A story in the Washington Post, As Homework Grows, So Do Arguments Against It by Valerie Krauss, Tuesday, September 12, 2006, Page A04, says the common wisdom on school homework is wrong.
Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework — except reading and some basic skills practice
High school students studying until dawn probably are wasting their time because there is no academic benefit after two hours a night; for middle-schoolers, 1 1/2 hours
Even short homework assignments may be counterproductive, for few teachers know how to prepare assignments that lead to learning. The teachers are often following the mandate of school boards whose members have no education or experience in learning.
Parents and school officials draw on truthiness to support their belief that the more homework, the better. (Truthiness is when a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts.)
Truthiness may be at the root of some pushback we’re encountering in the Unworkshops. If you already know in your gut that blogs are frivolous and search learning is a waste of time, it’s tough to buy into using them to foster learning.
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I know of a school with no homework, and no mandatory classes either. It’s called Fairhaven School and is located just outside Washington D.C.. Here’s the trailer of a documentary that was filmed there:
http://www.newamericanschoolhouse.com/trailer.htm
Jay,
If teachers would spend less time lecturing to students and encouraging them to seek out, evaluate and decontruct knowledge there would be no need for homework. Students would be working with knowledge as a opposed to being bombarded with the “truthiness” of a teachers wisdom. Technology has the power to help student become better critical thinkers versus cattle led to beleive what is being given them.
Jay, my reactions to “Homework Sucks” cover both ends of the spectrum: I believe in the value of homework, broadly defined, but find it rarely effective in practice.
Just as I believe that 80% or more of critical job learning happens outside formal, traditional learning environments (classroom or computer-mediated), I’m pretty sure that 80% or more of critical childhood learning (including both academic and life skills) occurs outside of school, mediated by parents, peers, and the community.
And just as I believe that we must provide the content, structure, and “channels” for on the job learning without delivering it, I feel that our schools should at least help structure learning outside school hours. Homework should be a component of that structure, though hardly the whole package. (I’d like to see High School students required to submit a portfolio of work outside school hours, including meaningful community service.)
All nice in theory, but reality intrudes.
* A core assumption is that parents and, to a lesser extent, the community are capable of implementing whatever learning structures we propose outside of school hours. Too often, that’s not possible, particularly in the case of the poor or poorly educated - who often lack the skills and knowledge to serve as coaches to their children, who lack the time as they struggle at multiple jobs to make ends meet, and who lack the access to technology so essential to learning these days.
* Too often, homework assignments are not well designed to achieve learning. Much of the homework my children have been assigned has had little or no value; it’s busywork, and as often as not, not even reviewed or graded in class. Or at the other extreme, the homework covers new material not well explained in textbooks (don’t get me started on the poor quality of student texts!) and so a challenge to even the most educated parents’ ability to coach their children.
* There’s plenty of blame to go around: teachers who don’t get it; notoriously poor teacher training; administrators and local school boards who have everything but learning on their agendas; textbooks that try to be glitzy at the expense of usability, chock full of generalizations, half-truths, and outright falsehoods that dumb our students down, and so on.
Another interesting read on this topic. Published in Maclean’s magazine, September 15, 2006.
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/education/article.jsp?content=20060911_133063_133063
Homework is soo bad..i hate it i want it to burn in the firey deapths of hell. … its a wasteof time.. i think i have better things to do . god. get it right , get it right get it tight
I am currently in my 3rd year of teaching 6th grade. I am not a fan of homework. I personally feel like it is just a big waste of time on both the part of the teacher and the student. I don’t typically assign homework to my students. It is amazing how many parents call or send a note because they are concerned that their child isn’t bringing home any homework! I cannot keep up with grading and planning and all of the other tasks that go along with teaching. I think that teacher burn out is due in part to the inability to catch up with grading. Well, here’s an idea: stop assigning so much work! The only time that I can think of in my education experience when homework has been helpful is when it was exploratory; when I was searching or investigating a topic. All the “busy work” such as complete problems 1-30 in your math book doesn’t do any good. What if the student is doing the assignment incorrectly? Do they learn to do the problems the wrong way?
I had a professor for college algebra that gave us the answers to every assignment. Our task was to try to match his answers. Now this I learned from. I wasn’t just hoping to get the correct answer. I worked the problems through and when my answer did not match his, I tried again until it did.
Bottom line, homework creates more work for the teacher and it doesn’t even help the student! Why is it that parents think students should have to have homework? Doesn’t it just create stress for them as well?
i take classes on two different highschool campuses the teachers don’t other to check as to not give 4 tests on the same day or projects at the same time. I get so much math homework it usually takes 2-3 hours. The worst part about it is that there Are only like 10 problems, usually being proofing, i feel like a never mak any progress. I get home from crew at 7:00 and literally work on homeork till 11:00-12:00. I know what you will say, quit crew. Yeah well screw that i shouldn’t have so much homework that i can’t participate in sports or clubs, let alone do things with friends. The school system in general sucks. School is a form of learning meant aid in education not become a lifestyle.
I think homework is the worst thing EVER!! i mean we all have better things to do and i think that teachers should spend less time talking and giving us maybe half the period finish up what we have… But my stupid teacher gives us soo much homework and talks the whole freakin period..and it makes me soo madd because she gives us our homework and the end of the day and then we dont have any time to finish it!!!!
I am totally against that because if she gives us more than 6 homeworks a day… then i will stabb her in her dream!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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