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Less homework? My teenage children are in honors and AP classes and barely have any homework. I think they should have far more homework. When I was their age I

Less homework? My teenage children are in honors and AP classes and barely have any homework. I think they should have far more homework. When I was their age I spent a few hours a day on homework. Parents I talk to feel the same way. Give the kids more work to do at home to keep them off their phones and YouTube.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
Homework has been demonstrated over and over again to not result in higher attainment. If your children are so smart they can surely do some reading and research of their own. That's what I did back in prehistoric times (1960s and early 1970s). In the subjects I enjoyed I was consistently ahead of the bulk of the class and occasionally of the teachers simply because I read all the text books and spent time in the library. It was enthusiasm that drove my performance not the imposition of extra homework.
- anon__coward 3y ago
  References please. The claim that hw does not help retention sounds pretty unbelievable.
  - muaytimbo 3y ago
    HN is a fact free zone, didn't you know that?
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    From the abstract: “Although previous research has shown that homework improves students’ academic achievement, the majority of these studies use data on students’ homework time from retrospective questionnaires, which may be less accurate than time-diary data. We use data from the combined Child Development Supplement (CDS) and the Transition to Adulthood Survey (TA) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore the effects of time spent on homework while attending high school on two measures of academic achievement: high school GPA and college attendance by age 20. We find that homework time has no effect on these measures of academic achievement.” Rønning, M. (2008). Who benefits from homework assignments? (Discussion Papers No. 566). Oslo, Norway: Statistics Norway, Research Department. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ908287 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ908287 Full text available http://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp566.pdf http://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp566.pdf
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  Really? Just based on repetition and revisiting material you think it would have benefits
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    Most students do homework grudgingly. This is not like a high achieving software dev using spaced repetition.
- martindbp 3y ago
  I still don't see any data from school maximalists that schooling is anything more than signaling (beyond basic math and literacy), and that kids wouldn't be much happier if they could spend time on projects and pursuits they were passionate about instead. My son is 6 and in 6 months of a Minecraft obsession he's fluent in English (besides Swedish and Chinese), learning about all sorts of concepts like animal breeding, crop rotation and automating factories and farms and building all sorts of machinery. Meanwhile school is teaching one letter a week. I can guarantee that if you put kids like him together with a bunch of other kids with the same passion and let them go wild building stuff with some guidance from a technically competent adult, they would come out much more prepared for life at 18. Fine if your kid has no curiosity or internal drive to do anything, but then I question what they will get out of school anyway.
rybosworld 3y ago
"I had to do it, so should the younger generation" is the the same line of thinking that delayed remote work a decade longer than it needed to be, and an over emphasis on knowing how to write in cursive.
xcode42 3y ago
I mean, you are their parent, if you believe that your kids don't have enough work to do, give them more work to do? why would that need to be handled through homework? the purpose of homework is to serve as a teaching aid to help students internalize and memorize the lessons given. If your kid is an honors student it sounds like he has learned what he needs to learn, why give them more homework?
ptero 3y ago
I envy you! Both of my kids had unhealthy amount of high school homework. I know many parents whose kids stayed up until 1-2am at least once a week. We expressed strong opinions to our kids that sleep is way more important than getting an extra grade bump, but many kids still trade sleep for a better grade.
- alt227 3y ago
  Who are these kids? I have never met a child who would avoid sleep and stay up half the night to do homework. /slight sarcasm.
  - ptero 3y ago
    Do you have kids? If so, what ages? US schools have changed, a lot, in the last 30 years. Many schools now are pressure cookers on both the teachers and peer levels. So some kids stay up very late and some go on antidepressants. On the other side are schools where no one cares about academics, and the bar for good grades is no mischief. Which is also not a great school for any kid.

kwhitefoot 3y ago

Homework has been demonstrated over and over again to not result in higher attainment. If your children are so smart they can surely do some reading and research of their own. That's what I did back in prehistoric times (1960s and early 1970s). In the subjects I enjoyed I was consistently ahead of the bulk of the class and occasionally of the teachers simply because I read all the text books and spent time in the library. It was enthusiasm that drove my performance not the imposition of extra homework.

anon__coward 3y ago
References please. The claim that hw does not help retention sounds pretty unbelievable.
- muaytimbo 3y ago
  HN is a fact free zone, didn't you know that?
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  From the abstract: “Although previous research has shown that homework improves students’ academic achievement, the majority of these studies use data on students’ homework time from retrospective questionnaires, which may be less accurate than time-diary data. We use data from the combined Child Development Supplement (CDS) and the Transition to Adulthood Survey (TA) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore the effects of time spent on homework while attending high school on two measures of academic achievement: high school GPA and college attendance by age 20. We find that homework time has no effect on these measures of academic achievement.” Rønning, M. (2008). Who benefits from homework assignments? (Discussion Papers No. 566). Oslo, Norway: Statistics Norway, Research Department. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ908287 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ908287 Full text available http://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp566.pdf http://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp566.pdf
gardenhedge 3y ago
Really? Just based on repetition and revisiting material you think it would have benefits
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Most students do homework grudgingly. This is not like a high achieving software dev using spaced repetition.
martindbp 3y ago
I still don't see any data from school maximalists that schooling is anything more than signaling (beyond basic math and literacy), and that kids wouldn't be much happier if they could spend time on projects and pursuits they were passionate about instead. My son is 6 and in 6 months of a Minecraft obsession he's fluent in English (besides Swedish and Chinese), learning about all sorts of concepts like animal breeding, crop rotation and automating factories and farms and building all sorts of machinery. Meanwhile school is teaching one letter a week. I can guarantee that if you put kids like him together with a bunch of other kids with the same passion and let them go wild building stuff with some guidance from a technically competent adult, they would come out much more prepared for life at 18. Fine if your kid has no curiosity or internal drive to do anything, but then I question what they will get out of school anyway.

rybosworld 3y ago

"I had to do it, so should the younger generation" is the the same line of thinking that delayed remote work a decade longer than it needed to be, and an over emphasis on knowing how to write in cursive.

xcode42 3y ago

I mean, you are their parent, if you believe that your kids don't have enough work to do, give them more work to do? why would that need to be handled through homework? the purpose of homework is to serve as a teaching aid to help students internalize and memorize the lessons given. If your kid is an honors student it sounds like he has learned what he needs to learn, why give them more homework?

ptero 3y ago

I envy you! Both of my kids had unhealthy amount of high school homework. I know many parents whose kids stayed up until 1-2am at least once a week. We expressed strong opinions to our kids that sleep is way more important than getting an extra grade bump, but many kids still trade sleep for a better grade.

alt227 3y ago
Who are these kids? I have never met a child who would avoid sleep and stay up half the night to do homework. /slight sarcasm.
- ptero 3y ago
  Do you have kids? If so, what ages? US schools have changed, a lot, in the last 30 years. Many schools now are pressure cookers on both the teachers and peer levels. So some kids stay up very late and some go on antidepressants. On the other side are schools where no one cares about academics, and the bar for good grades is no mischief. Which is also not a great school for any kid.