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Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should we get rid of homework? Why, or why not?

Is homework an outdated, ineffective or counterproductive tool for learning? Do you agree with the authors of the paper that homework is harmful and worsens inequalities that exist between students’ home circumstances?

Or do you agree with Mr. Kang that homework still has real educational value?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do? Do you think the amount is appropriate, too much or too little? Is homework, including the projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or, in your opinion, is it not a good use of time? Explain.

In these letters to the editor , one reader makes a distinction between elementary school and high school:

Homework’s value is unclear for younger students. But by high school and college, homework is absolutely essential for any student who wishes to excel. There simply isn’t time to digest Dostoyevsky if you only ever read him in class.

What do you think? How much does grade level matter when discussing the value of homework?

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

If you were a teacher, would you assign homework? What kind of assignments would you give and why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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August 16, 2021

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in

by Sara M Moniuszko

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide-range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas over workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework .

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy work loads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold, says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace, says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.

And for all the distress homework causes, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night.

"Most students, especially at these high-achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school ," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely, but to be more mindful of the type of work students go home with, suggests Kang, who was a high-school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework, I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the last two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic, making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized... sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking assignments up can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

©2021 USA Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

• Posted January 17, 2012
• By Lory Hough

The debate over how much schoolwork students should be doing at home has flared again, with one side saying it's too much, the other side saying in our competitive world, it's just not enough.

It was a move that doesn't happen very often in American public schools: The principal got rid of homework.

This past September, Stephanie Brant, principal of Gaithersburg Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md., decided that instead of teachers sending kids home with math worksheets and spelling flash cards, students would instead go home and read. Every day for 30 minutes, more if they had time or the inclination, with parents or on their own.

"I knew this would be a big shift for my community," she says. But she also strongly believed it was a necessary one. Twenty-first-century learners, especially those in elementary school, need to think critically and understand their own learning — not spend night after night doing rote homework drills.

Brant's move may not be common, but she isn't alone in her questioning. The value of doing schoolwork at home has gone in and out of fashion in the United States among educators, policymakers, the media, and, more recently, parents. As far back as the late 1800s, with the rise of the Progressive Era, doctors such as Joseph Mayer Rice began pushing for a limit on what he called "mechanical homework," saying it caused childhood nervous conditions and eyestrain. Around that time, the then-influential Ladies Home Journal began publishing a series of anti-homework articles, stating that five hours of brain work a day was "the most we should ask of our children," and that homework was an intrusion on family life. In response, states like California passed laws abolishing homework for students under a certain age.

But, as is often the case with education, the tide eventually turned. After the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, a space race emerged, and, writes Brian Gill in the journal Theory Into Practice, "The homework problem was reconceived as part of a national crisis; the U.S. was losing the Cold War because Russian children were smarter." Many earlier laws limiting homework were abolished, and the longterm trend toward less homework came to an end.

The debate re-emerged a decade later when parents of the late '60s and '70s argued that children should be free to play and explore — similar anti-homework wellness arguments echoed nearly a century earlier. By the early-1980s, however, the pendulum swung again with the publication of A Nation at Risk , which blamed poor education for a "rising tide of mediocrity." Students needed to work harder, the report said, and one way to do this was more homework.

For the most part, this pro-homework sentiment is still going strong today, in part because of mandatory testing and continued economic concerns about the nation's competitiveness. Many believe that today's students are falling behind their peers in places like Korea and Finland and are paying more attention to Angry Birds than to ancient Babylonia.

But there are also a growing number of Stephanie Brants out there, educators and parents who believe that students are stressed and missing out on valuable family time. Students, they say, particularly younger students who have seen a rise in the amount of take-home work and already put in a six- to nine-hour "work" day, need less, not more homework.

Who is right? Are students not working hard enough or is homework not working for them? Here's where the story gets a little tricky: It depends on whom you ask and what research you're looking at. As Cathy Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework , points out, "Homework has generated enough research so that a study can be found to support almost any position, as long as conflicting studies are ignored." Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth and a strong believer in eliminating all homework, writes that, "The fact that there isn't anything close to unanimity among experts belies the widespread assumption that homework helps." At best, he says, homework shows only an association, not a causal relationship, with academic achievement. In other words, it's hard to tease out how homework is really affecting test scores and grades. Did one teacher give better homework than another? Was one teacher more effective in the classroom? Do certain students test better or just try harder?

"It is difficult to separate where the effect of classroom teaching ends," Vatterott writes, "and the effect of homework begins."

Putting research aside, however, much of the current debate over homework is focused less on how homework affects academic achievement and more on time. Parents in particular have been saying that the amount of time children spend in school, especially with afterschool programs, combined with the amount of homework given — as early as kindergarten — is leaving students with little time to run around, eat dinner with their families, or even get enough sleep.

Certainly, for some parents, homework is a way to stay connected to their children's learning. But for others, homework creates a tug-of-war between parents and children, says Liz Goodenough, M.A.T.'71, creator of a documentary called Where Do the Children Play?

"Ideally homework should be about taking something home, spending a few curious and interesting moments in which children might engage with parents, and then getting that project back to school — an organizational triumph," she says. "A nag-free activity could engage family time: Ask a parent about his or her own childhood. Interview siblings."

Instead, as the authors of The Case Against Homework write, "Homework overload is turning many of us into the types of parents we never wanted to be: nags, bribers, and taskmasters."

Leslie Butchko saw it happen a few years ago when her son started sixth grade in the Santa Monica-Malibu (Calif.) United School District. She remembers him getting two to four hours of homework a night, plus weekend and vacation projects. He was overwhelmed and struggled to finish assignments, especially on nights when he also had an extracurricular activity.

"Ultimately, we felt compelled to have Bobby quit karate — he's a black belt — to allow more time for homework," she says. And then, with all of their attention focused on Bobby's homework, she and her husband started sending their youngest to his room so that Bobby could focus. "One day, my younger son gave us 15-minute coupons as a present for us to use to send him to play in the back room. … It was then that we realized there had to be something wrong with the amount of homework we were facing."

Butchko joined forces with another mother who was having similar struggles and ultimately helped get the homework policy in her district changed, limiting homework on weekends and holidays, setting time guidelines for daily homework, and broadening the definition of homework to include projects and studying for tests. As she told the school board at one meeting when the policy was first being discussed, "In closing, I just want to say that I had more free time at Harvard Law School than my son has in middle school, and that is not in the best interests of our children."

One barrier that Butchko had to overcome initially was convincing many teachers and parents that more homework doesn't necessarily equal rigor.

"Most of the parents that were against the homework policy felt that students need a large quantity of homework to prepare them for the rigorous AP classes in high school and to get them into Harvard," she says.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.'06, sees this at Another Course to College, the Boston pilot school where she teaches math. "When a student is not completing [his or her] homework, parents usually are frustrated by this and agree with me that homework is an important part of their child's learning," she says.

As Timothy Jarman, Ed.M.'10, a ninth-grade English teacher at Eugene Ashley High School in Wilmington, N.C., says, "Parents think it is strange when their children are not assigned a substantial amount of homework."

That's because, writes Vatterott, in her chapter, "The Cult(ure) of Homework," the concept of homework "has become so engrained in U.S. culture that the word homework is part of the common vernacular."

These days, nightly homework is a given in American schools, writes Kohn.

"Homework isn't limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important. Most teachers and administrators aren't saying, 'It may be useful to do this particular project at home,'" he writes. "Rather, the point of departure seems to be, 'We've decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week). … This commitment to the idea of homework in the abstract is accepted by the overwhelming majority of schools — public and private, elementary and secondary."

Brant had to confront this when she cut homework at Gaithersburg Elementary.

"A lot of my parents have this idea that homework is part of life. This is what I had to do when I was young," she says, and so, too, will our kids. "So I had to shift their thinking." She did this slowly, first by asking her teachers last year to really think about what they were sending home. And this year, in addition to forming a parent advisory group around the issue, she also holds events to answer questions.

Still, not everyone is convinced that homework as a given is a bad thing. "Any pursuit of excellence, be it in sports, the arts, or academics, requires hard work. That our culture finds it okay for kids to spend hours a day in a sport but not equal time on academics is part of the problem," wrote one pro-homework parent on the blog for the documentary Race to Nowhere , which looks at the stress American students are under. "Homework has always been an issue for parents and children. It is now and it was 20 years ago. I think when people decide to have children that it is their responsibility to educate them," wrote another.

And part of educating them, some believe, is helping them develop skills they will eventually need in adulthood. "Homework can help students develop study skills that will be of value even after they leave school," reads a publication on the U.S. Department of Education website called Homework Tips for Parents. "It can teach them that learning takes place anywhere, not just in the classroom. … It can foster positive character traits such as independence and responsibility. Homework can teach children how to manage time."

Annie Brown, Ed.M.'01, feels this is particularly critical at less affluent schools like the ones she has worked at in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and Los Angeles as a literacy coach.

"It feels important that my students do homework because they will ultimately be competing for college placement and jobs with students who have done homework and have developed a work ethic," she says. "Also it will get them ready for independently taking responsibility for their learning, which will need to happen for them to go to college."

The problem with this thinking, writes Vatterott, is that homework becomes a way to practice being a worker.

"Which begs the question," she writes. "Is our job as educators to produce learners or workers?"

Slate magazine editor Emily Bazelon, in a piece about homework, says this makes no sense for younger kids.

"Why should we think that practicing homework in first grade will make you better at doing it in middle school?" she writes. "Doesn't the opposite seem equally plausible: that it's counterproductive to ask children to sit down and work at night before they're developmentally ready because you'll just make them tired and cross?"

Kohn writes in the American School Board Journal that this "premature exposure" to practices like homework (and sit-and-listen lessons and tests) "are clearly a bad match for younger children and of questionable value at any age." He calls it BGUTI: Better Get Used to It. "The logic here is that we have to prepare you for the bad things that are going to be done to you later … by doing them to you now."

According to a recent University of Michigan study, daily homework for six- to eight-year-olds increased on average from about 8 minutes in 1981 to 22 minutes in 2003. A review of research by Duke University Professor Harris Cooper found that for elementary school students, "the average correlation between time spent on homework and achievement … hovered around zero."

So should homework be eliminated? Of course not, say many Ed School graduates who are teaching. Not only would students not have time for essays and long projects, but also teachers would not be able to get all students to grade level or to cover critical material, says Brett Pangburn, Ed.M.'06, a sixth-grade English teacher at Excel Academy Charter School in Boston. Still, he says, homework has to be relevant.

"Kids need to practice the skills being taught in class, especially where, like the kids I teach at Excel, they are behind and need to catch up," he says. "Our results at Excel have demonstrated that kids can catch up and view themselves as in control of their academic futures, but this requires hard work, and homework is a part of it."

Ed School Professor Howard Gardner basically agrees.

"America and Americans lurch between too little homework in many of our schools to an excess of homework in our most competitive environments — Li'l Abner vs. Tiger Mother," he says. "Neither approach makes sense. Homework should build on what happens in class, consolidating skills and helping students to answer new questions."

So how can schools come to a happy medium, a way that allows teachers to cover everything they need while not overwhelming students? Conklin says she often gives online math assignments that act as labs and students have two or three days to complete them, including some in-class time. Students at Pangburn's school have a 50-minute silent period during regular school hours where homework can be started, and where teachers pull individual or small groups of students aside for tutoring, often on that night's homework. Afterschool homework clubs can help.

Some schools and districts have adapted time limits rather than nix homework completely, with the 10-minute per grade rule being the standard — 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 30 minutes for third-graders, and so on. (This remedy, however, is often met with mixed results since not all students work at the same pace.) Other schools offer an extended day that allows teachers to cover more material in school, in turn requiring fewer take-home assignments. And for others, like Stephanie Brant's elementary school in Maryland, more reading with a few targeted project assignments has been the answer.

"The routine of reading is so much more important than the routine of homework," she says. "Let's have kids reflect. You can still have the routine and you can still have your workspace, but now it's for reading. I often say to parents, if we can put a man on the moon, we can put a man or woman on Mars and that person is now a second-grader. We don't know what skills that person will need. At the end of the day, we have to feel confident that we're giving them something they can use on Mars."

Read a January 2014 update.

Homework Policy Still Going Strong

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Research shows less is more..

Posted August 1, 2017

Homework may be the greatest extinguisher of curiosity ever invented - Alfie Kohen, author of The Homework Myth

Sweeping our country is a new trend, which I love: No homework! Many parents are singing the praises of these policies, which remove the nightly nagging of “Have you done your homework?” Plus it frees up time where parents can genuinely connect with their child whether over dinner, or gardening in the backyard without the stress of impending schoolwork. Of course, the no homework program isn’t for every principal although I really think in early elementary school there’s no downside and research even reveals that, too!

Studies show

In 2006, Harris Cooper shared his meta-analytic study, which found homework in elementary school (K-5th grade) does not contribute to academic achievement. Said differently: Homework has become just busy work in the United States, and children aren’t learning anything additional from it. And let’s be honest, at one point a child’s homework becomes a parents homework and even I’m regularly guilty of pulling my calculator out to double check my child’s work. But Cooper’s study isn’t black and white: There were modest gains for middle and high school students, so it looks like the developmental window of early childhood is the place where homework isn’t necessarily beneficial.

Recently, Heidi Maier, the new superintendent of Marion County in FL, which has 42,000 students made national news because she not only is banning homework, but is replacing it with 20 minutes of reading per night. Studies clearly show that young students gain from reading nightly, being read to and picking books of interest to them. Mark Trifilio, principal of the Orchard School in VT, eliminated HW last year and suggested replacing it with nightly reading, playing outdoors or even eating with your family. He reports students haven’t fallen behind, but now they have “time to be creative thinkers at home and follow their passions” ( The Washington Post , Feb 26, 2017).

The subtext of a “no homework” policy in elementary schools is saying: We trust our teachers, we trust the curriculum, and we trust our students to pay attention as well as learn during the day. No homework for kindergarten through fifth grade doesn’t erase learning, but helps students tolerate an often long day better and encourages them to pursue their unique interests after-school from reading and writing to taking photographs. Abbey, age nine, is one of my child client’s without homework and she’s created a website to share her “nature photos through her eyes.”

Counterintuitive classrooms

Western societies often think “more is better” but when it comes to homework the exact opposite may be true for young and perhaps even older children. A study conducted at Stanford University in 2013 showed the amped up stress and physical ailments high school students face especially when spending too much time on their homework. So perhaps a “no homework” policy early-on can position students to find balance in their lives, which can serve them later on. I especially love replacing homework with reading because I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of reading with a child, and how books open a child’s mind to new worlds whether it’s Hogwarts or the Ice Age. And after all isn’t the point of childhood to have fun and learn in a multitude of ways?

By Maureen Healy

Maureen Healy writes and speaks widely on the subjects of children’s emotional health, education and parenting . She also continues to work directly with children and their parents globally. To learn more about her books, sessions or programs: www.growinghappykids.com or @mdhealy

The Washington Post – July 17, 2017 Why this superintendent is banning homework – and asking kids to read

The Washington Post - February 26, 2017 What happened when one school banned homework – and asked kids to read and play instead

Healthline – April 11, 2017 Is too much homework bad for kids’ health?

CBS News – Sept 26, 2016 Growing number of elementary schools now homework free

The Battle Over Homework by Harris Cooper (2007)

Maureen Healy is an author, speaker and expert working with parents, teachers and children globally. Her most recent book is The Emotionally Healthy Child.

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Delving into the Perspectives of Teachers in No Homework Policy: A Qualitative Investigation

International Journal of Research Publications

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The impact of no homework policy: a comprehensive analysis.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The No Homework Policy, a revolutionary concept in the education sector, has been a subject of intense debate among educators, parents, and students alike. This policy, which aims to eliminate or significantly reduce homework, has been met with both applause and criticism. This article delves into the impact of the No Homework Policy, drawing from personal experiences of teachers and students who have been significantly affected by it.

The Traditional Role of Homework

Historically, homework has been viewed as an essential tool for reinforcing what students learn during the school day, preparing for upcoming lessons, and providing parents with a window into their children’s academic progress. However, critics argue that homework often leads to stress and burnout, infringes on students’ personal time, and exacerbates social inequalities.

The Student Perspective

From a student’s perspective, the No Homework Policy has had a profound impact. Many students have reported feeling less stressed and more able to balance their academic responsibilities with extracurricular activities and family time. However, some students feel that the policy has made it more difficult for them to retain information and fully understand the material taught in class.

The Teacher Perspective

Teachers, too, have had mixed reactions to the No Homework Policy. Some teachers feel that the policy allows them to focus more on in-class instruction and less on grading homework. However, others worry that without homework, students may not be getting enough practice with new concepts.

The Impact on Learning

Research has shown that homework can play a significant role in reinforcing the concepts taught in class. However, excessive homework can lead to burnout and stress, negatively impacting a student’s ability to learn and retain information. The No Homework Policy aims to strike a balance, reducing the burden of homework while ensuring that students still have opportunities to practice and reinforce what they’ve learned.

The Impact on Family Time

One of the significant benefits of the No Homework Policy is the potential for increased family time. With less homework to complete, students have more time to spend with their families, engage in hobbies, and simply relax and recharge. This can lead to improved mental health and overall well-being for students.

Effects on Educators

Educators have also experienced a variety of reactions to the No Homework Policy. For some, the policy has allowed them to shift their focus towards more in-depth in-class instruction, reducing the time spent on grading homework. However, there are concerns among others that the absence of homework may limit students’ opportunities to practice new concepts.

Influence on the Educational Landscape

The No Homework Policy has also left its mark on the broader educational landscape. It has challenged conventional norms and prompted educators to reconsider their teaching methodologies. While some educational institutions have welcomed the policy, others have shown resistance, resulting in a diverse array of practices across different schools and districts.

The Impact on Parent-Teacher Relationships

The No Homework Policy has also affected the relationships between parents and teachers. With less homework to monitor, parents may feel less involved in their child’s education. On the other hand, some parents have welcomed the policy, appreciating the reduced stress and increased family time it provides.

Implications for Student Success

The debate around the No Homework Policy’s influence on student success is ongoing. Some studies indicate that homework can boost academic outcomes, particularly for older students. Conversely, other research highlights that an overabundance of homework can lead to student burnout and disengagement, potentially negatively affecting academic success in the long term.

Final Thoughts

In wrapping up, the No Homework Policy is a complex issue with a broad range of implications. It’s evident that this policy has instigated significant changes in the experiences of both educators and learners. As we continue to navigate this conversation, it’s crucial to consider these personal experiences and aim for a balanced approach that encourages learning while also prioritizing the wellbeing of students and teachers.

Looking Forward

As we cast our gaze towards the future of education, it’s important to continually assess the effects of the No Homework Policy. As an increasing number of schools adopt this policy, we’ll gain a more comprehensive understanding of its impact on students, teachers, and the educational landscape as a whole. It’s also key to explore other strategies that can offer the benefits of homework, such as practice and reinforcement of learning, without leading to undue stress and burnout.

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Statement on the no-homework policy bills

PASIG CITY, August 28, 2019 – With its issuance of the “Guidelines on Giving Homework or Assignment to All Public Elementary School Pupils,” otherwise known as DepEd Memorandum No. 392, series 2010, the Department of Education (DepEd) reiterates its commitment to the holistic development of learners inside and outside the classroom.

The said issuance aims to enable learners to have more quality time with their parents, family, and friends by limiting the homework/assignment to a reasonable quantity on school days and by eliminating the same during weekends.

It is in this regard that the Department supports the no-homework policy proposed by legislators from the House of Representatives. By ensuring that they complete all assignments and projects in school, the no-homework policy enables our learners to find balance between their academic development and personal growth by having ample time for enjoyable activities with family.

The Department will further study the other provisions of the bills to determine the repercussions on the current teaching and learning process.

Unveiling the parents’ perceptions on no-homework policy in Nangan Elementary School

• Roy Galenzoga Garing Nangan Elementary School, Davao Oriental, Philippines https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5389-5811

This qualitative-phenomenological study was initiated to explore and understand the lived experiences and different perceptions of parents on no-homework policy in Nangan Elementary School, Nangan, Governor Generoso, Davao Oriental. Subsequently, this qualitative exploration hoped to draw out conclusions on the perceptions of the parents. The data source in this study derived from seven (7) research participants for the in-depth interview and another seven (7) parents for the focus group discussion. The research participants of this study were the selected Grade Five to Grade Six parents in Nangan Elementary School who were usually having many assignments compared to lower grade levels. The following themes emerged from analysis based in the perspectives of participant interviews: no-homework policy can be optional; no-homework policy is unfavorable and unhelpful to students; no-homework policy causes students to become irresponsible; and no-homework policy causes less learning among students. Concerning the experiences of parents in dealing with the assignments of their children, five major themes were manifested such as: having difficulties in answering homework; being able to help children; having fun while doing the assignment; being unable to finish work or chores; and bonding opportunity. Moreover, the participants about their challenges in dealing with the assignments of their children, four major themes emerged: understanding how to answer the lesson; having balance and time management; giving encouragement; and having follow-ups and rules. Lastly, their suggestions as regards the no-homework policy revealed four emergent themes: parents should always be responsible and helpful to their children; parents should have time management and balance; teachers should give appropriate, simple and uncostly homework; and teachers should give homework to students for continued learning.

Author Biography

Roy galenzoga garing, nangan elementary school, davao oriental, philippines.

Nangan Elementary School, Davao Oriental, Philippines

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• NEWS FEATURE
• 21 May 2024

Harassment of scientists is surging — institutions aren’t sure how to help

• Bianca Nogrady 0

Bianca Nogrady is a freelance science journalist based in Sydney, Australia.

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As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health, Peter Hotez was no stranger to online harassment and threats. But then the abuse showed up on his doorstep.

It was a Sunday during a brutal Texas heatwave in June 2023 when a man turned up at Hotez’s home, filming himself as he shouted questions at the scientist, who is a paediatrician and virologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Because of the long-running online and real-life abuse he has faced, Hotez now has the Texas Medical Center Police, Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff’s Office on speed dial, an agent tasked to him from the FBI and extra security whenever he speaks publicly.

“This is a very powerful adversarial force that is seeking to undermine science, and now it’s not only going after the science. It’s going after the scientists,” he says.

Hotez is an especially well-known scientist, but his experience is far from unique. Every day around the world, scientists are being abused and harassed online. They are being attacked on social media and by e-mail, telephone, letter and in person. And their reputations are being smeared with baseless accusations of misconduct. Sometimes, this escalates to real-world confrontations and attacks.

‘I hope you die’: how the COVID pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists

Such threats to scientists aren’t new; those researching climate change and gun control, for example, have endured abuse for decades. However, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an unprecedented escalation in the intensity and frequency of attacks, and the range of targets, say researchers. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the most high-profile infectious-diseases specialists during the pandemic, was subject not just to online trolling, but to two credible attempts on his life that prompted the arrests of two people. Virologist Marc Van Ranst at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and his family were moved to a safe house after a far-right soldier hunted them.

It’s not just scientists with a public profile in the crosshairs; those targeted include mathematical disease modellers, pharmacologists, physicists and fluid-dynamics researchers, who have never previously had any media attention.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be someone who’s active on social media,” says Sarah Sobieraj, a sociologist researching digital abuse and harassment at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “The visibility that brings attention to you could come from any number of sources that are not of your own doing.” Scientists have been attacked for private lectures and conference presentations that are shared online, studies published in journals, research work done for government agencies and even private Facebook posts shared publicly without their consent.

Researchers say that the surge in abuse is showing no signs of slowing down, even as the pandemic itself slips from the headlines. “All the data that we do have points to it increasing rather than decreasing; it’s certainly getting quite prolific,” says Lyndal Byford, director of news and partnerships at the Australian Science Media Centre in Adelaide. “I’m hearing a lot from universities and research organizations that they’re seeing it as an increasing problem.”

However, universities and research institutions are often slow to respond to this fast-moving threat, and the support they offer can frequently fall short , say many researchers who have experienced harassment. “Too often, we’re off on our own, not getting the backing of the institutions,” says Hotez.

Microbiologist who was harassed during COVID pandemic sues university

This issue has led to a court case in New Zealand, in which microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles is suing her employer , the University of Auckland, over the way it has responded to the ongoing harassment she has experienced since early 2020, which included online attacks and people confronting her in public. Wiles’s lawsuit alleges that the university “failed in their duty to keep her safe in her employment”. (The university says that it took numerous steps to ensure Wiles’s safety.)

The lawsuit and other high-profile cases have prompted a broader discussion among researchers, universities and other organizations about how best to respond to this kind of harassment. There is a growing recognition that online abuse and other types of attack can cause serious harm to individual scholars and to universities and research institutions. If researchers can’t communicate openly without facing abuse, “then really one of our core missions is being quite substantially damaged”, says Emma Johnston, a marine ecologist and deputy vice-chancellor of research at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Supporting scientists

Public-health researcher Tara Kirk Sell at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, became a target for online harassment and abuse after she started appearing on conservative television networks at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to talk about COVID-19. She and her colleague Beth Resnick, also a public-health researcher, decided to look into how many other people at Bloomberg were experiencing harassment; Sell was far from alone.

“We’re lucky,” says Sell, about the supportive leadership at their institution. The researchers were asked if they had any ideas about how to tackle the issue. So they put together a working group of people from across the university, and interviewed people who had experienced abuse to find out what could help.

“The most important thing really is that people feel like their institution supports them,” Sell says. The challenge is getting that support to them quickly and easily, with as few barriers to access as possible.

The approach they chose was to set up a dedicated e-mail address that staff can forward messages to if they receive abusive communications or posts on social media. That triggers an automatic alert to the campus security team as well as to Sell and Resnick. The staff member gets an immediate automated response with information about institutional support they can access, including counselling, the communications team and emergency-contact details for the security team.

Security will automatically get in touch with the affected person in two business days. Sell and Resnick also personally contact the staff member to make sure they’re all right.

Researchers Peter Hotez (centre) and Tara Kirk Sell (right) at a congressional hearing in 2020. Credit: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg/Getty

That ‘one-stop shop’ approach is crucial for dealing with online abuse and harassment, says Byford, because otherwise people facing these problems are at risk of falling between the cracks of organizational structures. “Everybody sees that it’s a big issue, but it’s not always clear who within that university structure is the right person to take control,” she says.

A multi-disciplinary team approach is key for handling harassment, says Bram van der Meer, a threat-assessment specialist at Dantes Psychology Services in Voorburg, the Netherlands, which works with organizations to manage problematic workplace situations. Van der Meer calls these groups ‘social-safety expert teams’ and says they should include people from various departments such as security, human resources, legal and university leadership. Such teams would have expertise and training in swiftly triaging threats and deciding on the best course of action, while also supporting an individual who is on the receiving end of the abuse.

But social-safety expert teams are no use if people don’t know about them or are hesitant to report to them. “There has to be a lot of advertisement about the existence of this group,” van der Meer says. He suggests that the university have an ambassador for the programme, who can help to raise the profile of the support service and encourage staff to make use of it.

Often people delay reporting harassment — or don’t report at all — until a situation escalates. Van der Meer says one of the most common reasons for this is that individuals are worried about the professional consequences of raising an issue, such as what their colleagues will think. They also worry that they are overstating or exaggerating the problem.

Sobieraj says women are often wary of reporting abuse and harassment, because they don’t want to be perceived as being ‘whiny’. The material itself can also be embarrassing to talk about. “If somebody has sent you a doctored image of yourself that’s pornographic or the commentary is talking about your presumed sexual behaviour, this is kind of embarrassing to talk about, or humiliating,” she says.

But under-reporting can hamper an institution’s ability to build a true picture of the problem and understand how serious or widespread it is. “I only see when one person e-mails me,” says Sell about receiving a harassing message. ”But I don’t know if that person’s e-mailing 50 other people in the department.”

Knowing about shared experiences also has its benefits. Johnston says the University of Sydney has found that being able to speak to others who have gone through the same thing can help those who are experiencing abuse. “They know that they’re not alone, and they form their own support network, they can share best responses and resilience tricks,” she says.

Online abuse and harassment is isolating, and can lead to serious psychological and professional harm, particularly for individuals who are already vulnerable or at a systemic disadvantage, says Alice Marwick, a communications researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “People who are first-generation academics, or people of colour, or queer folks or women, these are already people who are bearing enormous burdens.”

Marwick thinks that abuse is discouraging researchers from working on certain subjects that might attract unwanted attention. “I think that there’s a lot of people who are interested in studying controversial topics who don’t want to study them because they’re worried about this kind of backlash,” she says. She and her colleagues have published a guide to help researchers and academic institutions deal with harassment (see go.nature.com/4dhsxv4 ).

Tailored strategies

The stereotype of an Internet troll has long been of a lone individual hiding behind anonymity. But as Hotez’s experience has shown, the harassment can come from all levels of society. Sometimes it comes from other academics, even at the same institution. Sometimes it can come in the form of spurious complaints of research misconduct made through official channels.

Such attacks warrant different strategies that might include a public statement of support from the scientist’s institution. “We put out statements in support about academics’ right to present their work, free from harassment, and the right to present their expertise,” says Johnston, although she adds that the university doesn’t take a political stance or position on the topic at issue.

And releasing a statement of support can be complicated if the attacks come from the political sphere, because universities, funding bodies and other scientific institutions are expected to remain politically neutral. During the pandemic, scientists in the United States often came under criticism from right-leaning politicians, which led to cases of harassment.

COVID scientists in the public eye need protection from threats

In the United States, says Hotez, “the aggression against science and scientists is coming from one political party, and the extreme element of one political party”. So when scientific institutions remain neutral, that policy “favours the tormentors”, says Hotez. “More often than not, the scientists are kind of hung out to dry.”

Politically motivated harassment has happened in other countries, too. For example, supporters of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro tried to sue microbiologist and science communicator Natalia Pasternak for her criticisms of the Bolsonaro government’s response to COVID-19. In New Zealand, far-right activists opposed the government’s actions during the pandemic, and scientists involved in COVID-19 research. “We saw coordinated, targeted, networked abuse,” says Natalia D’Souza, a consultant on cyberbullying and cyberabuse, and board member of Netsafe, a non-profit organization focused on online safety in Auckland, New Zealand. “What comes to mind is particularly alt-right groups, who co-opt research either to serve their own agenda or to attack and discredit research and academics themselves.”

Spurious complaints of misconduct are another challenge for scientific institutions to manage. Johnston says the University of Sydney takes all complaints seriously and will follow standard policies and procedures in the first instance. But if there are repeated complaints by or against the same individual, and no new material is provided, the university will ask the complainant to cease and desist. “We can also send messages to key people who have received this information, that we’ve done a full investigation and we have found no substance to their complaints,” she says. “That’s a proactive measure to help protect their reputation.”

It can be particularly difficult to deal with harassment that comes from, or is prompted by the comments of, another academic. “Some of the most impactful abuse and harassment comes from peers and colleagues,” Byford says. It’s also been a source of frustration for Hotez, seeing his equally respected peers spreading what he sees as disinformation.

Geneticist Jack Heinemann at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, who was an expert witness for Wiles’s case, says that academic freedom does allow people to be wrong, as long as they don’t use defamatory language or promote violence when criticizing others’ work. “The most appropriate way to deal with somebody who is squarely within their academic freedom is to use your academic freedom to confront them.”

But Heinemann argues that university researchers who are communicating about their field of expertise should be supported and protected while doing so, rather than being cloistered or advised to limit their communications. “Otherwise, what you do is, you pit a harm against an activity,” he says. “You put yourself into the position where you’re constantly trading off academic freedom for safety.”

Nature 629 , 748-750 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01468-9

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Harvard leaders adopt policy to avoid speaking officially on social, political topics

• Carrie Jung

Harvard leadership will no longer issue official statements on social or political matters unless they directly affect the “core function of the university,” the school announced Tuesday.

Going forward, administrators said they will only issue statements on behalf of the university on issues that pertain to the school's core values, such as academic freedom and having an open environment for research.

“The university’s leaders are hired for their skill in leading an institution of higher education, not their expertise in public affairs,” the report released by an eight-member working group stated. “When speaking in their official roles, therefore, they should restrict themselves to matters within their area of institutional expertise and responsibility: the running of a university.”

Harvard’s new stance comes amid a tumultuous year on campus shortly after the beginning of the war in Gaza last October that gave rise to campus protests and divisions between students, faculty, staff and alumni.

The report was issued by a faculty-led group that formed in April and calls itself the Institutional Voice Working Group. It was created as part of a Harvard initiative aimed at cultivating constructive dialogue, academic freedom and open inquiry on campus.

"We have accepted the faculty Working Group’s report and recommendations, which also have been endorsed by the Harvard Corporation," interim President Alan Garber wrote to members of the school community in an email Tuesday.

The directive applies to any individual who can speak on behalf of the university, including the president, provost, deans and other administrative leaders, the report said.

Members of the working group said their recommendations and the new policy do not call for absolute institutional neutrality, where a university declines to take a public position on any social or political matter, such as the stance adopted by the University of Chicago in 1967 amid Vietnam War protests.

Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor and the working group's co-chair, said Harvard leaders can still speak officially on the school's core values, as well as anything that has to do with running a university.

"That's their zone of expertise and they shouldn't be neutral about that," he said in an interview. "The university as a whole is not expert in foreign policy. The university as a whole is not expert in domestic policy."

Feldman added the working group was not a direct response to Harvard's struggles around responding to the war in Gaza and the resulting protests and encampments. But, he said the tensions did highlight the fact that official guidance was sorely needed.

"If the university had a clear policy in place that people understood, then it would become much harder for anyone, either outside or inside the university to criticize the university, either for failing to take a stance or for taking too strong a stance or for taking the stance is not the stance that they wanted the university to take," he added.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay came under strong rebuke for her remarks shortly after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel — first, for the delayed timing of her statement and then for not more forcefully condemning the attacks.

In a Q&A with the Harvard Gazette , the official news channel of Harvard, working group co-chair and philosophy professor Alison Simmons expanded on the timing of the new policy. She cited the rapid dissemination of messaging through social media and the "extreme political polarization" of these times as barriers to controlling university communications or peoples' responses to them.

"These two changes were certainly on display in the wake of Oct. 7. But they have been in place for quite some time," Simmons told the outlet. "And the combination of these two new realities has made it important to form a policy."

The recommendations from the working group were created and written by eight Harvard faculty members from a variety of backgrounds and personal politics with representatives from departments like theology, education, public health and law. Members also conducted surveys and interviews with more than 1,000 faculty members and students.

"One of the main takeaways that came through in the listening sessions is that almost no one is particularly happy with the statements that the university has issued in the past," said working group member Martin West who is also the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

West acknowledges that the new policy will likely take some getting used to, in part because the public has grown accustomed to hearing from institutional leaders when a major world event happens. He hopes university leaders will take the time to remind the community that, with the new policy in place, the lack of a statement does not reflect a lack of concern. In fact, he hopes the move will cultivate a more inclusive environment on campus.

"I think it will take our community some time to adjust to the new reality," said West.

• Students walk out of Harvard commencement
• Harvard Corporation won't give diplomas to 13 students, despite faculty vote
• How Mass. colleges responded to student protest encampments

Carrie Jung Senior Reporter, Education Carrie is a senior education reporter.

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Harvard adopts a policy of silence on public matters that don’t ‘affect the university’s core function’

After months of controversy over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard University said Tuesday that its administration will no longer issue official statements about public matters unless they directly affect “the university’s core function.”

The school made the announcement more than a month after an Institutional Voice Working Group was established to consider whether Harvard should stop taking positions on weighty social and political matters. It comes as institutions around the country debate whether to adopt such policies, and at the end of an academic year in which many campus communities have been torn apart by division over the war.

“The integrity and credibility of the institution are compromised when the university speaks officially on matters outside its institutional area of expertise,” the working group said in its report, which was accepted by Harvard’s administration.

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“The process of translating these principles into concrete practice will, of course, require time and experience, and we look forward to the work ahead,” Harvard officials said in a letter to the campus community.

However, the Harvard working group noted “the university is not a neutral institution.”

“It values open inquiry, expertise, and diverse points of view, for these are the means through which it pursues truth,” read the report. “The policy of speaking officially only on matters directly related to the university’s core function, not beyond, serves those values.”

Harvard was engulfed in controversy last fall over what to say about the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and Israel’s deadly counteroffensive in Gaza. Then-president Claudine Gay was widely criticized for issuing a statement on the attacks that many saw as late and weak, especially compared with Harvard’s unequivocal statements after other wrenching world events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A chorus of professors and administrators proposed a simple solution: silence.

In the months since, momentum built inside Harvard and at other universities to embrace some form of “institutional neutrality.”

Institutional neutrality is not a new idea. In the modern academic era, it dates to 1967, when the University of Chicago adopted a policy of neutrality to avoid taking sides over the Vietnam War. The Chicago guidelines provided exceptions for extraordinary issues that “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry,” and situations “involving university ownership of property, its receipt of funds, its awarding of honors, its membership in other organizations.”

A smattering of other schools have adopted similar policies since then, while some university leaders have observed the principle even if they didn’t codify it into their schools’ policies.

The idea was, however, until recently a fairly obscure concept debated within the academy. But since Oct. 7 plunged many American universities into turmoil and thrust their leaders into debates over an intractable conflict, schools from Cambridge to California have begun to consider institutional neutrality as a matter of official policy.

Columbia’s University Senate adopted institutional neutrality in a unanimous vote in February. Faculty groups at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University are pushing their leaders to do the same.

Proponents argue that adopting such policies can make universities more governable and protect their mission of fostering open inquiry. Universities, they say, should be forums for debates, not participants in them.

Harvard’s working group, appointed by interim president Alan Garber, said the policy Harvard embraced could not fairly be called neutrality.

Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor and cochair of the working group, said in an interview that the university can’t be “value-neutral because we stand for some very specific and concrete things like pursuing the truth through reason and argument.” It’s part of the university’s job to defend those values, he said.

“What we’re focusing on is, the university should speak when it is expert,” he said.

Many people, said Feldman, believe “that they know what the morally correct stand is on an issue” and many of them would like the university to adopt their worldview.

Critics, however, say bowing out of the public discussion is just a way for universities to avoid taking morally correct but controversial stands.

And, they note, universities take positions in ways other than public statements — some endowments, for example, invest in fossil fuel stocks and some schools accept donations from representatives of autocratic regimes. One of the central demands of the Harvard demonstrators was for the university to divest from all connections, whether financial or institutional, in Israel.

Violet Barron, who just completed her sophomore year at Harvard, was among those suspended for participating in the encampment in Harvard Yard. She said the new policy “absolves Harvard of a responsibility it has to respond and comment on investments that are not neutral.”

“I see this as an excuse to stray away from questions that it is obligated to answer,” said Barron.

Lara Jirmanus, a physician and clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, compared the policy to a “bureaucratic sleight of hand,” believing it will act as a smokescreen “to hide the very political decisions the university makes on a daily basis.”

“Every decision at a university is highly political,” Jirmanus said. “From what is taught, to who gets tenure, to how Harvard invests its $50 billion endowment .”

The most fundamental political role universities play, she said, “is to define what is considered truth, not to make one-off statements on political affairs.”

A cochair of the Harvard working group, Alison Simmons, said in an e-mail Tuesday, “We do not pretend that our recommendation solves all problems or answers every question.

”Our focus was on official statements, which alone pose enough concern to warrant our attention,” said Simmons, a philosophy professor at Harvard.

Janet Halley, a law professor at Harvard, said in an e-mail that she hopes the new policy “will usher in a new era, an entirely new ‘weather,’ around statements from leadership at Harvard.”

Gay’s brief tenure as the first Black president of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university came to a bitter end in January over controversies stemming from the war, campus antisemitism, and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly works.

Gay’s troubles began when she was sharply criticized for failing to immediately respond to a student group’s open letter essentially blaming Israel for Hamas’s attacks, and then for failing to condemn the letter forcefully enough. The university tried again with a stronger statement the next day, but the damage was already done. The situation escalated with allegations that Gay was too slow to respond to reports of resurgent campus antisemitism.

This spring, Garber refused to negotiate with the protesters over divestment, although he acknowledged the “profound grief that many in our community feel over the tragic effects” of the war, and said there will be “deep disagreements and strongly felt emotions as we experience pain and distress over events” in the world.

The fight over divestment from Israel is unlikely to disappear, however. Just last week, Harvard’s commencement was disrupted when hundreds of students walked out about halfway through in solidarity with 13 classmates who were barred from receiving diplomas because of their involvement in the encampment.

Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge-based criminal defense and civil liberties attorney, was among those who welcomed the new policy. Schools, he said, should be centers where all points of view can be debated, and universities incur all sorts of problems when they stake out political stances.

“I am elated,” said Silverglate, who attended Harvard Law School. “Universities, for umpteen reasons . . . should not have foreign policies and should not take political positions.”

Mike Damiano and Hilary Burns of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @Danny__McDonald .