you're "working" 54 hours/week. By all means, give the students assignments. But they should be assignments the students can complete during school hours. If you don't have time for that, then maybe you should cut back on instructional hours.
• lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
  I see several issues with the ideas presented here. Firstly, the idea that a parent should have control over homework in any capacity seems like a misguided idea. Secondly, the article dances around ideas but never touches on the importance of the content of the homework. Not all worksheets are created equal and it follows that neither are all hours spent at home working. There are big differences from a pedagogical standpoint between homework designed to expand knowledge, evaluate proficiency, and provide mechanical practice (just to name a few). In my opinion the whole issue stems from lack of standardization in education in this country. The huge variance, even at a regional scale, in the tools available to teach coupled with the lack of standardized methods for addressing the needs of a wide variety of students presents a system that is often going to regress to the lowest common denominator (often mechanical drudgery given the ease in creation and evaluation) .
  • Karunamon 11y ago
    Firstly, the idea that a parent should have control over homework in any capacity seems like a misguided idea. Why, may I ask? It seems intuitive to me that the school's influence over the student ends when class is over and they return back to their families. And regarding standardization in education - that is what leads to a regression to the lowest common denominator (see the non-religious criticism directed at common core), not a lack of standardization. Ideally there would be fewer students per teacher (in a perfect world: 1-1) who are able to tailor the curriculum to the person, rather than trying to shoehorn ~30 kids of varying skills and interests into a one size fits all class measured by a one size fits all standardized test.
    • lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
      Exposure to information is just the first piece in the puzzle. Imagine, for example, you went to piano lessons but didn't practice at all at home. For the second point, I think we agree just have an impedance mismatch. When I speak of educational standardization I'm not talking to the idea that every kid takes home the same worksheets. Instead it's the idea that teachers have a better pool of tools and resources so they can address the needs to the students. In a perfect world we can have class sizes at ~10 (I think there is value in learning community that you lose if you take it much smaller than that) segregated by student ability. However, lacking the funding and push for that, these tools could be used to help teachers fully meet the needs of these larger class sizes as well as make the entire process more transparent.
• a3voices 11y ago
  I learned the most from doing homework and studying for tests. In class I mostly daydreamed and didn't pay attention to much.
  • sotojuan 11y ago
    This was me in high school, and even now in college. I couldn't get myself to do work during class and read or daydreamed (one time I brought a pillow to school). At home I did most of my learning and doing. I don't know why I was this way, but I think I was just more comfortable in my room and thus more likely to learn.
    • beeboop 11y ago
      I think it makes sense. In a lecture you're having to learn at the pace of the lecturer. If it's too slow or too fast you lose interest. At home on your own you go at your own pace.
  • flatline 11y ago
    It depended on a few things for me personally. I made it through several years of a liberal arts degree with a 3.5+ GPA by showing up to lectures and doing the bare minimum required on assignments. I did very little homework. Mostly, I showed up and paid attention to the lectures. I felt they were the most singular part of the college experience that I was not likely to find elsewhere, they were generally interesting, and you could, if you were lazy like I was, skip most of the required reading if you paid attention to what the professor said. High school was different, the teachers are focused on orienting you toward the material in a more remedial fashion and classroom time was, at least for me, an exercise in boredom and frustration. Students also don't necessarily know how to learn at this age, and some need a lot of step by step guidance and repetition. Some students require personal attention from the teacher. Most of the coursework is covered outside of class, in the homework. For highly technical topics there is no substitute for homework - you need to drill to make the material your own. For more subjective subjects, however, there is little reason to do a lot of work outside class unless the teacher is particularly bad or overloaded with needy students, or you have an exceptional passion for the material.
• Retric 11y ago
  The vast majority of homework has little direct value. The real problem is many classes are poorly structured and need to crutch of outside work to cover the material. Even in college I often found reading the textbook was more useful and faster than attending class. PS: I still remember many math classes where attendance took 5 minutes, then 30 seconds of (new idea! yay), followed by 40 minutes of mind numbing boredom.
  • sotojuan 11y ago
    I really hate how so many of my classes in college have mandatory assistance. In a lot of my classes the professor just poorly summarized the textbook. I think some courses could take inspiration from my English classes. In them, we had to read (novel or literary criticism paper) by ourselves, but in class we only asked questions, discussed the works and got help with our writing. I don't know if this can be applied to Computer Science classes, but I liked it a lot.
    • omnius19 11y ago
      Oh it can definitely be applied to computer science classes. At my college, most computer science classes had optional lectures and were heavily project based. Some of the slower or less experienced students went to lecture (usually less than 1/3 of the class) but most students skipped it. Instead, we would work on our projects and go to office hours for one on one assistance with a ta or prof if we needed help. This was expected behavior and they made tons of hours open to the students so it worked great.
  • zyxley 11y ago
    The preponderance of homework in primary and secondary school is striking compared to college, where there are plenty of classes where the entire load of work to be turned in is two or three moderate-length papers.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• zaccus 11y ago
  Seriously, parents are complaining about 10-20 min of homework a night? Kids should be spending 1-2 hrs on homework every night, and if they run out of homework they should be working on a personal project or reading. That doesn't have to encroach on their fun time; I'm talking about 2 hrs max. Every night. That's not asking a lot. It's about learning how to manage your time and developing a productive routine. Kids will be expected to do plenty of homework once they get to college, I don't see the point in not assigning it before then.
  • zaphar 11y ago
    Your sense of scale here is way off. My kids have 2-3 hours of homework a night 5 nights a week. Plus weekends. There have been times I've told my kids not to do the work and if their teacher asks they can take it up with me.
    • sotojuan 11y ago
      And don't forget a lot of kids stay home late because of extracurricular activities. Some of my friends got home at 5pm!
  • cpfohl 11y ago
    College kids will also typically spend a grand total of 12 hours in class in college (assuming 4 classes, each of which has three hours of in-class time). Expecting a college student to then put in another 12-20 hours of personal work makes a ton of sense. Expecting a high schooler who already puts in 30 hours at school, to then also put in 14 hours or more of homework time seriously doesn't make sense.
    • Retra 11y ago
      It also causes teachers to have excessively long work days.
  • thedufer 11y ago
    Not being a parent, I don't know what it's like now, but high school was by far the busiest and most stressful time in my life. I saw an average of 2-3 hours of homework per night, after 1.5 hours commuting, 8 hours at school, and 2-3 hours at sports practice. On an average day, that leaves an hour for breakfast/dinner and 8.5 hours for sleep; multiple nights in a row of 4-5 hours of sleep and no other breaks were not unusual. College is completely different. You spend something like 15 hours in classes instead of 35-40; of course you get homework.
• fiatmoney 11y ago
  "the notion that America can close the learning gap with China or India..." Indian and Chinese students in America do as well or better than Indian and Chinese students in their home countries on any measure you'd like to name. For that matter the same is true of Mexican students in the US vs. in Mexico, European students in the US vs. in Europe, etc.
  • dudul 11y ago
    Can you provide a source?
    • fiatmoney 11y ago
      By country: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_5a.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_... By ethnicity in the US: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_5e_1.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2012/pisa2012highlights_...
      • dudul 11y ago
        Thanks. I don't think it really backs your claim that "[X] students in America do as well or better than [X] students in their home countries on any measure you'd like to name." but it's still interesting data.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • jsvaughan 11y ago
    the learning benefit could be because of the change of scenery, not because one side is better
    • mayneack 11y ago
      Or because they select for people that are able/willing to make a choice to move across the world/border.
• samfisher83 11y ago
  If you want to get good at something you have to put in the work. I wonder what would have happened if MJ didn't put in time into practice.
  • sf56 11y ago
    A lot of kids that show promise in something outside of school get a free pass on homework. I wonder what would have happened if MJ was too buried under homework to get in any practice time.
  • pnut 11y ago
    Whatever, Michael Jackson came out of the womb singing! Sha-moh!
• ahallock 11y ago
  Homework is an abomination. It steals time a child could be spending with their parents, siblings, friends, etc. You spend all day in a classroom, sedentary, which isn't healthy to begin with, and then when you go home, you're expected to sit more. Children need to play and explore the world. Schools are failing if they have this overflow of work that must be sent home.
  • pdpi 11y ago
    I get (and agree with) your sentiment, but to call homework an abomination is misguided. I don't want the totality of kids' academic learning to be in the class room, I want them to have to do thing by themselves, unsupervised -- which is what homework is meant to achieve. As you say, though, that shouldn't come at the cost of their play time. Personally I feel more inclined to say that we should aim towards fewer classes and more homework.
    • bradbatt 11y ago
      If they are in school all day and then pressured with all sorts of homework at night, when do they actually get to learn something they want to learn? Something they are really interested in, but isn’t assigned by a teacher? I think there is value in giving kids time to learn things that at outside the subjects that a school teaches. Eliminating homework gives kids more of a chance to do that, not to mention the other things that people have mentioned like spending time with family, playing, etc.
      • pdpi 11y ago
        Like I said: I agree with the general sentiment of giving kids more time to be kids, to play and to learn non-academic stuff. What I'm advocating, though, is that this should be, at least partially, at the expense of structured lectures, rather than homework.
  • JDiculous 11y ago
    Doesn't sound too unlike working a job in the real world (minus the homework). Totally agree with you though.
• gayprogrammer 11y ago
  I didn't see anything from the side of parents who want more homework. Why are some parents asking for more? Are their children misbehaving? Are their children not learning the material? I am guessing that homework doesn't automatically make up for a school's or teachers' shortcomings.
  • clinta 11y ago
    I've seen parents argue for more homework so that homework would make up a larger percentage of the students grade in an attempt to make up for the fact that their child is a "Bad test taker". It always bothered me because a grade should reflect the percentage of the material you actually learned. Not be just an accounting of how many hours you spent trying to learn it.
    • Goronmon 11y ago
      It always bothered me because a grade should reflect the percentage of the material you actually learned. Not be just an accounting of how many hours you spent trying to learn it. Well, the argument in those cases is that tests aren't always a reliable indicator of the material being learned. Speaking from my experience, I was a great test taker in high school, and they rarely indicated my actual knowledge of the material. It's not hard for me to imagine plenty of students having the opposite problem.
• drumdance 11y ago
  This issue seems to go back and forth. Here's an argument in the Atlantic a few years ago arguing for more homework (for kids who struggle in school). http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/poor-students-need-homework/279566/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/poor-st...
• lordnacho 11y ago
  The problem with homework is it's used as a form of accountability. My French teacher used to joke when collecting papers : "Ou est votre dette a la societe?" (Apologies for missing accents.) Of course what it should be is like at university. The professor can't spend all his time with you, so you get a rough list of what you should know about. It's then up to you to judge whether you need to read a bit more or a bit less. The point is judgement. You can figure out when you understand something. You don't need a whole page of quadratic equations, in fact you don't understand it if you get to the end and think you need more. OTOH, if you only do the first two and you think you get it, you might be enlightened when you look at some further questions. As a parent, it means instead of asking the teacher for more homework, which will annoy them, you can simply ask your kid some enlightening questions. It's probably a lot more interesting for them that way.
  • dctoedt 11y ago
    > ... you can simply ask your kid some enlightening questions. It's probably a lot more interesting for them that way. Part-time (law) professor here. Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult.
    • lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
      This is where I think technology and legislation can really be helpful. A standardized structure for encouraging the top achievers combined with a national database of templates and problems to accommodate the wide spectrum of students would go along way.
    • grossvogel 11y ago
      > Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult. And this is a big piece of the problem with homework. Enlightening questions could be asked as homework, but various forces create an emphasis on quantity over quality. As someone who's taught arithmetic to lots of adults, I use 'enlightening' in a broad sense. I hope most of us agree that grasping arithmetic requires practice (in or out of class), but that's not the same as repetition. Even simple arithmetic problems can be varied in deliberate ways that draw students' attention to those variations and at the same time reinforce the underlying pattern.
• JamesBarney 11y ago
  I am in total agreement that children have better things to do than homework. Such as learning how to play and interact with others. Learn how to deal with adversity. How to deal with the sadness of a break up or not being included. Learning how to lead a team via Counter Strike or WOW. Learning computers by writing a mod for a favorite computer game. These things taught me far more than a worksheet on a very idealized version of the events that led to the American Revolution. And on a different note the idea of a lecture in class followed by homework at home seems silly to me. Lectures are easy to scale so a child can learn from the best of the best in the world(With explanatory graphics). Tailored tutoring to the issues a child is having while trying to solve problems and understand a concept is very hard to scale. It seems to me it would make more sense to watch lectures outside of the classroom and do homework in the classroom.
  • CodeCube 11y ago
    This is precisely the "flipped classroom" concept that Khan Academy has been championing for a while now: https://youtu.be/vmtgz95ZBbE?t=32s https://youtu.be/vmtgz95ZBbE?t=32s
  • jbob2000 11y ago
    My significant other is a teacher and entered the workforce 2 years ago. I now firmly believe that the education system is the way it is because of the teachers, and not in a good way. The few who got into it because "they love children and teaching" are so massively outweighed by those who took it because there was nothing else. It's created a system that is center around Dear Teacher, a frustrated individual upset that they couldn't get the overseas marketing job or field marine biology study position they spent $40,000 trying to attain. Lecture with assigned homework happens because it's easy. Read a script, send home to mommy and daddy to do the hard stuff. Any attempt to change and you get a strike. There's a fucking strike every year now in Ontario.
    • Mz 11y ago
      Bonus: A lot of elementary school teachers are there because they can't cut the math for some program they wanted and their college shunted them off into early education. These are, unfortunately, very often women. As a mathy woman who homeshooled my sons and spent considerable time getting my oldest over the math phobia school instilled in him, I harbor the opinion that sending math flunkies in droves to teach our children is part of why math has such a reputation of fear and loathing. They not only cannot teach it, they pass on their fear and loathing to the students. Extra bonus: Since they are overwhelmingly female, I think this contributes to keeping the stereotype alive and well that girls are bad at math. We give our kids sucky math education and also model that "All the women you know and admire are terrible at it and hate this shit." Go, us.
• ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  Saying 'no' to homework doesn't go far enough, IMHO. They should be saying 'no' to the entire abominable structure of schooling.
• robotresearcher 11y ago
  The main benefit of homework is instilling the habit of working to a deadline without direct supervision, instead of giving in to distractions.
  • Mz 11y ago
    You can get similar benefits by giving kids chores at home. Bonus: Chores at home are typically more meaningful than homework. Homework is often "make work." But the trash actually needs to be taken out for reasons of basic sanitation to protect your health and quality of life. So you aren't teaching kids their lives and labor so do not matter that we can have them simply piss their lives away on make work.
  • TeMPOraL 11y ago
    So I guess maybe my schools were too easy on the homework - I managed to slip through doing as little as I could, electing for self-driven learning instead (known to me as "whoa, this thing is cool!" when I was a kid), and the end result is that I absolutely can't do bullshit work on a deadline without direct supervision. It makes me feel at the same time both smart and totally unfit for the contemporary workplace.
    • robotresearcher 11y ago
      Me too, my friend. I've spent too much time here this week because I have something important I'm putting off. Sigh.
• kzhahou 11y ago
  For everyone here saying "no homework": do you think that math homework is also a waste of time?
• NDizzle 11y ago
  I am not to the point of saying 'no' to homework. But I am starting to question a few things. First off, my situation is not the norm anymore. Not only am I the single earner in my 5 person household, but I work from home full time. I am extremely active in my kids lives. My kids are very fortunate in that they always have one and often times both parents to help out with school work. My oldest is 9 - 4th grade. I have a 5 year old in Junior-Kindergarten. Both have homework. (My 2 year old doesn't count here, except when he's literally eating their homework.) I coach little league, and I talk to a lot of the parents. Some of the parents have kids in the same class as my 9 year old. These are households where both parents work and have more than one child in school. There is a drastic difference in support that the children receive. Now, I'm not smart. I have a high school education from Arkansas, which is always fighting with Mississippi for the worst rank in education standards. However, I consider my problem solving skills outstanding. I am not doing my kids homework, but I do look at my kids homework. Every night. I help them sometimes. I get on the white board and we go over things. I have them teach the methods back to me. It's a difference that just last night, a mother of one of the kids came up to me and was talking about the math homework they had today. Her daughter had spent an hour on it before the game and still doesn't get it. I hadn't even looked at the homework yet, so I asked my daughter what was going on with the math homework tonight. Her response? Oh yeah, that's super easy. You can look at it when we get home. So you have something that takes at least 1 hour (I'll find out more about it later if anyone cares!) for one student compared to something that is a nonissue for another student. In 4th grade. That isn't really sustainable. And I'll go out on a limb here and say that her friend who is having a bit more trouble isn't dumb by any means. I've coached her for two years in softball. And we're not special in the other direction, either. Oh yeah - my 5 year old in Jr K - she has monthly homework assignments. Things like gather fall leaves and glue them to a piece of paper. Trace your hand and stick leaves on it to make a bird. Fun things like that. Not real homework. But she does have things to do at home to gear her up for the future. Anyways. There are my personal experiences with this stuff in California's central valley.
  • wisty 11y ago
    It's not easy for low SES students to learn much from homework. Schools are designed by upper-middle-class people who care a lot about school. The problem students are from a very different background. It's nice to say that teachers should be doing parenting for kids (building their self esteem, helping them develop as people, etc), but that's just glorified daycare. The poor students need to be taught to read, write, and do math, because that's what their parents can't help them with. Education is meant to give every child a chance. I really think poor people have decent general cognitive skills (problem solving, relationships, etc), but really need a leg-up when it comes to formal academic work. I don't think schools are really helping kids, when they shunt the fundamentals off to parents, as homework. 6 hours a day should be plenty to develop basic numeracy and literacy. But that's often not a priority to educators. It's more fun for teachers to tell themselves they're being parents - teaching kids how to develop as people.
• a2tech 11y ago
  The best thing my school did was moving to the 'block' system. Instead of having 6 or 8 classes to go to every day, I had 4 classes a semester. It also meant that my algebra class, or biology, was twice as long as your 'standard' class at another school. The block system meant that the instructor had twice as long with the students and could really dig into a subject. It also meant we didn't usually have homework because it wasn't necessary-the instructor taught, we learned, we drilled on it in class.
  • Jtsummers 11y ago
    The school in my first high school school district did that, and had disastrous results. Too much time between related courses (essentially 9 months between each math class). I preferred the way my second high school did it. We still had 8 periods a day (magnet school, so the regular schools had 7). Monday was everything, it was a busy day. Odd classes on TR, even on WF. So you only had to do homework for 3-4 classes a night. And you had the benefits of nearly two hours of instruction most days. It was more like college structure, but with additional courses (where most college students take 4-6 classes a semester, we took 6-8; some of our classes took multiple periods).
  • clarkmoody 11y ago
    We had block schedule with 4 classes per day, but alternated days for 8 classes total. Long, 100 minute class periods allowed for lecture+homework/help time during the day. Fridays were an alternate set of interesting classes, from SAT prep, to bowling, to computer programming. I couldn't recommend this system more. If you must have public school, this is a great way to structure it.
  • thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    This is important. Homework is a poor substitute for class time. If education budgets permitted schools to stay open later in the day, time spent on homework could be spent in class. Plus, the block system is a better approximation of university.
• mmcclellan 11y ago
  One evening my wife, daughter and I were sitting in the living room. My wife and I were reading and my daughter was doing her Math homework, when all of sudden she asks "Did Heath Ledger commit suicide?" I said "that's a weird question, what brought that up?" and she said they were talking about it at school today with the Dare Police Officer. I said "Oh you had a Police Officer in your class today?" and she said "Yeah, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays." No one I've ever told that story to has ever commented on it.
  • talmand 11y ago
    A Dare police officer, as in D.A.R.E.? Is that program from my childhood still active? Or is that something else?
    • adrusi 11y ago
      It's dying out, but still around.
  • wishinghand 11y ago
    Why was there a DARE officer at that school three days a week?
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • r00fus 11y ago
      School-to-Prison pipeline, maybe?
  • protomyth 11y ago
    Yeah, time to run for that old school board seat or find someone who can. Three days a week means that family time with you and your wife is being substituted for homework because your child spends time with a D.A.R.E. officer. I went to school in, shall we say, a less than good-rated school, and we didn't even have that level of foolishness during the "Just Say No" era.
• adrusi 11y ago
  I figured I'd share a relevant anecdote: throughout most of my school (at least by seventh grade) I did virtually no homework. Not with the blessing of my teacher, nor of my parents. But I knew that my parents wanted to shut their eyes and pretend that my grades were improving for as long as they could until the report card came home. I knew that most teachers could be convinced into letting me make up some work at the end of the quarter to turn my Ds into Cs if need be. And I knew that without doing the homework, I could still swing a 90% or greater in the remaining assignments. I could sit down in class and be fully engaged an learn everything I need to and more. While I avoided some higher-level classes because often they were just the same as the regular classes with more homework, most of the classes I took were of the advanced level. I wasn't just coasting. I repeatedly tried throughout high school to change my habits, but for various reasons, many personal, these attempts were doomed to fail. I know I'm not the average case, but clearly homework is not at all necessary for every kid to do well in school. Other commentors have given the opposite anecdote, saying they did only homework and did well. I think maybe we should accept that these grading policies should be tailored to the student. At the risk of just rambling off my life story, I'm going to continue to show how these homework problems affected me beyond high school. Despite these problems, I was admitted to a good state university. I had a 3.0ish GPA because I brought it up with easy A classes like band, and because I had several classes that where homework comprised only 5-10% of the grade. I guess that. combined with my above-average extracurriculars got me in. I then essentially flunked out after two semesters. It's not that I didn't have the study habits. They were probably lacking a little for the academic environment, but I definitely knew how learn independently. I was just so completely used to ignoring my academic responsibilities that I couldn't stop. When you've been saying "I don't need to do this homework" for years, it's very easy to say "I don't need to study this thing" even though you know very well that you have a lapse in understanding. I'm convinced that I would have done at least somewhat better in college if only not doing homework in high school didn't feel like not doing something that I had to do; if my parents and teachers hadn't treated not doing homework as a bad thing. Obviously it was in fact a bad thing, but it didn't have to be.
  • protomyth 11y ago
    Did you happen to have a job during high school?
• SCHiM 11y ago
  I HATED homework. I can honestly say that it's one of the main reasons I didn't have a fun time at school, since these things tend to snowball out of control. Don't do your homework -> get into trouble -> teachers thing you're * -> etc. When universities started to doing the same (in my country) I just quit. Now I work in tech, I love my job. And the best part is that I thought all the skills I needed to myself without the huge (wasteful) drains on free time.
• protomyth 11y ago
  School starts at 8AM around here and ends at 3:30PM with a 30 minute lunch break. 4 classes in the morning and 3 in the afternoon of 55 minutes each with 5 minutes between classes to get to the locker and to a different classroom. Around 32 hours of instruction and work per week. That's close to a full time job, and some people want the students to do 2-3 hours of homework a night? If schools must, increase the school day by 30 minutes or an hour, but that's enough. Other things are just as important as school.
• unquietcode 11y ago
  Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addressed, but the system has to serve all types, including children who's parents are unable to provide alternative structures and insights and 'hacks' to get by. That didn't add much (I wasn't trying), but these threads always seem to turn into an echo chamber of "I got by without doing any homework!" because, let's face it, here we are. What is the 98% solution, I wonder, versus the 2% version? Of all that I've seen, it starts with better, smarter, well-paid, un-stressed, empathetic teachers. Students too afraid to think? Too pinned down to discover how best to learn for themselves? I just want to give all these poor kids a hug and tell them how smart they really are--it makes me so sad.
  • guimarin 11y ago
    I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power-law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts. If you can learn on your own, and have the capacity to recognize when the assumptions underpinning the status-quo are no longer correct, you can consistently remain wealthy relative to everyone else. True rich families understand this and teach it implicitly/explicitly to their children. Who end up being the fertile ground on which 'good teachers' have a multiplicative effect. This does not work for the poor as they lack the necessary base skills and knowledge to benefit from good teaching. Poor people still break through because circumstance often teaches people, like everyone who came from nothing on this message board, how to learn on their own without help or assistance from others. Advocating more assistance from others is not the solution. And for the same reason that sending $1T in aid to Africa has had mixed results. Knowledge cannot be taught it must be learned.
    • 11y ago
• ilovefood 11y ago
  After refusing them to get proper vaccination, let's prevent them from getting proper education. Evolution baby!
  • JshWright 11y ago
    "Vaccinations are effective at preventing disease, with minimal side effects." "Hours of homework (after 7 hours of school) is 'proper education'." Are you really claiming that those two statements have a remotely similar body of evidence supporting them?
    • ilovefood 11y ago
      They both tend to improve our ability to adapt in a hostile environment: real life. Like I said, evolution.
      • JshWright 11y ago
        I don't dispute the fact that education and vaccination are both good things. The flaw in your argument is that you are assuming that "education" and "hours of homework" are equivalent.
        • ilovefood 11y ago
          Parents weeping about their kids' "hours of homework" is the educational part here. I'm really shocked about the article and truly enjoying the comments.
          • JshWright 11y ago
            So just to be clear, you feel that 2-3 hours of homework is appropriate for a kid, after they spent 7-8 hours in school?
• c3534l 11y ago
  > An elementary school in Gaithersburg, Md., has banned homework altogether in favor of 30 minutes of nightly reading. Is this reading that's supposed to go on at home? I'm now confused as to how the article is trying to define homework. But yeah, when I was in school there'd be 8 hours at school, then 3 hours of homework. And the homework was all busy work and the time spent in school was mostly pointless as well. School probably killed my innate desire to learn more than anything else in my life. It took me a while after I graduated enjoy it again.
• FussyZeus 11y ago
  This sounds again like a problem of a system that is trying to educate a thousand different kids with a thousand different lifestyles and a thousand different home lives and a thousand different living situations all the same way, because it still operates on the basis of the organization system of the industrial revolution. Hell, we still organize our kids by their date of manufacture. Every time I read one of these it reads like "We're trying to make this 1940's era system work but it just keeps sucking more and more" and yet every time someone says we should just obliterate this thing and come up with something better, they always get shouted down by the educational establishment. unquietcode up there has a great thought, and I know I'm deep in it, but yes, I got successful in howling opposition to, not because of the education system. We sit our kids in tiny desks and have them do clerical work for 9 hours a day while high school dropouts drive Bugatti's and we wonder how our kids intrinsically know that school is worthless.
• csense 11y ago
  The problem with homework is the proportion of busywork assigned. A typical math textbook consists of several columns of fifty nearly identical problems, of which the teacher typically assigns thirty. I don't need to solve thirty quadratic equations by factoring in order to demonstrate that I know how to solve quadratic equations by factoring. The first three or four will suffice. And don't get me started on the astonishing number of assignments consisting of crosswords, word searches, paint-by-numbers, and similar activities with zero academic value.
• danans 11y ago
  It seems like the only skill that homework really builds is tolerance for being micromanaged, which I'm not sure is a good skill anyways. I recall (with angst) the ridiculous way that homework was graded in school (x% of credit taken away for every day the assignment was late). This sets people up for a terrible relationship with work by making them focus on short-term rewards/penalties instead of longer term goals, while disadvantaging individuals who don't respond well to such a micromanaged model. If we really want kids to develop well-rounded skills, we should make work about longer term projects, whose goal is very well articulated and its purpose is clear to students. At the least, we should provide multiple paths for students to make the grade, one based on homework for those who naturally do well with that environment, and another based on long term projects for those who are naturally more "bursty" in their learning process. You can still administer tests/quizzes for both types of learners to gauge their progress.
• dgrant 11y ago
  This is crazy, I don't know where I would be today if I hadn't done homework. Homework was where I really and truly learned. Independent work is so important, and it's totally different than doing something with a bunch of students in a classroom setting. Sure, the education system probably could be improved a lot. But you can't just remove homework from the current system and expect there will be no negative consequence to that. My daughter is in Grade 1 French Immersion in Canada and she is assigned a few sight words every week in French to memorize in addition to some French sounds (2 letter sounds). On top of that we try to do a bit of math here and there and some English. The teacher tells us to make it as fun as possible, so we try, sometimes I turn her sight words in to a quick board game. For math, we try to use the Bedtime Math books or the app. For reading, we read princess readers which she loves. Sometimes we try other readers and we push it, only to find out she really hates them, and sometimes the French sounds memorization is tough and painful. Can't imagine asking the teacher for less homework though, it seems like just the right amount.
  • bitL 11y ago
    You and your daughter will end up as people that can contribute something great to the society; most of the ones skipping the homework without innate talent not, and they will complain about how unfairly are they treated because they are smart. One of my piano teachers was forced to practice through tears as a kid because they saw the talent she had. She went on to becoming a world famous child prodigy playing grade 8 pieces by sight-reading with unbelievable ease. Work is required if you want to achieve something. You just need to find the right balance, and it's neither "no work" nor "work all the time".
    • derefr 11y ago
      > She went on to becoming a world famous child prodigy playing grade 8 pieces by sight-reading with unbelievable ease. ...and did that get her anywhere as an adult? It seems to me that so many people are excited when their children are ahead of the curve, doing "adult"-level things at a young age—and just assume they'll stay ahead forever, forging on beyond the norm, rather than reverting to the mean.
    • 11y ago
• Overtonwindow 11y ago
  I think homework is necessary for some subjects, like math and physics, because practice is where the learning comes from IMHO. In other subjects, homework is anachronistic. I think we should extend the school day like Japan, and build homework and social networks into the school setting.
  • JshWright 11y ago
    You want to _extend_ an 8 hour day even further?
    • aianus 11y ago
      I don't know about the U.S. but in Toronto school ran from 8:45am to 3:15pm which is 6.5 hours. My poor dad had to shift his schedule to work 7:15 to 3:15 to pick me up. It would have made a lot more sense to extend the school day by 1.5h to a standard 8h day and not assign homework.
      • JshWright 11y ago
        When I was in school (admittedly, 15 years ago...), I got on the bus at 7am and got off at 3pm. This was in upstate New York.
    • Overtonwindow 11y ago
      Absolutely! Asian and European schools have longer days, and the social activities of the kids are based in and around the school. I think it's safer, promote learning and socialization in a structured environment, and it takes pressure off of parents to worry about their children at home alone, while they're still at work. Just add an hour to the school day. Use that hour to review with the kids what they did in school that day, any questions they have, and get them started on reviewing that learning.
• neap24 11y ago
  Why the all or nothing approach? At my high school, I think we have a great policy for math homework (I am the teacher). It is assigned every day but never checked or graded. At the beginning of each class we go over any problems the students had trouble with, then move on. Students eventually reach an equilibrium where they figure out how much time they personally need to spend each night on math homework. For students who are failing tests and doing no homework, we generally suggest they do a little more.
  • eitally 11y ago
    This is totally the way to go. In my experience (I was in high school '92-'95 so this is dated), this method worked great in the advanced classes, but a lot of the remedial and "normal" track classes still focused heavily on rote memorization and quantity of work, for whatever reasons. The fact is, the best students will succeed no matter what, either because they have supportive families & social groups or because they're autodidacts, so the challenge is tackling the other 80%. In your experience, does this method work equally well no matter what the class is or who the students are?
    • neap24 11y ago
      It seems to work equally well for advanced and non-advanced students, it's just that the normal track students take a little longer to figure what the "right amount" of homework for them to do is.
• betadreamer 11y ago
  The real argument is not about whether we need homework or not. It's more about can you learn more than 7 hours or so a day? Kids are at school from 8-3 being taught by the teachers and then they have to spend an another 30min to 1hour at home. This is just too much. Homeworks are important. It's the only time that they can think by themselves and put what they learn in practice. But after being taught so long at school, kids are tired to learn. They want to play!
  • carb 11y ago
    30min to 1 hour of homework is too much? If they have seven periods a day and we assume they only average homework from each class once every few days, then the kids only have 20 minutes of homework per class. That should be the minimum for a homework assignment, not the maximum. Less time that than and no knowledge reinforcement is happening because the homework is too easy.
• Htsthbjig 11y ago
  I was extremely lucky in my work life, I am successful as entrepreneur and I believe it is because of the way I was raised as a kid in Spain. When I went out of the school I was free to do whatever I wanted to do. I never did homework but was good student, not brilliant, because I considered the extra effort was not worth it, as the extra effort for better grades was not linear but exponential. I took school seriously when I was in the school but when I am out, I am out. I rode my bike, I played soccer with my friends, I did swim in lakes or pools, I climbed mountains, I camped in the forest. All those experiences gave me probably as much as the school and trained me for free environments. I see the world as an environment I can change and I do routinely. Most people can't and I believe it is because they were trained to be good in controlled environments but just can't "think out of the box" because of their education that was so controlled. I have seen miserable kids with not a single moment of freedom in their day. A girl of my class graduated with honors in the University, got tenure and suicided. She was miserable if she did not made perfect exams, her parents were like crazy "life is work and sacrifice" nazis. They were not expected to choose their own paths, to make decisions, but were expected to follow others to be good guys. Most of the best entrepreneurs I know of had problems in the school. Most of them wanted to do things on their own early on and the adult response was repression.
• isolated 11y ago
  I graduated from high school recently. Homework was the true bane of my existence. It gnawed at my every waking thought and put a tinge of anxiety to my every moment. Am I doing it? Did I forget some? What do I need to be doing that Im not? The entire school experience is a depressing prison of course but homework is how it goes from an seven hour affair to a twenty four hour project. More than anything else it makes sure youre always at school, always worried about the evaluation of unrespectable teachers and disgusting sadists. You start to wonder if theres a way out, like any prisoner examining the prison with obsessive dedication. You follow the vine to its end and back pacing your room going through the mental anguish of knowing youre trapped and theres nothing you can do about it. (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.fr/2008/10/programmers-view-of-u...) I used to have this fantasy where Id go down to the school building in the middle of the night when nobody is there with a barrel of kerosene. Id douse the schoolhouse walls with the fetid substance and light it ablaze, laughing as the walls go up in smoke before throwing myself on the tickling flames crying and screaming and laughing in agony as I burn. Im so glad to be free.
  • civilian 11y ago
    I'm with you. I'm 28 now, working as a software engineer, and I'm loving my life. I roll into work at 10:30 and yesterday I got a raise without having to ask or negotiate for it. I have the time and money to pursue hobbies, but I also genuinely enjoy my coworkers. But high school was _rough_ for me. My grades weren't especially good, but I did a lot of AP classes. I constantly had the anxiety of homework looming over me. Looking back, I realized that I got into the state where I'd be behind on a lot of things, and once I had 5 different things on my plate it'd be really hard to prioritize them and I'd just stress myself out trying to balance them. I'd like to have children someday, but I know that there's a chance they're going to inherit my style of thinking. (My dad is the same as me-- he also graduated college just barely, also procrastinated too much in high school.) I'd really like to find some alternate form of school that still challenges my kids, but does so in a way that doesn't explode their stress levels.
• Dowwie 11y ago
  "Let kids be kids" means something different for each household. In mine, that meant video games and sports, but mostly the former. Not sure what's going to come of any no-homework generation while this happens elsewhere: "Teens in Shanghai spend 14 hours a week on homework" http://qz.com/311360/students-in-these-countries-spend-the-most-time-doing-homework/ http://qz.com/311360/students-in-these-countries-spend-the-m...
  • learc83 11y ago
    When I was in elementary school in the 90s, they used to try to scare us into working harder by telling us stories about how Japanese kids went to school half a day on Saturday. When my parents were in school it was about keeping up with the Soviets. These days, it's kids in Shanghai doing 14 hours a week of homework.
    • orless 11y ago
      We actually had 6-day studing week in Soviet Union in the school. There were normally two schifts, one ca. 8-13 and the other one ca. 14-19. After school or before school we had a few hours of homework every day, I'd say between 2 and 3 hours. More in the later classes as we were preparing for the university.
    • unsignedint 11y ago
      I remember half-day Saturdays! It was more of a global thing in Japan. Many workers actually did half a day on Saturday, so naturally were schools. Most of companies adopted 5 working day per week perhaps around the end of 80th. School was a bit late on this one, when I was in Japan (1st year in middle school; 1992) was when they were start transitioning from 5.5 to 5. Although, I have only experienced having only second Saturday of a month off. After I left Japan, in 1995, they've transitioned to 2nd and 4th Saturdays off, but It was not until 2002 schools in Japan transitioned to complete 5 day a week schedule.
• drewg123 11y ago
  We opted out of a 9/10 greatschools.org public school by second grade due, in part, to excessive homework in early elementary school (and also because of an obsession with standardized tests). My son had 15-20 minutes a night of homework in kindergarten and even more in first grade. He was a "late" (by US standards) reader, which meant that he could not be responsible for reading the instructions doing his homework himself. These nightly homework sessions were pure misery for our family. After 2 years, we felt that all they were achieving was to drum any love of learning out of our son. After 2 years in a Montessori-like school, he's reading well above grade level, doing well at math, loving science, and has transferred to a new school with a Spanish immersion program. I feel that if he'd stayed in public school, he'd be well on the way to having "learning problems"
• malcolmgreaves 11y ago
  I learned the most from _good_ homework assignments. These assignments were always multi-week (1-2) affairs. They were big, complicated, and covered a lot of things. But, since they weren't due within a day, they gave me the time to really work at them. To rack my brain against their problems and discover, on my own, how to solve them. Of course, I almost always needed to talk with my TAs, professor, and fellow students multiple times throughout the assignment. And this made me become pro-active about seeking help, which I use on a daily basis in the real world. Worksheets? Yes, I never learned a damn thing from these time wasters. I feel that mini-projects are the way to go.
• Macsenour 11y ago
  As a SCRUM teacher, I do 2 hours of talking, with Q&A, and then 3 hours of practical where we put the LEGO version of the Daily Bugle together. I learned LONG ago that my students learned so much more by DOING than by lecture. As children, why would it be reversed with homework? If anything, I should reduce the talking and add more Lego fun for kids.
• k__ 11y ago
  I never did homework in school. Got a lot of hate from the teachers, but it only lowered my grades one mark. Finished school with C+ so with homework I'd probably got B+ When I got home I played video games and later surfed the Internet and chatted all day. This changed massively when I started my undergrad studies. I didn't have to come to university, like I had to go to school, so I stayed at home. After I failed all my Math classes in the first semester I started working at home really hard in the second semester to get all the Math done. After the first year I knew how to find out what was expected in the exams, something I was missing in school. I stopped showing up at classes and just created a list of stuff that was needed for the exams. I learned this at home a month or a week before the exam and kept working/partying the rest of the semester. For my post-grad studies I switched to a remote university entirely and saved a bunch of time and money with this. Since I had to work with remote teams on group projects in the post-grad studies, I also decided that I wanted to work remote in my 'regular' job also. Long story short, I hated homework as a kid, now I only do "homework".
  • cortesoft 11y ago
    The thing that sucked about homework wasn't the fact that it was doing 'work' at 'home'... it was that it was often rote, boring, and time consuming work that did little to stimulate the brain.
• compStudent 11y ago
  As a current high school student (at a private high school that is consistently ranked as one of the top in the country, so AMA if you want), homework sucks. That is true. But the benefit to homework is that it teaches time management skills. Thanks to having hours of homework every night, I have learned to manage my time very well. For example, I spent the summer working in a University Lab. While there I spent ~10 hours a day at work, yet this still felt like a vacation to me. So yes, being busy sucks--but it ensures that students will learn how to manage their time effectively.
• orless 11y ago
  I'm really not sure if abandoning homework is a good idea. I went to school in the Soviet Union/Russia, we had ca. 5 hours school a day and around 2-3 hours of homework, 6 days a week. I surely can't provide solid scientific evidence linking homework to results in learning, but I don't think it was unreasanable. I have to admit, I mostly remember math homework, I loved math and loved math homework, it was always great fun to hack those problems and then problems with * and and * (stars for the higher difficulty). We learned concepts in the class, but we also needed to train mechanics with pure repetition. Some commenters wrote about scaling - I think repetition is exactly something which scales well in the homework, you don't really need to do this in the class with a teacher. The same for foreign language, for instance. You don't really need a teacher a classroom to memorize new words, that's perfect for the homework. So I don't think homework is unreasonable, I think it's a valid approach to "outsource" mechanical/repetitive tasks which don't require classroom or supervision. Having said that, 7 hours of school PLUS 2-3 hours of homework is definitely too much.
• lazyant 11y ago
  I'm good with a bit of homework when the kids are not too little; there's something to say for sitting down by yourself and trying to focus and figure things out or memorize a little bit (it can be done at school too or instead of at home); if students don't have a minimum of study habits, how are they going to go about hard STEM courses in universities?
• dcgoss 11y ago
  I am a sophomore in high school. In fact, I attend the same school as Zach Masterman in the article (Harriton High School), and he is in one of my classes. My one refute to his complaints is that perhaps he would have less homework if he played less games in class. Quips aside, here are my two cents. I certainly do not agree that all out of class work should be abolished. However, I do think there is a threshold at which it becomes too much. As I presume many of us on this website can relate to, there is lots to be gained through personal study and developing good individual working habits. Many students tend to complain about being forced to go to bed late, however I am willing to bet that many of these students (myself included) sometimes push their assignments back to later in the night and could go to bed earlier with more efficient scheduling. This certainly does not always hold true, sometimes there is just that much to do. Being a three season athlete I have a little less time than others, however I have found academic success. In general an HN appropriate modification of the "time triangle" (http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/09/02/6357682979153755441561145936_tumblr_m071aegWRy1r5dp6f.png http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/09/02/6357682979...) has held mostly true: Pick 3 for the day: Sleep, Academics, Sports, Programming OR Social Engagements Also, a note about my school. It is in the notorious Lower Merion School District, which is known for collecting lots of money in property taxes from the local old money who send their kids to private school. Thus, they have lots to spend per student (every student is given a new Macbook Air at the beginning of freshman year to rent for 4 years. They receive the exact same laptop every year, to incentivize keeping it in good shape. Only cost to student is $80 insurance deposit per year. The program is extremely successful.), every teacher is paid very well, great facilities, and they perform very well as a school. There is also a competitive academic culture: you are expected to do well at Harriton, and many do. Where homework plays in that equation is unclear, but take it how you will. My final point is that not everyone who isn't doing homework is sitting around watching TV or playing on their phones. Some have found a passion in something like programming, and actively pursue those passions in their free time (working on side projects, or perhaps even trying to build a company). Our district even provides a mini incubator with small amounts of seed money, free mentorship, and summer office space.
  • jrapdx3 11y ago
    > Where homework plays in that equation is unclear, but take it how you will. Sure, in the enriched environment you describe students are more likely to have the motivation to make the effort to learn and succeed. I'd guess you and your classmates are engaged with the educational process, ready, even eager to learn. Doing homework would seem the natural thing to do. By all means it's right to take advantage of such favorable circumstance. The issue for schools and students not so blessed is creating this kind of benefit. The goal won't be achieved by strengthening the factory approach to education. Piling on bureaucracy, "performance" testing, etc. will not help, rather just lead to more discouragement. I think great examples, like the one you present, give a clue. Find talented teachers (I've known a number of them, they do exist) and leave them unencumbered, let them teach. They will reach some students, and it will begin to inspire others. Perhaps they will assign homework, but then if we offer help to parents and students so they can cope with it better, homework would serve constructive purpose in augmenting learning. Technology can add to the cause, but by itself is no answer. Used wisely it may play a useful role in evolving solutions, that is, realizing it's a means to an end.
• seansmccullough 11y ago
  I always just did my homework at school in middle and high school. I graduated high school in 2009, so I imagine kids get a lot more homework now?
• learc83 11y ago
  If we're talking about high school, bring back study hall. Kids can't absorb information from lectures 7 hours a day, so why try? 7 hours a day 5 days a week (most of the year) for 13 years is surely enough time to prepare for college/trade school/apprenticeship/unskilled labor.
• iron0012 11y ago
  I am continually shocked by how willing people are to opine, completely sans any data except for their own (worthless) anecdotes, when it takes less than 5 seconds to google “homework meta-analysis”. Believe it or not, scientists have studied whether homework is worth doing before. You know, using science. Here’s one example of such a meta-analysis: https://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/review-of-educational-research-2006-cooper-1-62.pdf https://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/review-of-edu... Unsurprisingly (to me at least), homework is positively associated with improved academic performance. Was that really so hard? Was it really easier to bloviate, as nearly everyone seems wont to do, than to actually pursue the evidence?
• Ch_livecodingtv 11y ago
  I know a family in South Korea with children, who wakes up at 7 am for Grade school until 1 PM. Go to English academy the next hour, then goes to several other academies of Math, Science, Music. Comes home exhausted at 7-8 pm but has to do online tutorials for English. Plus the homework after that. The parents pity their child. But they said they don't have any choice. The classmates are too competitive. If they stop doing that their child may look stupid in school. This is pathetic. But how to stop?