the argument against homework

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7 Research-Based Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework: Academic Insights, Opposing Perspectives & Alternatives

In recent years, the question of why students should not have homework has become a topic of intense debate among educators, parents, and students themselves. This discussion stems from a growing body of research that challenges the traditional view of homework as an essential component of academic success. The notion that homework is an integral part of learning is being reevaluated in light of new findings about its effectiveness and impact on students’ overall well-being.

The push against homework is not just about the hours spent on completing assignments; it’s about rethinking the role of education in fostering the well-rounded development of young individuals. Critics argue that homework, particularly in excessive amounts, can lead to negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, and a diminished love for learning. Moreover, it often disproportionately affects students from disadvantaged backgrounds, exacerbating educational inequities. The debate also highlights the importance of allowing children to have enough free time for play, exploration, and family interaction, which are crucial for their social and emotional development.

Checking 13yo’s math homework & I have just one question. I can catch mistakes & help her correct. But what do kids do when their parent isn’t an Algebra teacher? Answer: They get frustrated. Quit. Get a bad grade. Think they aren’t good at math. How is homework fair??? — Jay Wamsted (@JayWamsted) March 24, 2022

As we delve into this discussion, we explore various facets of why reducing or even eliminating homework could be beneficial. We consider the research, weigh the pros and cons, and examine alternative approaches to traditional homework that can enhance learning without overburdening students.

Once you’ve finished this article, you’ll know:

• Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts →
• 7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework →
• Opposing Views on Homework Practices →
• Exploring Alternatives to Homework →

Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts: Diverse Perspectives on Homework

In the ongoing conversation about the role and impact of homework in education, the perspectives of those directly involved in the teaching process are invaluable. Teachers and education industry experts bring a wealth of experience and insights from the front lines of learning. Their viewpoints, shaped by years of interaction with students and a deep understanding of educational methodologies, offer a critical lens through which we can evaluate the effectiveness and necessity of homework in our current educational paradigm.

Check out this video featuring Courtney White, a high school language arts teacher who gained widespread attention for her explanation of why she chooses not to assign homework.

Here are the insights and opinions from various experts in the educational field on this topic:

“I teach 1st grade. I had parents ask for homework. I explained that I don’t give homework. Home time is family time. Time to play, cook, explore and spend time together. I do send books home, but there is no requirement or checklist for reading them. Read them, enjoy them, and return them when your child is ready for more. I explained that as a parent myself, I know they are busy—and what a waste of energy it is to sit and force their kids to do work at home—when they could use that time to form relationships and build a loving home. Something kids need more than a few math problems a week.” — Colleen S. , 1st grade teacher

“The lasting educational value of homework at that age is not proven. A kid says the times tables [at school] because he studied the times tables last night. But over a long period of time, a kid who is drilled on the times tables at school, rather than as homework, will also memorize their times tables. We are worried about young children and their social emotional learning. And that has to do with physical activity, it has to do with playing with peers, it has to do with family time. All of those are very important and can be removed by too much homework.” — David Bloomfield , education professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York graduate center

“Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…) Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, ‘Is it really making a difference?’” — John Hattie , professor

”Many kids are working as many hours as their overscheduled parents and it is taking a toll – psychologically and in many other ways too. We see kids getting up hours before school starts just to get their homework done from the night before… While homework may give kids one more responsibility, it ignores the fact that kids do not need to grow up and become adults at ages 10 or 12. With schools cutting recess time or eliminating playgrounds, kids absorb every single stress there is, only on an even higher level. Their brains and bodies need time to be curious, have fun, be creative and just be a kid.” — Pat Wayman, teacher and CEO of HowtoLearn.com

7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework

Let’s delve into the reasons against assigning homework to students. Examining these arguments offers important perspectives on the wider educational and developmental consequences of homework practices.

1. Elevated Stress and Health Consequences

The ongoing debate about homework often focuses on its educational value, but a vital aspect that cannot be overlooked is the significant stress and health consequences it brings to students. In the context of American life, where approximately 70% of people report moderate or extreme stress due to various factors like mass shootings, healthcare affordability, discrimination, racism, sexual harassment, climate change, presidential elections, and the need to stay informed, the additional burden of homework further exacerbates this stress, particularly among students.

Key findings and statistics reveal a worrying trend:

• Overwhelming Student Stress: A staggering 72% of students report being often or always stressed over schoolwork, with a concerning 82% experiencing physical symptoms due to this stress.
• Serious Health Issues: Symptoms linked to homework stress include sleep deprivation, headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems.
• Sleep Deprivation: Despite the National Sleep Foundation recommending 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep for healthy adolescent development, students average just 6.80 hours of sleep on school nights. About 68% of students stated that schoolwork often or always prevented them from getting enough sleep, which is critical for their physical and mental health.
• Turning to Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: Alarmingly, the pressure from excessive homework has led some students to turn to alcohol and drugs as a way to cope with stress.

This data paints a concerning picture. Students, already navigating a world filled with various stressors, find themselves further burdened by homework demands. The direct correlation between excessive homework and health issues indicates a need for reevaluation. The goal should be to ensure that homework if assigned, adds value to students’ learning experiences without compromising their health and well-being.

By addressing the issue of homework-related stress and health consequences, we can take a significant step toward creating a more nurturing and effective educational environment. This environment would not only prioritize academic achievement but also the overall well-being and happiness of students, preparing them for a balanced and healthy life both inside and outside the classroom.

2. Inequitable Impact and Socioeconomic Disparities

In the discourse surrounding educational equity, homework emerges as a factor exacerbating socioeconomic disparities, particularly affecting students from lower-income families and those with less supportive home environments. While homework is often justified as a means to raise academic standards and promote equity, its real-world impact tells a different story.

The inequitable burden of homework becomes starkly evident when considering the resources required to complete it, especially in the digital age. Homework today often necessitates a computer and internet access – resources not readily available to all students. This digital divide significantly disadvantages students from lower-income backgrounds, deepening the chasm between them and their more affluent peers.

Key points highlighting the disparities:

• Digital Inequity: Many students lack access to necessary technology for homework, with low-income families disproportionately affected.
• Impact of COVID-19: The pandemic exacerbated these disparities as education shifted online, revealing the extent of the digital divide.
• Educational Outcomes Tied to Income: A critical indicator of college success is linked more to family income levels than to rigorous academic preparation. Research indicates that while 77% of students from high-income families graduate from highly competitive colleges, only 9% from low-income families achieve the same . This disparity suggests that the pressure of heavy homework loads, rather than leveling the playing field, may actually hinder the chances of success for less affluent students.

Moreover, the approach to homework varies significantly across different types of schools. While some rigorous private and preparatory schools in both marginalized and affluent communities assign extreme levels of homework, many progressive schools focusing on holistic learning and self-actualization opt for no homework, yet achieve similar levels of college and career success. This contrast raises questions about the efficacy and necessity of heavy homework loads in achieving educational outcomes.

The issue of homework and its inequitable impact is not just an academic concern; it is a reflection of broader societal inequalities. By continuing practices that disproportionately burden students from less privileged backgrounds, the educational system inadvertently perpetuates the very disparities it seeks to overcome.

3. Negative Impact on Family Dynamics

Homework, a staple of the educational system, is often perceived as a necessary tool for academic reinforcement. However, its impact extends beyond the realm of academics, significantly affecting family dynamics. The negative repercussions of homework on the home environment have become increasingly evident, revealing a troubling pattern that can lead to conflict, mental health issues, and domestic friction.

A study conducted in 2015 involving 1,100 parents sheds light on the strain homework places on family relationships. The findings are telling:

• Increased Likelihood of Conflicts: Families where parents did not have a college degree were 200% more likely to experience fights over homework.
• Misinterpretations and Misunderstandings: Parents often misinterpret their children’s difficulties with homework as a lack of attention in school, leading to feelings of frustration and mistrust on both sides.
• Discriminatory Impact: The research concluded that the current approach to homework disproportionately affects children whose parents have lower educational backgrounds, speak English as a second language, or belong to lower-income groups.

The issue is not confined to specific demographics but is a widespread concern. Samantha Hulsman, a teacher featured in Education Week Teacher , shared her personal experience with the toll that homework can take on family time. She observed that a seemingly simple 30-minute assignment could escalate into a three-hour ordeal, causing stress and strife between parents and children. Hulsman’s insights challenge the traditional mindset about homework, highlighting a shift towards the need for skills such as collaboration and problem-solving over rote memorization of facts.

The need of the hour is to reassess the role and amount of homework assigned to students. It’s imperative to find a balance that facilitates learning and growth without compromising the well-being of the family unit. Such a reassessment would not only aid in reducing domestic conflicts but also contribute to a more supportive and nurturing environment for children’s overall development.

4. Consumption of Free Time

In recent years, a growing chorus of voices has raised concerns about the excessive burden of homework on students, emphasizing how it consumes their free time and impedes their overall well-being. The issue is not just the quantity of homework, but its encroachment on time that could be used for personal growth, relaxation, and family bonding.

Authors Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish , in their book “The Case Against Homework,” offer an insightful window into the lives of families grappling with the demands of excessive homework. They share stories from numerous interviews conducted in the mid-2000s, highlighting the universal struggle faced by families across different demographics. A poignant account from a parent in Menlo Park, California, describes nightly sessions extending until 11 p.m., filled with stress and frustration, leading to a soured attitude towards school in both the child and the parent. This narrative is not isolated, as about one-third of the families interviewed expressed feeling crushed by the overwhelming workload.

Key points of concern:

• Excessive Time Commitment: Students, on average, spend over 6 hours in school each day, and homework adds significantly to this time, leaving little room for other activities.
• Impact on Extracurricular Activities: Homework infringes upon time for sports, music, art, and other enriching experiences, which are as crucial as academic courses.
• Stifling Creativity and Self-Discovery: The constant pressure of homework limits opportunities for students to explore their interests and learn new skills independently.

The National Education Association (NEA) and the National PTA (NPTA) recommend a “10 minutes of homework per grade level” standard, suggesting a more balanced approach. However, the reality often far exceeds this guideline, particularly for older students. The impact of this overreach is profound, affecting not just academic performance but also students’ attitudes toward school, their self-confidence, social skills, and overall quality of life.

Furthermore, the intense homework routine’s effectiveness is doubtful, as it can overwhelm students and detract from the joy of learning. Effective learning builds on prior knowledge in an engaging way, but excessive homework in a home setting may be irrelevant and uninteresting. The key challenge is balancing homework to enhance learning without overburdening students, allowing time for holistic growth and activities beyond academics. It’s crucial to reassess homework policies to support well-rounded development.

5. Challenges for Students with Learning Disabilities

Homework, a standard educational tool, poses unique challenges for students with learning disabilities, often leading to a frustrating and disheartening experience. These challenges go beyond the typical struggles faced by most students and can significantly impede their educational progress and emotional well-being.

Child psychologist Kenneth Barish’s insights in Psychology Today shed light on the complex relationship between homework and students with learning disabilities:

• Homework as a Painful Endeavor: For students with learning disabilities, completing homework can be likened to “running with a sprained ankle.” It’s a task that, while doable, is fraught with difficulty and discomfort.
• Misconceptions about Laziness: Often, children who struggle with homework are perceived as lazy. However, Barish emphasizes that these students are more likely to be frustrated, discouraged, or anxious rather than unmotivated.
• Limited Improvement in School Performance: The battles over homework rarely translate into significant improvement in school for these children, challenging the conventional notion of homework as universally beneficial.

These points highlight the need for a tailored approach to homework for students with learning disabilities. It’s crucial to recognize that the traditional homework model may not be the most effective or appropriate method for facilitating their learning. Instead, alternative strategies that accommodate their unique needs and learning styles should be considered.

In conclusion, the conventional homework paradigm needs reevaluation, particularly concerning students with learning disabilities. By understanding and addressing their unique challenges, educators can create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment. This approach not only aids in their academic growth but also nurtures their confidence and overall development, ensuring that they receive an equitable and empathetic educational experience.

6. Critique of Underlying Assumptions about Learning

The longstanding belief in the educational sphere that more homework automatically translates to more learning is increasingly being challenged. Critics argue that this assumption is not only flawed but also unsupported by solid evidence, questioning the efficacy of homework as an effective learning tool.

Alfie Kohn , a prominent critic of homework, aptly compares students to vending machines in this context, suggesting that the expectation of inserting an assignment and automatically getting out of learning is misguided. Kohn goes further, labeling homework as the “greatest single extinguisher of children’s curiosity.” This critique highlights a fundamental issue: the potential of homework to stifle the natural inquisitiveness and love for learning in children.

The lack of concrete evidence supporting the effectiveness of homework is evident in various studies:

• Marginal Effectiveness of Homework: A study involving 28,051 high school seniors found that the effectiveness of homework was marginal, and in some cases, it was counterproductive, leading to more academic problems than solutions.
• No Correlation with Academic Achievement: Research in “ National Differences, Global Similarities ” showed no correlation between homework and academic achievement in elementary students, and any positive correlation in middle or high school diminished with increasing homework loads.
• Increased Academic Pressure: The Teachers College Record published findings that homework adds to academic pressure and societal stress, exacerbating performance gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

These findings bring to light several critical points:

• Quality Over Quantity: According to a recent article in Monitor on Psychology , experts concur that the quality of homework assignments, along with the quality of instruction, student motivation, and inherent ability, is more crucial for academic success than the quantity of homework.
• Counterproductive Nature of Excessive Homework: Excessive homework can lead to more academic challenges, particularly for students already facing pressures from other aspects of their lives.
• Societal Stress and Performance Gaps: Homework can intensify societal stress and widen the academic performance divide.

The emerging consensus from these studies suggests that the traditional approach to homework needs rethinking. Rather than focusing on the quantity of assignments, educators should consider the quality and relevance of homework, ensuring it truly contributes to learning and development. This reassessment is crucial for fostering an educational environment that nurtures curiosity and a love for learning, rather than extinguishing it.

7. Issues with Homework Enforcement, Reliability, and Temptation to Cheat

In the academic realm, the enforcement of homework is a subject of ongoing debate, primarily due to its implications on student integrity and the true value of assignments. The challenges associated with homework enforcement often lead to unintended yet significant issues, such as cheating, copying, and a general undermining of educational values.

Key points highlighting enforcement challenges:

• Difficulty in Enforcing Completion: Ensuring that students complete their homework can be a complex task, and not completing homework does not always correlate with poor grades.
• Reliability of Homework Practice: The reliability of homework as a practice tool is undermined when students, either out of desperation or lack of understanding, choose shortcuts over genuine learning. This approach can lead to the opposite of the intended effect, especially when assignments are not well-aligned with the students’ learning levels or interests.
• Temptation to Cheat: The issue of cheating is particularly troubling. According to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education , under the pressure of at-home assignments, many students turn to copying others’ work, plagiarizing, or using creative technological “hacks.” This tendency not only questions the integrity of the learning process but also reflects the extreme stress that homework can induce.
• Parental Involvement in Completion: As noted in The American Journal of Family Therapy , this raises concerns about the authenticity of the work submitted. When parents complete assignments for their children, it not only deprives the students of the opportunity to learn but also distorts the purpose of homework as a learning aid.

In conclusion, the challenges of homework enforcement present a complex problem that requires careful consideration. The focus should shift towards creating meaningful, manageable, and quality-driven assignments that encourage genuine learning and integrity, rather than overwhelming students and prompting counterproductive behaviors.

Addressing Opposing Views on Homework Practices

While opinions on homework policies are diverse, understanding different viewpoints is crucial. In the following sections, we will examine common arguments supporting homework assignments, along with counterarguments that offer alternative perspectives on this educational practice.

1. Improvement of Academic Performance

Homework is commonly perceived as a means to enhance academic performance, with the belief that it directly contributes to better grades and test scores. This view posits that through homework, students reinforce what they learn in class, leading to improved understanding and retention, which ultimately translates into higher academic achievement.

However, the question of why students should not have homework becomes pertinent when considering the complex relationship between homework and academic performance. Studies have indicated that excessive homework doesn’t necessarily equate to higher grades or test scores. Instead, too much homework can backfire, leading to stress and fatigue that adversely affect a student’s performance. Reuters highlights an intriguing correlation suggesting that physical activity may be more conducive to academic success than additional homework, underscoring the importance of a holistic approach to education that prioritizes both physical and mental well-being for enhanced academic outcomes.

2. Reinforcement of Learning

Homework is traditionally viewed as a tool to reinforce classroom learning, enabling students to practice and retain material. However, research suggests its effectiveness is ambiguous. In instances where homework is well-aligned with students’ abilities and classroom teachings, it can indeed be beneficial. Particularly for younger students , excessive homework can cause burnout and a loss of interest in learning, counteracting its intended purpose.

Furthermore, when homework surpasses a student’s capability, it may induce frustration and confusion rather than aid in learning. This challenges the notion that more homework invariably leads to better understanding and retention of educational content.

3. Development of Time Management Skills

Homework is often considered a crucial tool in helping students develop important life skills such as time management and organization. The idea is that by regularly completing assignments, students learn to allocate their time efficiently and organize their tasks effectively, skills that are invaluable in both academic and personal life.

However, the impact of homework on developing these skills is not always positive. For younger students, especially, an overwhelming amount of homework can be more of a hindrance than a help. Instead of fostering time management and organizational skills, an excessive workload often leads to stress and anxiety . These negative effects can impede the learning process and make it difficult for students to manage their time and tasks effectively, contradicting the original purpose of homework.

4. Preparation for Future Academic Challenges

Homework is often touted as a preparatory tool for future academic challenges that students will encounter in higher education and their professional lives. The argument is that by tackling homework, students build a foundation of knowledge and skills necessary for success in more advanced studies and in the workforce, fostering a sense of readiness and confidence.

Contrarily, an excessive homework load, especially from a young age, can have the opposite effect . It can instill a negative attitude towards education, dampening students’ enthusiasm and willingness to embrace future academic challenges. Overburdening students with homework risks disengagement and loss of interest, thereby defeating the purpose of preparing them for future challenges. Striking a balance in the amount and complexity of homework is crucial to maintaining student engagement and fostering a positive attitude towards ongoing learning.

5. Parental Involvement in Education

Homework often acts as a vital link connecting parents to their child’s educational journey, offering insights into the school’s curriculum and their child’s learning process. This involvement is key in fostering a supportive home environment and encouraging a collaborative relationship between parents and the school. When parents understand and engage with what their children are learning, it can significantly enhance the educational experience for the child.

However, the line between involvement and over-involvement is thin. When parents excessively intervene by completing their child’s homework,  it can have adverse effects . Such actions not only diminish the educational value of homework but also rob children of the opportunity to develop problem-solving skills and independence. This over-involvement, coupled with disparities in parental ability to assist due to variations in time, knowledge, or resources, may lead to unequal educational outcomes, underlining the importance of a balanced approach to parental participation in homework.

Exploring Alternatives to Homework and Finding a Middle Ground

In the ongoing debate about the role of homework in education, it’s essential to consider viable alternatives and strategies to minimize its burden. While completely eliminating homework may not be feasible for all educators, there are several effective methods to reduce its impact and offer more engaging, student-friendly approaches to learning.

Alternatives to Traditional Homework

• Project-Based Learning: This method focuses on hands-on, long-term projects where students explore real-world problems. It encourages creativity, critical thinking, and collaborative skills, offering a more engaging and practical learning experience than traditional homework. For creative ideas on school projects, especially related to the solar system, be sure to explore our dedicated article on solar system projects .
• Flipped Classrooms: Here, students are introduced to new content through videos or reading materials at home and then use class time for interactive activities. This approach allows for more personalized and active learning during school hours.
• Reading for Pleasure: Encouraging students to read books of their choice can foster a love for reading and improve literacy skills without the pressure of traditional homework assignments. This approach is exemplified by Marion County, Florida , where public schools implemented a no-homework policy for elementary students. Instead, they are encouraged to read nightly for 20 minutes . Superintendent Heidi Maier’s decision was influenced by research showing that while homework offers minimal benefit to young students, regular reading significantly boosts their learning. For book recommendations tailored to middle school students, take a look at our specially curated article .

Ideas for Minimizing Homework

• Limiting Homework Quantity: Adhering to guidelines like the “ 10-minute rule ” (10 minutes of homework per grade level per night) can help ensure that homework does not become overwhelming.
• Quality Over Quantity: Focus on assigning meaningful homework that is directly relevant to what is being taught in class, ensuring it adds value to students’ learning.
• Homework Menus: Offering students a choice of assignments can cater to diverse learning styles and interests, making homework more engaging and personalized.
• Integrating Technology: Utilizing educational apps and online platforms can make homework more interactive and enjoyable, while also providing immediate feedback to students. To gain deeper insights into the role of technology in learning environments, explore our articles discussing the benefits of incorporating technology in classrooms and a comprehensive list of educational VR apps . These resources will provide you with valuable information on how technology can enhance the educational experience.

For teachers who are not ready to fully eliminate homework, these strategies offer a compromise, ensuring that homework supports rather than hinders student learning. By focusing on quality, relevance, and student engagement, educators can transform homework from a chore into a meaningful component of education that genuinely contributes to students’ academic growth and personal development. In this way, we can move towards a more balanced and student-centric approach to learning, both in and out of the classroom.

Useful Resources

• Is homework a good idea or not? by BBC
• The Great Homework Debate: What’s Getting Lost in the Hype
• Alternative Homework Ideas

The evidence and arguments presented in the discussion of why students should not have homework call for a significant shift in homework practices. It’s time for educators and policymakers to rethink and reformulate homework strategies, focusing on enhancing the quality, relevance, and balance of assignments. By doing so, we can create a more equitable, effective, and student-friendly educational environment that fosters learning, well-being, and holistic development.

• “Here’s what an education expert says about that viral ‘no-homework’ policy”, Insider
• “John Hattie on BBC Radio 4: Homework in primary school has an effect of zero”, Visible Learning
• HowtoLearn.com
• “Time Spent On Homework Statistics [Fresh Research]”, Gitnux
• “Stress in America”, American Psychological Association (APA)
• “Homework hurts high-achieving students, study says”, The Washington Post
• “National Sleep Foundation’s updated sleep duration recommendations: final report”, National Library of Medicine
• “A multi-method exploratory study of stress, coping, and substance use among high school youth in private schools”, Frontiers
• “The Digital Revolution is Leaving Poorer Kids Behind”, Statista
• “The digital divide has left millions of school kids behind”, CNET
• “The Digital Divide: What It Is, and What’s Being Done to Close It”, Investopedia
• “COVID-19 exposed the digital divide. Here’s how we can close it”, World Economic Forum
• “PBS NewsHour: Biggest Predictor of College Success is Family Income”, America’s Promise Alliance
• “Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background”, Taylor & Francis Online
• “What Do You Mean My Kid Doesn’t Have Homework?”, EducationWeek
• “Excerpt From The Case Against Homework”, Penguin Random House Canada
• “How much homework is too much?”, neaToday
• “The Nation’s Report Card: A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading”, National Center for Education Statistics
• “Battles Over Homework: Advice For Parents”, Psychology Today
• “How Homework Is Destroying Teens’ Health”, The Lion’s Roar
• “ Breaking the Homework Habit”, Education World
• “Testing a model of school learning: Direct and indirect effects on academic achievement”, ScienceDirect
• “National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling”, Stanford University Press
• “When school goes home: Some problems in the organization of homework”, APA PsycNet
• “Is homework a necessary evil?”, APA PsycNet
• “Epidemic of copying homework catalyzed by technology”, Redwood Bark
• “High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame”, The Chronicle of Higher Education
• “Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background”, ResearchGate
• “Kids who get moving may also get better grades”, Reuters
• “Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003”, SageJournals
• “Is it time to get rid of homework?”, USAToday
• “Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework”, Stanford
• “Florida school district bans homework, replaces it with daily reading”, USAToday
• “Encouraging Students to Read: Tips for High School Teachers”, wgu.edu
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Simona Johnes is the visionary being the creation of our project. Johnes spent much of her career in the classroom working with students. And, after many years in the classroom, Johnes became a principal.

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School Life Balance , Tips for Online Students

The Pros and Cons of Homework

Updated: December 7, 2023

Published: January 23, 2020

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

Photo by  energepic.com  from  Pexels

Why should students have homework, 1. homework encourages practice.

Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .

2. Homework Gets Parents Involved

Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.

3. Homework Teaches Time Management

Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.

4. Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication

Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.

5. Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.

6. Homework Reduces Screen Time

Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

1. homework encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework.

While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom.

Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.

2. Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home

While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .

3. Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job

School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.

4. Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results

Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success.

The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements.

It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity.

Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.

5. Homework Assignments Are Overdone

The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however.

On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

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This post has been updated as of December 2017.

It’s not uncommon to hear students, parents, and even some teachers always complaining about homework. Why, then, is homework an inescapable part of the student experience? Worksheets, busy work, and reading assignments continue to be a mainstay of students’ evenings.

Whether from habit or comparison with out-of-class work time in other nations, our students are getting homework and, according to some of them, a LOT of it. Educators and policy makers must ask themselves—does assigning homework pay off?

Is there evidence that homework benefits students younger than high school?

The Scholastic article Is Homework Bad? references Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , in which he says, “There is no evidence to demonstrate that homework benefits students below high school age.”

The article goes on to note that those who oppose homework focus on the drawbacks of significant time spent on homework, identifying one major negative as homework’s intrusion into family time. They also point out that opponents believe schools have decided homework is necessary and thus assign it simply to assign some kind of homework, not because doing the work meets specifically-identified student needs.

“Busy work” does not help students learn

Students and parents appear to carry similar critiques of homework, specifically regarding assignments identified as busy work—long sheets of repetitive math problems, word searches, or reading logs seemingly designed to make children dislike books.

When asked how homework can negatively affect children, Nancy Kalish, author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It , says that many homework assignments are “simply busy work” that makes learning “a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience.”

Commenters on the piece, both parents and students, tended to agree. One student shared that on occasion they spent more time on homework than at school, while another commenter pointed out that, “We don’t give slow-working children a longer school day, but we consistently give them a longer homework day.”

Without feedback, homework is ineffective

The efficacy of the homework identified by Kalish has been studied by policy researchers as well. Gerald LeTendre, of Penn State’s Education Policy Studies department points out that the shotgun approach to homework, when students all receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed individually with the student, is “not very effective.”  He goes on to say that, “If there’s no feedback and no monitoring, the homework is probably not effective.”

Researchers from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia had similar findings in their study, “ When Is Homework Worth The Time ?” According to UVAToday, these researchers reported no “substantive difference” in the grades of students related to homework completion.

As researcher Adam Maltese noted, “Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be.” The report further suggested that while not all homework is bad, the type and quality of assignments and their differentiation to specific learners appears to be an important point of future research.

If homework is assigned, it should heighten understanding of the subject

The Curry School of Education report did find a positive association between standardized test performance and time spent on homework, but standardized test performance shouldn’t be the end goal of assignments—a heightened understanding and capability with the content material should.

As such, it is important that if/when teachers assign homework assignments, it is done thoughtfully and carefully—and respectful of the maximum times suggested by the National Education Association, about 10 minutes per night starting in the first grade, with an additional 10 minutes per year after.

Continue reading — The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.

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Special Topic / The Case For and Against Homework

The Case for Homework

The case against homework, the dangers of ignoring the research, grade level, time spent on homework, parent involvement, going beyond the research.

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Special Topic / The Case For and Against Homework - table

Two meta-analyses by Cooper and colleagues (Cooper, 1989a; Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006) are the most comprehensive and rigorous. The 1989 meta-analysis reviewed research dating as far back as the 1930s; the 2006 study reviewed research from 1987 to 2003. Commenting on studies that attempted to examine the causal relationship between homework and student achievement by comparing experimental (homework) and control (no homework) groups, Cooper, Robinson, and Patall (2006) noted, With only rare exceptions, the relationship between the amount of homework students do and their achievement outcomes was found to be positive and statistically significant. Therefore, we think it would not be imprudent, based on the evidence in hand, to conclude that doing homework causes improved academic achievement. (p. 48)

In a third book, The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (2006a), Kohn took direct aim at the research on homework. In this book and in a recent article in Phi Delta Kappan (2006b), he became quite personal in his condemnation of researchers. For example, referring to Harris Cooper, the lead author of the two leading meta-analyses on homework, Kohn noted, A careful reading of Cooper's own studies . . . reveals further examples of his determination to massage the numbers until they yield something—anything—on which to construct a defense of homework for younger children. (2006a, p. 84)He also attacked a section on homework in our book Classroom Instruction that Works (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).

• Grades 4–6: ES = .15 (Percentile gain = 6)
• Grades 7–9: ES = .31 (Percentile gain = 12)
• Grades 10–12: ES = .64 (Percentile gain = 24)

The pattern clearly indicates that homework has smaller effects at lower grade levels. Even so, Cooper (1989b) still recommended homework for elementary students because homework for young children should help them develop good study habits, foster positive attitudes toward school, and communicate to students the idea that learning takes work at home as well as at school. (p. 90)

• For students in the earliest grades , it should foster positive attitudes, habits, and character traits; permit appropriate parent involvement; and reinforce learning of simple skills introduced in class.
• For students in upper elementary grades , it should play a more direct role in fostering improved school achievement.
• In 6th grade and beyond , it should play an important role in improving standardized test scores and grades.

One of the more contentious issues in the homework debate is the amount of time students should spend on homework. The Cooper synthesis (1989a) reported that for junior high school students, the benefits increased as time increased, up to 1 to 2 hours of homework a night, and then decreased. The Cooper, Robinson, and Patall (2006) study reported similar findings: 7 to 12 hours of homework per week produced the largest effect size for 12th grade students. The researchers suggested that for 12th graders the optimum amount of homework might lie between 1.5 and 2.5 hours per night, but they cautioned that no hard-and-fast rules are warranted. Still, researchers have offered various recommendations. For example, Good and Brophy (2003) cautioned that teachers must take care not to assign too much homework. They suggested that homework must be realistic in length and difficulty given the students' abilities to work independently. Thus, 5 to 10 minutes per subject might be appropriate for 4th graders, whereas 30 to 60 minutes might be appropriate for college-bound high school students. (p. 394)

Cooper, Robinson, and Patall (2006) also issued a strong warning about too much homework: Even for these oldest students, too much homework may diminish its effectiveness or even become counterproductive. (p 53)

• Parents receive clear guidelines spelling out their role.
• Teachers do not expect parents to act as experts regarding content or to attempt to teach the content.
• Parents ask questions that help students clarify and summarize what they have learned.

Good and Brophy (2003) provided the following recommendations regarding parent involvement: Especially useful for parent-child relations purposes are assignments calling for students to show or explain their written work or other products completed at school to their parents and get their reactions (Epstein, 2001; Epstein, Simon, & Salinas, 1997) or to interview their parents to develop information about parental experiences or opinions relating to topics studied in social studies (Alleman & Brophy, 1998). Such assignments cause students and their parents or other family members to become engaged in conversations that relate to the academic curriculum and thus extend the students' learning. Furthermore, because these are likely to be genuine conversations rather than more formally structured teaching/learning tasks, both parents and children are likely to experience them as enjoyable rather than threatening. (p. 395)

Riehl (2006) pointed out the similarity between education research and medical research. She commented, When reported in the popular media, medical research often appears as a blunt instrument, able to obliterate skeptics or opponents by the force of its evidence and arguments. . . . Yet repeated visits to the medical journals themselves can leave a much different impression. The serious medical journals convey the sense that medical research is an ongoing conversation and quest, punctuated occasionally by important findings that can and should alter practice, but more often characterized by continuing investigations. These investigations, taken cumulatively, can inform the work of practitioners who are building their own local knowledge bases on medical care. (pp. 27–28)

Research-Based Homework Guidelines

Assign purposeful homework. Legitimate purposes for homework include introducing new content, practicing a skill or process that students can do independently but not fluently, elaborating on information that has been addressed in class to deepen students' knowledge, and providing opportunities for students to explore topics of their own interest.

Design homework to maximize the chances that students will complete it. For example, ensure that homework is at the appropriate level of difficulty. Students should be able to complete homework assignments independently with relatively high success rates, but they should still find the assignments challenging enough to be interesting.

Involve parents in appropriate ways (for example, as a sounding board to help students summarize what they learned from the homework) without requiring parents to act as teachers or to police students' homework completion.

Carefully monitor the amount of homework assigned so that it is appropriate to students' age levels and does not take too much time away from other home activities.

Balli, S. J. (1998). When mom and dad help: Student reflections on parent involvement with homework. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 31 (3), 142–148.

Bangert-Drowns, R. L., Kulik, C. C., Kulik, J. A., & Morgan, M. (1991). The instructional effects of feedback in test-like events. Review of Educational Research, 61 (2), 213–238.

Bennett, S., & Kalish, N. (2006). The case against homework: How homework is hurting our children and what we can do about it . New York: Crown.

Bloom, B. S. (1984). The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to one tutoring. Educational Leadership, 41 (8), 4–18.

Cooper, H. (1989a). Homework . White Plains, NY: Longman.

Cooper, H. (1989b). Synthesis of research on homework. Educational Leadership, 47 (3), 85–91.

Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987–2003. Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1–62.

Corno, L. (1996). Homework is a complicated thing. Educational Researcher, 25 (8), 27–30.

Epstein, J. (2001). School, family, and community partnerships: Preparing educators and improving schools . Boulder, CO: Westview.

Epstein, J. L., & Becker, H. J. (1982). Teachers' reported practices of parent involvement: Problems and possibilities. Elementary School Journal, 83 , 103–113.

Fraser, B. J., Walberg, H. J., Welch, W. W., & Hattie, J. A. (1987). Synthesis of educational productivity research [Special issue]. International Journal of Educational Research, 11 (2), 145–252.

Gill, B. P., & Schlossman, S. L. (2000). The lost cause of homework reform. American Journal of Education, 109 , 27–62.

Good, T. L., & Brophy, J. E. (2003). Looking in classrooms (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Graue, M. E., Weinstein, T., & Walberg, H. J. (1983). School-based home instruction and learning: A quantitative synthesis. Journal of Educational Research, 76 , 351–360.

Hattie, J. A. (1992). Measuring the effects of schooling. Australian Journal of Education, 36 (1), 5–13.

Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., Bassler, O. C., & Burow, R. (1995). Parents' reported involvement in students' homework: Strategies and practices. The Elementary School Journal, 95 (5), 435–450.

Kavale, K. A. (1988). Using meta-analyses to answer the question: What are the important influences on school learning? School Psychology Review, 17 (4), 644–650.

Kohn, A. (2006a). The homework myth: Why our kids get too much of a bad thing . Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Kohn, A. (2006b). Abusing research: The study of homework and other examples. Phi Delta Kappan. 88 (1), 9–22.

Kralovec, E., & Buell, J. (2000). The end of homework: How homework disrupts families, overburdens children, and limits learning . Boston: Beacon.

Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (2007). Response to Kohn's allegations . Centennial, CO: Marzano & Associates. Available: http://marzanoandassociates.com/documents/KohnResponse.pdf

Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (in press). Errors and allegations about research on homework. Phi Delta Kappan .

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement . Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

National Education Commission on Time and Learning (1994). Prisoners of time . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Paschal, R. A., Weinstein, T., & Walberg, H. J. (1984). The effects of homework on learning: A quantitative synthesis. Journal of Educational Research, 78 , 97–104.

Perkins, P. G., & Milgram, R. B. (1996). Parental involvement in homework: A double-edge sword. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 6 (3), 195–203.

Riehl, C. (2006). Feeling better: A comparison of medical research and education research. Educational Researcher, 35 (5), 24–29.

Van Voorhis, F. (2003). Interactive homework in middle school: Effects on family involvement and science achievement. Journal of Educational Research, 96 , 323–338.

Walberg, H. J. (1999). Productive teaching. In H. C. Waxman & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), New directions for teaching practice research (pp. 75–104). Berkeley, CA: McCutchen.

Wallis, C. (2006). Viewpoint: The myth about homework. Time, 168 (10), 57.

• 1 For a more detailed response to Kohn's views on homework, see Marzano & Pickering (2007) and Marzano & Pickering (in press).

Robert Marzano is the CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Centennial, CO, which provides research-based, partner-centered support for educators and education agencies—with the goal of helping teachers improve educational practice.

As strategic advisor, Robert brings over 50 years of experience in action-based education research, professional development, and curriculum design to Marzano Research. He has expertise in standards-based assessment, cognition, school leadership, and competency-based education, among a host of areas.

He is the author of 30 books, 150 articles and chapters in books, and 100 sets of curriculum materials for teachers and students in grades K–12.

The late Debra J. Pickering consulted with schools and districts nationally and internationally as vice president of field services for Marzano Research Laboratory. She passed away in 2020.

In addition to her work with schools, Pickering coauthored (with Robert Marzano) educational books and manuals, including  Dimensions of Learning ,  Classroom Instruction That Works ,  Classroom Management That Works , and  Building Academic Vocabulary .

With a combination of theoretical grounding and more than three decades of practical experience, Pickering worked with educators to translate theory into practice. In later years her work continued to focus on the study of learning and the development of resources for curriculum, instruction, and assessment to help all educators meet the needs of all students.

Pickering had a master's degree in school administration and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction, with an emphasis in cognitive psychology.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

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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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Why more and more teachers are joining the anti-homework movement

The word homework doesn’t just elicit groans from students. Many veteran educators aren’t fans of it either.

Barbara Tollison, a high school English teacher with nearly four decades in the classroom, stopped assigning homework five years ago. In lieu of writing papers, she asks her 10th graders in San Marcos, California, to read more books before bed.

“For the kids who understand the information, additional practice is unnecessary,” she told TODAY Parents . “The kids who need more support are going to go home and not do it right. It's just going to confuse them more. They don’t have the understanding and they need guidance.”

Tollison is part of a growing movement that believes learners can thrive academically without homework. According to Alfie Kohn, author of “ The Homework Myth ,” there’s never a good excuse for making kids work a second shift of academics in elementary and middle school.

“In high school, it’s a little more nuanced,” Kohn told TODAY Parents . “Some research has found a tiny correlation between doing more homework and doing better on standardized tests . But No. 1, standardized tests are a lousy measure of learning. No. 2, the correlation is small. And No. 3, it doesn’t prove a causal relationship. In other words, just because the same kids who get more homework do a little better on tests, doesn’t mean the homework made that happen.”

Kohn noted that “newer, better” studies are showing that the downside of homework is just as profound in 16-year-olds as it is in 8-year-olds, in terms of causing causing anxiety, a loss of interest in learning and family conflict.

Parents Is homework robbing your family of joy? You're not alone

“For my book, I interviewed high school teachers who completely stopped giving homework and there was no downside, it was all upside,” he shared.

“There just isn’t a good argument in favor of homework,” Kohn said.

Katie Sluiter, an 8th grade teacher in Michigan, couldn’t agree more. She believes that the bulk of instruction and support should happen in the classroom.

“What I realized early on in my career is that the kids who don’t need the practice are the only ones doing their homework,” Sluiter told TODAY Parents .

Sluiter added that homework is stressful and inequitable. Many children, especially those from lower-income families, have little chance of being successful with work being sent home.

“So many things are out of the student’s control, like the ability to have a quiet place to do homework,” Sluiter explained. “In my district, there are many parents that don’t speak any English, so they’re not going to be able to help with their child’s social studies homework. Some kids are responsible for watching their younger siblings after school.”

Parents Too much homework? Study shows elementary kids get 3 times more than they should

Sluiter also doesn’t want to add “an extra pile of stress” to already over-scheduled lives.

“Middle school is hard enough without worrying, ‘Did I get my conjunctions sheet done?’” she said. “It’s ridiculous. It’s just too much. We need to let them be kids."

Kohn, who has written 14 books on parenting and education, previously told TODAY that moms and dads should speak up on behalf of their children.

"If your child's teacher never assigns homework, take a moment to thank them for doing what's in your child's best interest — and for acknowledging that families, not schools, ought to decide what happens during family time," he said. "If your child is getting homework, organize a bunch of parents to meet with the teacher and administrators — not to ask, 'Why so much?' but, given that the research says it's all pain and no gain, to ask, 'Why is there any?'"

Related video:

Rachel Paula Abrahamson is a lifestyle reporter who writes for the parenting, health and shop verticals. Her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and elsewhere. Rachel lives in the Boston area with her husband and their two daughters. Follow her on Instagram .

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Nobody knows what the point of homework is

The homework wars are back.

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As the Covid-19 pandemic began and students logged into their remote classrooms, all work, in effect, became homework. But whether or not students could complete it at home varied. For some, schoolwork became public-library work or McDonald’s-parking-lot work.

Luis Torres, the principal of PS 55, a predominantly low-income community elementary school in the south Bronx, told me that his school secured Chromebooks for students early in the pandemic only to learn that some lived in shelters that blocked wifi for security reasons. Others, who lived in housing projects with poor internet reception, did their schoolwork in laundromats.

According to a 2021 Pew survey , 25 percent of lower-income parents said their children, at some point, were unable to complete their schoolwork because they couldn’t access a computer at home; that number for upper-income parents was 2 percent.

The issues with remote learning in March 2020 were new. But they highlighted a divide that had been there all along in another form: homework. And even long after schools have resumed in-person classes, the pandemic’s effects on homework have lingered.

Over the past three years, in response to concerns about equity, schools across the country, including in Sacramento, Los Angeles , San Diego , and Clark County, Nevada , made permanent changes to their homework policies that restricted how much homework could be given and how it could be graded after in-person learning resumed.

Three years into the pandemic, as districts and teachers reckon with Covid-era overhauls of teaching and learning, schools are still reconsidering the purpose and place of homework. Whether relaxing homework expectations helps level the playing field between students or harms them by decreasing rigor is a divisive issue without conclusive evidence on either side, echoing other debates in education like the elimination of standardized test scores from some colleges’ admissions processes.

I first began to wonder if the homework abolition movement made sense after speaking with teachers in some Massachusetts public schools, who argued that rather than help disadvantaged kids, stringent homework restrictions communicated an attitude of low expectations. One, an English teacher, said she felt the school had “just given up” on trying to get the students to do work; another argued that restrictions that prohibit teachers from assigning take-home work that doesn’t begin in class made it difficult to get through the foreign-language curriculum. Teachers in other districts have raised formal concerns about homework abolition’s ability to close gaps among students rather than widening them.

Many education experts share this view. Harris Cooper, a professor emeritus of psychology at Duke who has studied homework efficacy, likened homework abolition to “playing to the lowest common denominator.”

But as I learned after talking to a variety of stakeholders — from homework researchers to policymakers to parents of schoolchildren — whether to abolish homework probably isn’t the right question. More important is what kind of work students are sent home with and where they can complete it. Chances are, if schools think more deeply about giving constructive work, time spent on homework will come down regardless.

There’s no consensus on whether homework works

The rise of the no-homework movement during the Covid-19 pandemic tapped into long-running disagreements over homework’s impact on students. The purpose and effectiveness of homework have been disputed for well over a century. In 1901, for instance, California banned homework for students up to age 15, and limited it for older students, over concerns that it endangered children’s mental and physical health. The newest iteration of the anti-homework argument contends that the current practice punishes students who lack support and rewards those with more resources, reinforcing the “myth of meritocracy.”

But there is still no research consensus on homework’s effectiveness; no one can seem to agree on what the right metrics are. Much of the debate relies on anecdotes, intuition, or speculation.

Researchers disagree even on how much research exists on the value of homework. Kathleen Budge, the co-author of Turning High-Poverty Schools Into High-Performing Schools and a professor at Boise State, told me that homework “has been greatly researched.” Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer and leader of the education nonprofit Challenge Success, said, “It’s not a highly researched area because of some of the methodological problems.”

Experts who are more sympathetic to take-home assignments generally support the “10-minute rule,” a framework that estimates the ideal amount of homework on any given night by multiplying the student’s grade by 10 minutes. (A ninth grader, for example, would have about 90 minutes of work a night.) Homework proponents argue that while it is difficult to design randomized control studies to test homework’s effectiveness, the vast majority of existing studies show a strong positive correlation between homework and high academic achievement for middle and high school students. Prominent critics of homework argue that these correlational studies are unreliable and point to studies that suggest a neutral or negative effect on student performance. Both agree there is little to no evidence for homework’s effectiveness at an elementary school level, though proponents often argue that it builds constructive habits for the future.

For anyone who remembers homework assignments from both good and bad teachers, this fundamental disagreement might not be surprising. Some homework is pointless and frustrating to complete. Every week during my senior year of high school, I had to analyze a poem for English and decorate it with images found on Google; my most distinct memory from that class is receiving a demoralizing 25-point deduction because I failed to present my analysis on a poster board. Other assignments really do help students learn: After making an adapted version of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book for a ninth grade history project, I was inspired to check out from the library and read a biography of the Chinese ruler.

For homework opponents, the first example is more likely to resonate. “We’re all familiar with the negative effects of homework: stress, exhaustion, family conflict, less time for other activities, diminished interest in learning,” Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, which challenges common justifications for homework, told me in an email. “And these effects may be most pronounced among low-income students.” Kohn believes that schools should make permanent any moratoria implemented during the pandemic, arguing that there are no positives at all to outweigh homework’s downsides. Recent studies , he argues , show the benefits may not even materialize during high school.

In the Marlborough Public Schools, a suburban district 45 minutes west of Boston, school policy committee chair Katherine Hennessy described getting kids to complete their homework during remote education as “a challenge, to say the least.” Teachers found that students who spent all day on their computers didn’t want to spend more time online when the day was over. So, for a few months, the school relaxed the usual practice and teachers slashed the quantity of nightly homework.

Online learning made the preexisting divides between students more apparent, she said. Many students, even during normal circumstances, lacked resources to keep them on track and focused on completing take-home assignments. Though Marlborough Schools is more affluent than PS 55, Hennessy said many students had parents whose work schedules left them unable to provide homework help in the evenings. The experience tracked with a common divide in the country between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

So in October 2021, months after the homework reduction began, the Marlborough committee made a change to the district’s policy. While teachers could still give homework, the assignments had to begin as classwork. And though teachers could acknowledge homework completion in a student’s participation grade, they couldn’t count homework as its own grading category. “Rigorous learning in the classroom does not mean that that classwork must be assigned every night,” the policy stated . “Extensions of class work is not to be used to teach new content or as a form of punishment.”

Canceling homework might not do anything for the achievement gap

The critiques of homework are valid as far as they go, but at a certain point, arguments against homework can defy the commonsense idea that to retain what they’re learning, students need to practice it.

“Doesn’t a kid become a better reader if he reads more? Doesn’t a kid learn his math facts better if he practices them?” said Cathy Vatterott, an education researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. After decades of research, she said it’s still hard to isolate the value of homework, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned.

Blanket vilification of homework can also conflate the unique challenges facing disadvantaged students as compared to affluent ones, which could have different solutions. “The kids in the low-income schools are being hurt because they’re being graded, unfairly, on time they just don’t have to do this stuff,” Pope told me. “And they’re still being held accountable for turning in assignments, whether they’re meaningful or not.” On the other side, “Palo Alto kids” — students in Silicon Valley’s stereotypically pressure-cooker public schools — “are just bombarded and overloaded and trying to stay above water.”

Merely getting rid of homework doesn’t solve either problem. The United States already has the second-highest disparity among OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations between time spent on homework by students of high and low socioeconomic status — a difference of more than three hours, said Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University and author of No More Mindless Homework .

When she interviewed teachers in Boston-area schools that had cut homework before the pandemic, Bempechat told me, “What they saw immediately was parents who could afford it immediately enrolled their children in the Russian School of Mathematics,” a math-enrichment program whose tuition ranges from $140 to about $400 a month. Getting rid of homework “does nothing for equity; it increases the opportunity gap between wealthier and less wealthy families,” she said. “That solution troubles me because it’s no solution at all.”

A group of teachers at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, made the same point after the school district proposed an overhaul of its homework policies, including removing penalties for missing homework deadlines, allowing unlimited retakes, and prohibiting grading of homework.

“Given the emphasis on equity in today’s education systems,” they wrote in a letter to the school board, “we believe that some of the proposed changes will actually have a detrimental impact towards achieving this goal. Families that have means could still provide challenging and engaging academic experiences for their children and will continue to do so, especially if their children are not experiencing expected rigor in the classroom.” At a school where more than a third of students are low-income, the teachers argued, the policies would prompt students “to expect the least of themselves in terms of effort, results, and responsibility.”

Not all homework is created equal

Despite their opposing sides in the homework wars, most of the researchers I spoke to made a lot of the same points. Both Bempechat and Pope were quick to bring up how parents and schools confuse rigor with workload, treating the volume of assignments as a proxy for quality of learning. Bempechat, who is known for defending homework, has written extensively about how plenty of it lacks clear purpose, requires the purchasing of unnecessary supplies, and takes longer than it needs to. Likewise, when Pope instructs graduate-level classes on curriculum, she asks her students to think about the larger purpose they’re trying to achieve with homework: If they can get the job done in the classroom, there’s no point in sending home more work.

At its best, pandemic-era teaching facilitated that last approach. Honolulu-based teacher Christina Torres Cawdery told me that, early in the pandemic, she often had a cohort of kids in her classroom for four hours straight, as her school tried to avoid too much commingling. She couldn’t lecture for four hours, so she gave the students plenty of time to complete independent and project-based work. At the end of most school days, she didn’t feel the need to send them home with more to do.

A similar limited-homework philosophy worked at a public middle school in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A couple of teachers there turned as much class as possible into an opportunity for small-group practice, allowing kids to work on problems that traditionally would be assigned for homework, Jessica Flick, a math coach who leads department meetings at the school, told me. It was inspired by a philosophy pioneered by Simon Fraser University professor Peter Liljedahl, whose influential book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics reframes homework as “check-your-understanding questions” rather than as compulsory work. Last year, Flick found that the two eighth grade classes whose teachers adopted this strategy performed the best on state tests, and this year, she has encouraged other teachers to implement it.

Teachers know that plenty of homework is tedious and unproductive. Jeannemarie Dawson De Quiroz, who has taught for more than 20 years in low-income Boston and Los Angeles pilot and charter schools, says that in her first years on the job she frequently assigned “drill and kill” tasks and questions that she now feels unfairly stumped students. She said designing good homework wasn’t part of her teaching programs, nor was it meaningfully discussed in professional development. With more experience, she turned as much class time as she could into practice time and limited what she sent home.

“The thing about homework that’s sticky is that not all homework is created equal,” says Jill Harrison Berg, a former teacher and the author of Uprooting Instructional Inequity . “Some homework is a genuine waste of time and requires lots of resources for no good reason. And other homework is really useful.”

Cutting homework has to be part of a larger strategy

The takeaways are clear: Schools can make cuts to homework, but those cuts should be part of a strategy to improve the quality of education for all students. If the point of homework was to provide more practice, districts should think about how students can make it up during class — or offer time during or after school for students to seek help from teachers. If it was to move the curriculum along, it’s worth considering whether strategies like Liljedahl’s can get more done in less time.

Some of the best thinking around effective assignments comes from those most critical of the current practice. Denise Pope proposes that, before assigning homework, teachers should consider whether students understand the purpose of the work and whether they can do it without help. If teachers think it’s something that can’t be done in class, they should be mindful of how much time it should take and the feedback they should provide. It’s questions like these that De Quiroz considered before reducing the volume of work she sent home.

More than a year after the new homework policy began in Marlborough, Hennessy still hears from parents who incorrectly “think homework isn’t happening” despite repeated assurances that kids still can receive work. She thinks part of the reason is that education has changed over the years. “I think what we’re trying to do is establish that homework may be an element of educating students,” she told me. “But it may not be what parents think of as what they grew up with. ... It’s going to need to adapt, per the teaching and the curriculum, and how it’s being delivered in each classroom.”

For the policy to work, faculty, parents, and students will all have to buy into a shared vision of what school ought to look like. The district is working on it — in November, it hosted and uploaded to YouTube a round-table discussion on homework between district administrators — but considering the sustained confusion, the path ahead seems difficult.

When I asked Luis Torres about whether he thought homework serves a useful part in PS 55’s curriculum, he said yes, of course it was — despite the effort and money it takes to keep the school open after hours to help them do it. “The children need the opportunity to practice,” he said. “If you don’t give them opportunities to practice what they learn, they’re going to forget.” But Torres doesn’t care if the work is done at home. The school stays open until around 6 pm on weekdays, even during breaks. Tutors through New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development programs help kids with work after school so they don’t need to take it with them.

As schools weigh the purpose of homework in an unequal world, it’s tempting to dispose of a practice that presents real, practical problems to students across the country. But getting rid of homework is unlikely to do much good on its own. Before cutting it, it’s worth thinking about what good assignments are meant to do in the first place. It’s crucial that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds tackle complex quantitative problems and hone their reading and writing skills. It’s less important that the work comes home with them.

Jacob Sweet is a freelance writer in Somerville, Massachusetts. He is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, among other publications.

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15 Should Homework Be Banned Pros and Cons

Homework was a staple of the public and private schooling experience for many of us growing up. There were long nights spent on book reports, science projects, and all of those repetitive math sheets. In many ways, it felt like an inevitable part of the educational experience. Unless you could power through all of your assignments during your free time in class, then there was going to be time spent at home working on specific subjects.

More schools are looking at the idea of banning homework from the modern educational experience. Instead of sending work home with students each night, they are finding alternative ways to ensure that each student can understand the curriculum without involving the uncertainty of parental involvement.

Although banning homework might seem like an unorthodox process, there are legitimate advantages to consider with this effort. There are some disadvantages which some families may encounter as well.

These are the updated lists of the pros and cons of banning homework to review.

List of the Pros of Banning Homework

1. Giving homework to students does not always improve their academic outcomes. The reality of homework for the modern student is that we do not know if it is helpful to have extra work assigned to them outside of the classroom. Every study that has looked at the subject has had design flaws which causes the data collected to be questionable at best. Although there is some information to suggest that students in seventh grade and higher can benefit from limited homework, banning it for students younger than that seems to be beneficial for their learning experience.

2. Banning homework can reduce burnout issues with students. Teachers are seeing homework stress occur in the classroom more frequently today than ever before. Almost half of all high school teachers in North America have seen this issue with their students at some point during the year. About 25% of grade school teachers say that they have seen the same thing.

When students are dealing with the impact of homework on their lives, it can have a tremendously adverse impact. One of the most cited reasons for students dropping out of school is that they cannot complete their homework on time.

3. Banning homework would increase the amount of family time available to students. Homework creates a significant disruption to family relationships. Over half of all parents in North America say that they have had a significant argument with their children over homework in the past month. 1/3 of families say that homework is their primary source of struggle in the home. Not only does it reduce the amount of time that everyone has to spend together, it reduces the chances that parents have to teach their own skills and belief systems to their kids.

4. It reduces the negative impact of homework on the health of a student. Many students suffer academically when they cannot finish a homework assignment on time. Although assumptions are often made about the time management skills of the individual when this outcome occurs, the reasons why it happens is usually more complex. It may be too difficult, too boring, or there may not be enough time in the day to complete the work.

When students experience failure in this area, it can lead to severe mental health issues. Some perceive themselves as a scholarly failure, which translates to an inability to live life successfully. It can disrupt a desire to learn. There is even an increased risk of suicide for some youth because of this issue. Banning it would reduce these risks immediately.

5. Eliminating homework would allow for an established sleep cycle. The average high school student requires between 8-10 hours of sleep to function at their best the next day. Grade-school students may require an extra hour or two beyond that figure. When teachers assign homework, then it increases the risk for each individual that they will not receive the amount that they require each night.

When children do not get enough sleep, a significant rest deficit occurs which can impact their ability to pay attention in school. It can cause unintended weight gain. There may even be issues with emotional control. Banning homework would help to reduce these risks as well.

6. It increases the amount of socialization time that students receive. People who are only spending time in school and then going home to do more work are at a higher risk of experiencing loneliness and isolation. When these emotions are present, then a student is more likely to feel “down and out” mentally and physically. They lack meaningful connections with other people. These feelings are the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes per day. If students are spending time on homework, then they are not spending time connecting with their family and friends.

7. It reduces the repetition that students face in the modern learning process. Most of the tasks that homework requires of students is repetitive and uninteresting. Kids love to resolve challenges on tasks that they are passionate about at that moment in their lives. Forcing them to complete the same problems repetitively as a way to “learn” core concepts can create issues with knowledge retention later in life. When you add in the fact that most lessons sent for homework must be done by themselves, banning homework will reduce the repetition that students face, allowing for a better overall outcome.

8. Home environments can be chaotic. Although some students can do homework in a quiet room without distractions, that is not the case for most kids. There are numerous events that happen at home which can pull a child’s attention away from the work that their teacher wants them to do. It isn’t just the Internet, video games, and television which are problematic either. Household chores, family issues, employment, and athletic requirements can make it a challenge to get the assigned work finished on time.

List of the Cons of Banning Homework

1. Homework allows parents to be involved with the educational process. Parents need to know what their children are learning in school. Even if they ask their children about what they are learning, the answers tend to be in generalities instead of specifics. By sending home work from the classroom, it allows parents to see and experience the work that their kids are doing when they are in school during the day. Then moms and dads can get involved with the learning process to reinforce the core concepts that were discovered by their children each day.

2. It can help parents and teachers identify learning disabilities. Many children develop a self-defense mechanism which allows them to appear like any other kid that is in their classroom. This process allows them to hide learning disabilities which may be hindering their educational progress. The presence of homework makes it possible for parents and teachers to identify this issue because kids can’t hide their struggles when they must work 1-on-1 with their parents on specific subjects. Banning homework would eliminate 50% of the opportunities to identify potential issues immediately.

3. Homework allows teachers to observe how their students understand the material. Teachers often use homework as a way to gauge how well a student is understanding the materials they are learning. Although some might point out that assignments and exams in the classroom can do the same thing, testing often requires preparation at home. It creates more anxiety and stress sometimes then even homework does. That is why banning it can be problematic for some students. Some students experience more pressure than they would during this assessment process when quizzes and tests are the only measurement of their success.

4. It teaches students how to manage their time wisely. As people grow older, they realize that time is a finite commodity. We must manage it wisely to maximize our productivity. Homework assignments are a way to encourage the development of this skill at an early age. The trick is to keep the amount of time required for the work down to a manageable level. As a general rule, students should spend about 10 minutes each school day doing homework, organizing their schedule around this need. If there are scheduling conflicts, then this process offers families a chance to create priorities.

5. Homework encourages students to be accountable for their role. Teachers are present in the classroom to offer access to information and skill-building opportunities that can improve the quality of life for each student. Administrators work to find a curriculum that will benefit the most people in an efficient way. Parents work hard to ensure their kids make it to school on time, follow healthy routines, and communicate with their school district to ensure the most effective learning opportunities possible. None of that matters if the student is not invested in the work in the first place. Homework assignments not only teach children how to work independently, but they also show them how to take responsibility for their part of the overall educational process.

6. It helps to teach important life lessons. Homework is an essential tool in the development of life lessons, such as communicating with others or comprehending something they have just read. It teaches kids how to think, solve problems, and even build an understanding for the issues that occur in our society right now. Many of the issues that lead to the idea to ban homework occur because someone in the life of a student communicated to them that this work was a waste of time. There are times in life when people need to do things that they don’t like or want to do. Homework helps a student begin to find the coping skills needed to be successful in that situation.

7. Homework allows for further research into class materials. Most classrooms offer less than 1 hour of instruction per subject during the day. For many students, that is not enough time to obtain a firm grasp on the materials being taught. Having homework assignments allows a student to perform more research, using their at-home tools to take a deeper look into the materials that would otherwise be impossible if homework was banned. That process can lead to a more significant understanding of the concepts involved, reducing anxiety levels because they have a complete grasp on the materials.

The pros and cons of banning homework is a decision that ultimately lies with each school district. Parents always have the option to pursue homeschooling or online learning if they disagree with the decisions that are made in this area. Whether you’re for more homework or want to see less of it, we can all agree on the fact that the absence of any reliable data about its usefulness makes it a challenge to know for certain which option is the best one to choose in this debate.

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Jay Caspian Kang

The movement to end homework is wrong.

By Jay Caspian Kang

Opinion Writer

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.”

Put a bit more simply: The quality of students’ homework production is linked to their socioeconomic status. This alone doesn’t seem particularly controversial. As I’ve discussed in this newsletter, many measures of academic achievement wind up being linked to wealth. The authors go on to argue that since this is the case, teachers should “interpret differences in students’ homework production through a structural inequalities frame.” What they have found, however, is that teachers don’t think of homework this way. Instead, they tend to rely on the “myth of meritocracy” to explain “homework inequalities.”

Calarco, Horn and Chen are all respected scholars at top-tier universities. Their paper was published in Educational Researcher, a journal of the American Educational Research Association, one of the pre-eminent research organizations in the education space. Homework reduction, or abolition, is part of an emerging educational movement. And while the authors acknowledge that eliminating homework would be difficult in the short term, given how rooted it is in American pedagogy, I imagine that many public schools over the next decade or so will start to de-emphasize homework as these ideas start to make their way to school boards and curriculum writers.

Trying to assess the value of homework, reduce it or at least make less of it busywork might very well be a useful endeavor. But Calarco, Horn and Chen are questioning something much more fundamental to the American educational system than homework. Whether they intend to or not, they are, in effect, reframing the purpose of schooling itself. Is school a place where a select group of children can distinguish themselves from their peers through diligence, talent and the pursuit of upward mobility? Is it a place where everyone should have equal access to learning and opportunity, whatever that might mean? And are these two ideals mutually exclusive?

The authors of “You Need to Be More Responsible” are part of a movement that argues, sometimes convincingly, that a meritocratic vision impedes true equal opportunity. In regards to homework, what they are saying, in effect, is that the idea of responsibility itself — requiring students to be accountable for completing assignments — exacerbates inequality. And that rather than trying to run all students through a hierarchical educational system in the hopes that they will end up in the same place, it appears that the authors would rather de-emphasize anything that reinforces the idea that one student is better than another.

According to the authors, then, teachers should factor in students’ socioeconomic status when evaluating their homework. Teachers should acknowledge that, even with completed assignments, structural inequalities may be why students with access to fewer resources got more questions wrong than their better-resourced peers did. And if they want to help these hypothetical poor students, they shouldn’t appeal to messages of personal responsibility and individual agency because those concepts reinforce the myth of meritocracy.

This all sounds a bit abstract. Having taught at a variety of schools, I agree that students’ socioeconomic status will likely be a better predictor of how they do on their homework than any personal traits, but I still can’t quite imagine how a structural inequalities frame would operate in the classroom. How would you even talk to your students?

Teacher: Hey there. You got half the questions wrong on your homework.

Student: I’m sorry about that. What do you think I could do to improve my performance?

Teacher: Well, you could boost your socioeconomic status. Otherwise, the deck’s extremely stacked against you getting any of these questions right.

To help combat the myth of meritocracy, the authors suggest that teachers not assign overly challenging homework and stop rewarding or punishing students based on the quality of the homework they produce. They also suggest that some teachers, if so inclined, could go “a step further in attempting to reduce homework’s harm” and just get rid of it altogether. They write:

More research is needed to understand the consequences of these more “progressive” homework policies. Yet, we suspect that while optional and ungraded homework may reduce inequalities in homework-related rewards and punishments, it may not prevent teachers from judging those students (and their parents) who do not complete the optional or ungraded work. No-homework policies have greater potential for alleviating the kinds of unequal practices we observed in the schools in our study.

In short, teachers can’t even be trusted to give out optional homework because they’re too meritocracy-brained and will still judge the students based on the results. The easiest solution is to just stop giving homework altogether, so the wrong-thinking teachers don’t have as much of a platform upon which to prop up their meritocratic myths.

I want to be fair to the authors and acknowledge that even if I’m a bit skeptical about how their prescriptions could operate in a classroom, there might be other good reasons for doing away with homework.

Evidence about the effectiveness of homework is pretty scattered. There are studies and articles saying that homework helps students learn and that kids aren’t overly burdened with it. There are also studies and articles that say excessive homework shows diminishing returns and can be harmful to students’ mental health . Having read some of these studies, I think the fairest assessment right now would be to say that the evidence about the benefits of homework is pretty inconclusive because of the inherent difficulties in isolating one part of a student’s academic life and drawing huge conclusions about how it affects everything else.

From a theoretical standpoint, I mostly agree with Calarco, Horn and Chen’s diagnosis of the American educational system. It does largely function as a way to sort and stratify children into different socioeconomic bands, which, again, in theory, means that it would be helpful for teachers to approach their work with that in mind. Many richer kids go to private schools that feed into elite colleges that will more or less ensure their alumni will be on the glide path to staying rich. Many poorer kids go to poorer schools that provide them, in many cases, with fewer opportunities that might help them advance socioeconomically. Some portion of middle-class and working-class people, including a lot of immigrants and children of immigrants, pragmatically use the school system to achieve class mobility.

When you break it all down, the amount of class mobility our education system can grind out each year falls well short of what most people expect. The spoils of academic meritocracy, then, aren’t particularly widespread, which does bring up the question: If we all agree that everyone should go to school and if the class mobility part is working only for some families and not at all for others, why do we structure it in such a competitive way?

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.

Jay Caspian Kang ( @jaycaspiankang ), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.”

Have feedback? Send a note to [email protected] .

20 Pros and Cons of Homework

Homework. It’s a word that sends a shudder down the spine of students and parents alike.

It is also a question that has become divisive. Some people feel that homework is an effective way to reinforce the concepts that were learned at school. Others feel like the time that homework demands would be better spent with a meaningful activity that brings the family together.

Is homework important? Is it necessary? Or is the added stress that homework places on students and parents doing more harm than good? Here are some of the key pros and cons to discuss.

List of the Pros of Homework

1. It encourages the discipline of practice. Repeating the same problems over and over can be boring and difficult, but it also reinforces the practice of discipline. To get better at a skill, repetition is often necessary. You get better with each repetition. By having homework completed every night, especially with a difficult subject, the concepts become easier to understand. That gives the student an advantage later on in life when seeking a vocational career.

2. It gets parents involved with a child’s life. Looking at Common Core math can be somewhat bewildering to parents. If you see the math problem 5×3 expressed as an addition problem, 5+5+5 seems like the right answer. The correct answer, however, would be 3+3+3+3+3. By bringing homework to do, students can engage their learning process with their parents so everyone can be involved. Many parents actually want homework sent so they can see what their children are being taught in the classroom.

3. It teaches time management skills. Homework goes beyond completing a task. It forces children (and parents, to some extent) to develop time management skills. Schedules must be organized to ensure that all tasks can be completed during the day. This creates independent thinking and develops problem-solving skills. It encourages research skills. It also puts parents and children into a position where positive decision-making skills must be developed.

4. Homework creates a communication network. Teachers rarely see into the family lives of their students. Parents rarely see the classroom lives of their children. Homework is a bridge that opens lines of communication between the school, the teacher, and the parent. This allows everyone to get to know one another better. It helps teachers understand the needs of their students better.

It allows parents to find out their child’s strengths and weaknesses. Together, an educational plan can be developed that encourages the best possible learning environment.

5. It allows for a comfortable place to study. Classrooms have evolved over the years to be a warmer and welcoming environment, but there is nothing like the comfort that is felt at home or in a safe space. By encouraging studies where a child feels the most comfortable, it is possible to retain additional information that may get lost within the standard classroom environment.

6. It provides more time to complete the learning process. The time allotted for each area of study in school, especially in K-12, is often limited to 1 hour or less per day. That is not always enough time for students to be able to grasp core concepts of that material. By creating specific homework assignments which address these deficiencies, it becomes possible to counter the effects of the time shortages. That can benefit students greatly over time.

7. It reduces screen time. On the average school night, a student in the US might get 3-4 hours of screen time in per day. When that student isn’t in school, that figure doubles to 7-8 hours of screen time. Homework might be unwanted and disliked, but it does encourage better study habits. It discourages time being spent in front of the television or playing games on a mobile device. That, in turn, may discourage distracting habits from forming that can take away from the learning process in the future.

8. It can be treated like any other extracurricular activity. Some families over-extend themselves on extracurricular activities. Students can easily have more than 40 hours per week, from clubs to sports, that fall outside of regular school hours. Homework can be treated as one of these activities, fitting into the schedule where there is extra time. As an added benefit, some homework can even be completed on the way to or from some activities.

List of the Cons of Homework

1. Children benefit from playing. Being in a classroom can be a good thing, but so can being on a playground. With too much homework, a child doesn’t have enough time to play and that can impact their learning and social development. Low levels of play are associated with lower academic achievement levels, lower safety awareness, less character development, and lower overall health.

2. It encourages a sedentary lifestyle. Long homework assignments require long periods of sitting. A sedentary lifestyle has numerous direct associations with premature death as children age into adults. Obesity levels are already at or near record highs in many communities. Homework may reinforce certain skills and encourage knowledge retention, but it may come at a high price.

3. Not every home is a beneficial environment. There are some homes that are highly invested into their children. Parents may be involved in every stage of homework or there may be access to tutors that can explain difficult concepts. In other homes, there may be little or no education investment into the child. Some parents push the responsibility of teaching off on the teacher and provide no homework support at all.

Sometimes parents may wish to be involved and support their child, but there are barriers in place that prevent this from happening. The bottom line is this: no every home life is equal.

4. School is already a full-time job for kids. An elementary school day might start at 9:00am and end at 3:20pm. That’s more than 6 hours of work that kids as young as 5 are putting into their education every day. Add in the extra-curricular activities that schools encourage, such as sports, musicals, and after-school programming and a student can easily reach 8 hours of education in the average day. Then add homework on top of that? It is asking a lot for any child, but especially young children, to complete extra homework.

5. There is no evidence that homework creates improvements. Survey after survey has found that the only thing that homework does is create a negative attitude toward schooling and education in general. Homework is not associated with a higher level of academic achievement on a national scale. It may help some students who struggle with certain subjects, if they have access to a knowledgeable tutor or parent, but on a community level, there is no evidence that shows improvements are gained.

6. It discourages creative endeavors. If a student is spending 1 hour each day on homework, that’s an hour they are not spending pursuing something that is important to them. Students might like to play video games or watch TV, but homework takes time away from learning an instrument, painting, or developing photography skills as well. Although some homework can involve creative skills, that usually isn’t the case.

7. Homework is difficult to enforce. Some students just don’t care about homework. They can achieve adequate grades without doing it, so they choose not to do it. There is no level of motivation that a parent or teacher can create that inspires some students to get involved with homework. There is no denying the fact that homework requires a certain amount of effort. Sometimes a child just doesn’t want to put in that effort.

8. Extra time in school does not equate to better grades. Students in the US spend more than 100 hours of extra time in school already compared to high-performing countries around the world, but that has not closed the educational gap between those countries and the United States. In some educational areas, the US is even falling in global rankings despite the extra time that students are spending in school. When it comes to homework or any other form of learning, quality is much more important than quantity.

9. Accurate practice may not be possible. If homework is assigned, there is a reliance on the student, their parents, or their guardians to locate resources that can help them understand the content. Homework is often about practice, but if the core concepts of that information are not understood or inaccurately understood, then the results are the opposite of what is intended. If inaccurate practice is performed, it becomes necessary for the teacher to first correct the issue and then reteach it, which prolongs the learning process.

10. It may encourage cheating on multiple levels. Some students may decide that cheating in the classroom to avoid taking homework home is a compromise they’re willing to make. With internet resources, finding the answers to homework instead of figuring out the answers on one’s own is a constant temptation as well. For families with multiple children, they may decide to copy off one another to minimize the time investment.

11. Too much homework is often assigned to students. There is a general agreement that students should be assigned no more than 10 minutes of homework per day, per grade level. That means a first grader should not be assigned more than 10 minutes of homework per night. Yet for the average first grader in US public schools, they come home with 20 minutes of homework and then are asked to complete 20 minutes of reading on top of that. That means some students are completing 4x more homework than recommended every night.

At the same time, the amount of time children spent playing outdoors has decreased by 40% over the past 30 years.

For high school students, it is even worse at high performing schools in the US where 90% of graduates go onto college, the average amount of homework assigned per night was 3 hours per student.

12. Homework is often geared toward benchmarks. Homework is often assigned to improve test scores. Although this can provide positive outcomes, including better study skills or habits, the fact is that when children are tired, they do not absorb much information. When children have more homework than recommended, test scores actually go down. Stress levels go up. Burnout on the curriculum occurs.

The results for many students, according to research from Ruben Fernandez-Alonso in the Journal of Educational Psychology, is a decrease in grades instead of an increase.

The pros and cons of homework are admittedly all over the map. Many parents and teachers follow their personal perspectives and create learning environments around them. When parents and teachers clash on homework, the student is often left in the middle of that tug of war. By discussing these key points, each side can work to find some common ground so our children can benefit for a clear, precise message.

Quantity may be important, but quality must be the priority for homework if a student is going to be successful.

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I love how detailed this post is and I totally agree with you! Thank you for sharing the homework organizer! 🙂

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A gold star to any parent who rebels against homework

S panish parents are revolting – against homework . The CEAPA (which represents 12,000 parent/teacher organisations) is organising protests against what it claims is too much homework set by schools. A recent survey revealed that 82% of parents asked believed it was too much or excessive. Over half thought it harmed family life. And with a few caveats, I couldn’t agree more with their complaint.

Interestingly, compared with other countries, the estudiantes have it relatively easy. In 2014, the OECD recorded average weekly homework assigned to 15-year-old students across various countries, and it turns out Spanish students don’t know how lucky they are, with a mere 6.5 hours. Finnish pupils dodge the bullet with a skinny 2.8 hours. Shanghai clobbers its students with 13.8 hours (so they know what it feels like to be a teacher, I imagine). The UK doles out a comparatively palatable 4.9 hours. Given that Programme for International Student Assessment chart-toppers Finland and Shanghai appear at either end of this survey, there doesn’t appear to be a clear link between length of homework set and systemic grade outcomes.

So what does the research say about it? A 2001 meta-study by the National Foundation for Educational Research concluded that there was “a positive relationship between time spent and outcomes at secondary level” but “evidence at primary level is inconsistent”. And even at secondary, homework “explains only a small amount of variance in pupils’ achievement”. More recently John Hattie’s seminal Visible Learning study concluded that homework overall had an effect size of 0.29 – in other words, a very small impact. He too noted a difference between the effect on young pupils (0.15, minuscule) and older children (0.64, significant). Other studies concur . So if there is at least some utility, are the Spanish parents right to rebel?

Si. Because there is a huge variance between the effect different types of homework have on students. And homework differs from classwork in many ways. It’s normally done independently of supervision; it requires that the task is understood, and that all resources to complete the task (from IT to prior, understood knowledge) are availableThe student needs uninterrupted time and space to finish it, and the qualities of character to complete it. Obviously, mileage varies enormously in all of these categories. In a classroom you can attempt to create a controlled environment where conditions are optimised for everyone’s benefit. But setting homework is an act of faith about what will return; a boomerang thrown into the darkness.

Plus, some homework is useful, and some is not. One thing that amazed me when I entered teaching was how much homework appeared to be entirely mad, and set for little purpose beyond bureaucracy. Writing a poem about how you felt about litter was one of my favourites, but there were countless other examples. Writing a letter from Jesus about what it was like to be on the cross. Making “wanted” posters for Mr Hyde for English teachers. Colouring in the Great Fire of London for history. Writing scripts for roleplays about Greek medicine. Building volcanoes out of papier mache for geography. I mean, come on. These kind of activities indicate a purposelessness that we need to say goodbye to for ever in teaching. Set meaningful homework, or not at all. It’s their time you’re wasting.

For example, asking pupils to read independently is great, and useful at most ages, although by itself it won’t help someone struggling with the basics. It demonstrates what is called the Matthew effect : to those that already have, shall be given. In other words it’s the children with poor background knowledge or difficult home environments who benefit least from it, and the most fortunate who get any effect at all. Which isn’t an argument against homework, but a reminder that when you set it, you have to be aware of the different impacts it can have.

Of course the teacher’s lens is important here too: homework produces marking. And if you set it, the student deserves constructive feedback. But if you see 200+ children as a secondary humanities teacher every week, weekly marking becomes a Sisyphean task. Even flicking and ticking the toils of that number of pupils becomes an extra day out of your week. And the effect of such minimal feedback is microscopic at best. Given that this might burn anything up to 25% of your notional working life, it’s heart-breaking, not to mention pointless.

Finally, the parents’ view: homework steals family time that doesn’t get refunded elsewhere in the week. And that is indisputably true, and the theft is compounded when the return is so small in general. Those few hours between getting home and closing your eyes are precious to the inter-family relationship. If you’re going to steal any of that, you better be damn sure that the reward is greater than the loss. And for a lot of homework, for a lot of children, it just doesn’t add up. Abajo el sistema opresor – down with the oppressor – as they say in Spain.

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'The gap gets bigger and bigger' - The argument against homework

10.43 27 Sep 2022

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Homework is adding stress to families and creating an equality gap among students.

That's according to psychotherapist and author Stella O'Malley.

She said homework should be part of the school day instead.

She told Pat Kenny there are other ways to get children to learn.

"I'm not a fan of homework - I think education is very important, but there's lots of ways to educate.

"I'd be in favour of, in the last hour of the school day, they make it devoted to independent learning.

"So effectively the children would be able to do their homework on their own, quietly in the last hour of the day.

"That means every child would get the opportunity to work independently, and if they need a little hand maybe they ask the teacher.

"But effectively the idea is you're on your own and you're going over the work of the day".

She said homework at home actually creates a large amount of inequality.

"The kids who have very engaged parents do very well, because they've got their parents helping them with their homework, and making sure they've got all the books and everything right.

"While the kids who don't, the gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger as they get older for that very reason".

'The idea of choice'

Simon Lewis is principal of Carlow Educate Together National School, and host of the 'If I Was The Minister for Education' podcast.

He said they talked to parents and children - with about 80% of respondents in favour of scrapping homework.

While the ratio of staff who believe homework should be scrapped was closer to 50/50.

He said: "The main recommendation really was that traditional homework in itself is meaningless for all children.

"Simply doing pages of books does very little...however as long as homework is meaningful - and when we say meaningful we look at the idea of looking at the children's own interests in a particular topic, and they can go and learn about what they're interested in.

"The idea of choice, that not everybody's doing the same homework - and teachers are well qualified in differentiation.

"And we also have the added additution in the last 20 years of technology, which can subtly give differenced homework to other children".

Simon added that "choice and meaningfulness" are key to productive homework.

Main image: A child doing their homework. Picture by: BSIP SA / Alamy Stock Photo

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The growing argument against homework

This article was published more than 9 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

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A New York City elementary school's decision to ban homework in favour of play has infuriated some parents.

Many people seem to believe that working on assignments after school is an essential part of a child's success. But if you actually do your homework on homework, evidence suggests its benefits are negligible at best. Given what we know about kids' sedentary lifestyles, of course we should ditch homework for play.

"The topic of homework has received a lot of attention lately, and the negative effects of homework have been well established," the school's principal, Jane Hsu, wrote in a letter that was sent home with students last month, reports DNAinfo.com .

"They include: children's frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities and family time and, sadly for many, loss of interest in learning."

Instead of working on essays or math problems at home, students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade are encouraged to read and spend time with their families, the principal said.

The new policy was prompted by the fact that too many children had to sit out recess because they failed to hand in homework assignments.

A committee the school established a year ago to investigate the problem concluded there is "no link between elementary school homework and success in school."

Ultimately, therefore, it would be better to have kids running around at recess and after dinner playing hockey, or basketball, or tag, or whatever activity it might be.

But some parents are so upset they are threatening to pull their kids from the school.

"I think they should have homework. Some of it is about discipline. I want [my daughter] to have fun, but I also want her to be working towards a goal," Daniel Tasman, the father of a second-grader at the school, told DNAinfo. He is now looking for another school.

"I was just thinking maybe I'll keep my daughter here for another year, but this pushed me over the edge," he said.

Over the past few years, a movement has emerged that is questioning homework. Parents are sick of having to help kids complete mountains of assignments.

"If one thing happens in 2015, it should be a concerted campaign to eradicate this illogical, damaging, ass-paining institution once and for all," novelist Caitlin Moran wrote in The Times , a British newspaper, earlier this year.

My six-year-old daughter gets one homework assignment each week, which we usually work on the night before it is due. When this becomes a daily duty, I'm sure I'll be at the same level of hair-pulling frustration as Moran and so many other parents.

Some politicians are also asking what's the point.

In 2012, French president François Hollande proposed banning homework for children in primary and middle school.

Last year, an elementary school in Quebec banned homework because it was putting too much pressure on students and their parents.

Homework is not only a pain, its "educational value" is still unclear, particular at younger grades.

One public school in Barrie even noticed that grades went up after homework was banned.

If the ban in New York gets kids playing outdoors, other schools should follow suit.

According to the latest "report card" issued by Active Healthy Kids Canada, only 7 per cent of children ages five to 11 meet Canada's daily physical-activity guidelines.

Those guidelines set an embarrassingly low bar: at least one-hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day.

For a little historical context, harken back to an anti-homework argument in the 1920s. Back then, physicians in the U.S. worried that homework might damage children's health. Doctors believed – I'm not joking here – that children needed six to seven hours a day of fresh air and sunshine, as Etta Kralovec, author of The End of Homework , has pointed out.

Obviously, that was before iPads and 24-hour a day access to Teletoon.

If we want our kids to grow up to make sound decisions based on evidence, we should set a good example by banning homework in elementary school.

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Home » Is Homework Really Beneficial?

Is Homework Really Beneficial?

The notion that homework is beneficial for students is heavily flawed. The reason being that homework is the cause of many issues rather than being beneficial. The earliest records of American schooling did not have problems regarding any overburden of homework on students, but as the system evolved children in lower grade levels were expected to complete more homework so that it would prepare them for higher levels of education. This eventually transitioned into all grades, but in the early 1900’s the rage was directed in favor of elementary school students. This resulted in a public outcry from parents and critics alike. Authors Gill B.P. and Schlossman S.L. provide insight on the matter, “During the 1930’s, many of homework’s critics began to define the health issue more broadly, charging that homework threatened children’s health by depriving them of outdoor play that was essential to healthy development” (“Villain or”, 2004). Critics, social scientists and researchers alike, complained that homework “constituted a health hazard”. Health professionals also agreed that the excessive amounts of homework given to children threatened their development because homework directly resulted in limited time. They agreed that because of the limited time students had for other activities they were imprisoned by school and consequently had their social skills harmed at a young age. Ultimately, the establishment of homework in schools has proven to be detrimental to students even as far back as the early 1900’s. Considering the fact that America still uses the same schooling system, which drew this criticism, it is not asinine to assume that the system is more than likely outdated for today’s highly advanced society and is need of serious reform.

Schoolwork, ranging from essays to projects, is generally time-consuming. Joseph Simplicio, an American author, advocates against homework in modern schooling. In his scholarly journal, “Homework in the 21st century”, he writes, “Successfully completing these time-consuming assignments on schedule they argue, leave children frantically attempting to balance overcrowded schedule that include schoolwork, homework, extracurricular activities, private enrichment lessons, sports, work, family, personal obligations, and much more” (2005). Simplicio is contrasting the two choices students have when faced with the task to prioritize school or their personal life. He is implying that those who dedicate their time to school have limited personal lives because their lifestyle usually ends up isolating them from the outside world, just so that they can focus on maintaining their grades. By doing so, students would be depriving themselves of the privileges like an afterschool job, healthy extracurricular activities, family time, and time for other various recreational activities. Those who wish to have a free lifestyle tend to not pay much attention to school and therefore procrastinate or simply do not do their assignments. It is common for teenagers to want time for themselves, it is their time to venture out in the world, learn their purpose and to finally mature themselves on their existence. Imposing upon the valuable time teenagers require to grow could be considered unethical if one considers it to be true.

Truth be told, excessive and unnecessary work for anyone is harmful. Likewise, students should not be expected to complete packets upon packets of schoolwork and still be obligated to come the next day and be at their best. Many students suffer from sleep deprivation, simply because most homework is tedious and time-consuming. It should also be taken into account that many students would much rather do their own activities before starting homework, by the time one starts homework it could already be 10:00 pm. Swick and Jellinek write in their research paper, “…lack of sleep can interfere with the consolidation of learning. It also has powerful effects on working memory and reaction time, making both academic and athletic performance suffer” (“Adolescents and”, 2017). Students that regularly receive homework are prone to experiencing less sleep resulting in the loss of much-needed rest. The brain would not be fully functioning which would result in the lack of calibration as the brain would not be refreshed, consequently, the brain’s capacity and abilities to retain information would also be severely hindered. Considering that homework is “supposed” to help students remember the material learned in class, this study proves it to be more ironic than accurate. If it were meant to help students memorize class material then why would it also be responsible for a lower level of brain function among students who stay up all night trying to complete their homework?

Change can only occur if the ones that have authority are willing to make any change. The Department of Education of the United States has not done much to reform the outdated education system ever since the inception of the agency in 1867. The DOE has not shown any interest because the closest they have been at addressing the issue of homework is by pushing the publication of a 31-page brochure in 1998 that detailed how teachers should assign homework and its positive role in the academic success of students. The brochure, conveniently, is labeled, “Helping Your Students with Homework…A Guide for

Teachers” (1998). The concluding paragraph of this brochure reads, “Homework can bring together children, parents, and teachers in a common effort to improving student learning […]” (p.45, 1998). Something that I would like to digress with. Non-profit organizations such as End the Race, formed by parents, exist to disagree with this statement. The DOE is not taking this issue seriously as the parents are; the education system that has been breeding off the lives of students burdened under grades that will eventually determine their fate. The brochure further says that homework leads to academic success, and

that homework develops life skills. This would be a fact if those skills were being sleep deprived,

time stripped, and stressed. If the education system is as perfect as the DOE assumes with their

lack of reform, then there should be no reason for why the United States ranks 14th in the global

education rankings according to a study by Masters and More. In comparison, Finland, notorious

for insisting that homework is useless, ranks at 5th. Considerably higher than the United States and stands to disprove the notion that homework means success.

End The Race’s motto, “Race for Nothing”, suggests that the students are racing through loads of homework and assignments, and in the end, they will not learn anything from it. The problem here is that the work students are completing is useless. End The Race made leaps and bounds in order to catch the attention of lawmakers and federal authorities.  In 2011, End The Race launched a petition labeled, “Urge the National PTA: Support Healthy Homework Guidelines”. After amassing more than 10,000 signatures, the petition shut down due to “complications” that have not yet been revealed to the public. The organization is very committed to bringing awareness that they created a documentary film. The documentary, “Race to Nowhere”, explores the lives of students and presents anecdotes of parents and doctors. Unfortunately, the film is screened in a few selected schools across New York. Organizations like End The Race exist to prove that parents are actively fighting to prove that homework is harmful rather than beneficial for their children. However, these efforts have proven to be futile. Although there has been no fruit to the hard work, the fact that parents and educators have done this much is inspiring. Their work stands to prove that there is an active problem with homework’s implementation because loving parents would not waste their time fighting for something that did not exist. Their fight should remind us to also voice our opinion even if it is not guaranteed to change anything.

Vicky Abeles, the leader, and director of End The Race wrote an op-ed on Time Magazine about how homework is obviously harmful through first-hand accounts with students she has worked with and also her own children. She starts her op-ed off with a line targetted at mothers in order to hook them in, “Would it surprise you to learn that some elementary school kids have workweeks comparable to adults’ schedules?”. This hook is powerful because of the absurd juxtaposition with this sentence. It would be insane to compare an adults work schedule with an elementary student’s but Abeles has evidence to prove it. She says, “For most children. Mandatory homework assignments push their workweek far beyond the school day and deep into what any other laborers would consider overtime”. Again with the juxtaposition, Abeles makes sure to make asinine comparisons in order to prove a point.  Her point is that students are made to do too much. Her argument starts from elementary students to show the worst of the situations and then she gradually moves on to older students, “With my youngest child just months away from finishing high school, I’m remembering all the needless misery and missed opportunities all three of my kids suffered because of their endless assignments”. Abeles continuously uses anecdotal evidence to win over the audience in order to make a point. Abeles further states, “ I would urge them into bed before midnight and then find them clandestinely studying under the covers with a flashlight”. This sentence clearly proves the fact that homework is extremely time consuming. And in her own words because of the extreme homework her son is,  “finding little time for the exercise and fresh air essential to his well-being”.

Gifted Child Today, an educational popular source magazine geared towards professionals and parents, has voiced its concern over the homework argument many times. Once such example is in their Fall 2007 issue which is titled, “The debate about homework”. The text states, “Homework is given to students to do outside of the school hours. Since 1940, arguments for and against homework have surfaced in editorials, magazines, and peer-reviewed journals”. This introductory line provides us with some important context, the context that homework has been a controversial topic. With this precursor, it can be assumed that there is some weight within the anti-homework sentiment if it has managed to stay alive for so long.   The article seems to hold no argument but instead provides views from both sides of the debate in order to create space for the reader to decide. It is an informative piece rather than being an argumentative piece. It has no bias and is strictly was written to provide information for the masses. The article does refer to another popular source, “Educational Learning”. This magazine, just like Gifted Child Today, is also an educational magazine which caters to professionals and parents. It is apparent that Gifted Child Today sourced information from Educational Learning’s article which is titled, “ The case for and against homework”. This article is divided between their argument which is that homework is being utilized incorrectly and a counter-argument to that statement, a tad different than Gifted Child Today’s article which had no statement. The first few words read, “Teachers should not abandon homework. Instead, they should improve instructional quality”. From the beginning, the article provides a statement which is further expanded upon. This article, labeled “Special Topic” was written by Robert J. Marzano and Debra J. Pickering in March of 2007. The article starts with, “Arguments against homework are becoming louder and more popular, as evidenced by several recent books…”. With this fact, the article delves into the case against homework, “The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families by Kralovec and Buell…considered by many to be the first high-profile attack on homework, asserted that homework contributes to a corporate-style, competitive U.S. culture that overvalues work to the detriment of personal and familial well-being”. I believe this to be true because numbers and GPA’s are valued more than the student’s ability and drive to succeed, Instead of valuing the student’s vision and dreams, we value numbers on a paper by assigning countless assignments with varying lengths and difficulties and therefore stress and strain the student of their energy in order to determine their fate. The time homework consumes can directly relate to reduced family activity and could also very likely hurt the physical and emotional wellbeing of students who tend to take more time to do their homework than others. The article references another book, “A similar call for action came from Bennett and Kalish (2006) in The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It. These authors criticized both the quantity and quality of homework…too much homework harms students’ health and family time…asserted that teachers are not well trained in how to assign homework…suggested that individuals and parent groups should insist that teachers reduce the amount of homework, design more valuable assignments, and avoid homework altogether over breaks and holidays”. Bennet and Kalish believe that students would benefit from quality homework in limited amounts, instead of lots of homework. Instead of giving homework consistently, teachers should learn how to effectively assign homework and refrain from giving poorly written homework and to also refrain from giving homework over holidays in order to allow students to spend times with their families without any worry of schoolwork. I am in complete agreement with Bennet and Kalish because in order to learn the work should be of quality rather than of quantity. Learning should be a desire and should not be forced, because if forced it will not work. This is evident by the number of students that drop out early or simply do not care about school.

The Educational Learning article titled, “The case for and against homework”, provides counter-arguments to the stance that homework is unbeneficial. The subsection, “ The Dangers of Ignoring the Research”, states, “Cooper and colleagues’ (2006) comparison of homework with no homework indicates that the average student in a class in which appropriate homework was assigned would score 23 percentile points higher on tests of the knowledge addressed in that class than the average student in a class in which homework was not assigned”. Basically, those who do receive homework score higher on assessments, quizzes, and tests compared to those who do not receive homework. “Perhaps the most important advantage of homework is that it can enhance achievement by extending learning beyond the school day. This characteristic is important because U.S. students spend much less time studying academic content than students in other countries do”. The article claims that homework is statistically important because American students are not required to study work as much as students that, for example, live in Japan or China. It is said that the homework given to us now is important for us because it supposedly enhances achievement outside of the school life. Although homework MAY provide enhancements and benefits, it does not mean it is not mentally and physically detrimental within the long run.

A study, called “Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework”, was conducted by Denise Pope from Stanford Graduate School of Education, her findings bear interesting results and counteract this counter-argument. The study was conducted on a group of students from select schools and the study revealed, “56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor” (2014). The study reveals that students will most instantly presume that homework is their primary source of stress regardless of any other factors involved. Not only does this prove that homework can cause stress, but it also proves that students stress about homework over everything else in their lives and that it is the biggest enemy to their happiness. These findings by Denise Pope prove that homework is a great stress on students and that even though it could benefit them, it will come with side effects. These side effects include stress, depression, lack of time management, no recreational opportunities, no time with family, and sleep deprivation. In a private online discussion with Denise Pope, she recommends that removing homework would benefit students greatly. “Well- we would love to see more time for kids to play…many kids have almost no free time these days, and it takes a toll on the mentally and physically”. It is evident that homework creates problems for students according to her studies and subsequent statements, Denise Pope says students she works with call homework, “busy work”. (Denise Pope, personal communication, October 17, 2018).

Teachers themselves also know the harmful effects of homework. A study documented by Stephen D. Aloia in his scholarly article, “Teacher assessment of homework”, he states, “This study examined the perceptions of 247 teachers about the…harmful effects of homework on the students”. Aloia goes on to state, “In addition, they were asked to respond to eight questions about the efficacy of their homework…”.  Before getting into the results, Aloia makes sure to provide background information to the debate on homework. He states, “ Current scholars, such as Cooper, (1989) and, Walberg, et al., (1985), contend that homework is related to academic achievement and it is important in our educational system. However, even Cooper notes that “There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance”, of students. Therefore, as he further says, “there will always be a need for on-going research and assessment of homework practices across the continuum of schooling”. After providing both sides of the story on the debate of homework, Aloia jumps straight into the responses given by the teachers. “List three to five ways that homework is harmful to your students…”. The teachers voted in order, the results are from most voted to the least voted. The results are as following: frustration, stress, lack of family time, no play time, too much work, parent problems, lower grades for non-completion, and miscellaneous responses (these responses include health issues, emotional problems, and lack of time for other activities that are recreational). These responses are expected because it was known very well. These harmful effects are obvious yet homework is still administered, most of the time irresponsibly and for the sake of giving homework out. It is true that school boards mandate a certain amount of homework or else the teacher will be penalized. Therefore, effects like frustration, sleep deprivation and stress occur. Students simply cannot keep up with the unreasonable amount of homework they are given.

Homework and its burdening impacts have been a dilemma for a long time. Much has

been done to bring awareness to the problem, but it is neglected. Many parents and students have

been ignorant for far too long because they think the system works. The truth is that the system

does not work for the students. The DOE does not seem to be interested in change, but it is

Bibliography (as of October 25th, 2018):

Gill, B. P., & Schlossman, S. L. (2004). Villain or savior? The American discourse on

homework, 1850-2003. Theory into Practice, 43(3), 174+. Retrieved from

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=nysl_me_76_tele&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA122163697&asid=96266a4a0a6a7a62c6691b95885cfe49

Simplicio, J. S. C. (2005). Homework in the 21st century: the antiquated and ineffectual

implementation of a time-honored educational strategy. Education, 126(1), 138+. retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=nysl_me_76_tele&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA136846799&asid=2ee6851336ba64af48a3a9c7c752558c

Swick, S. D., & Jellinek, M. S. (2017, June 1). Adolescents and sleep, or the lack thereof.

Pediatric News, 51(6), 11. Retrieved from

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=nysl_me_76_tele&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA497947890&asid=8d14c3b4c52ccf90ab95f769b53c3992

Aloia, Stephen D. “Teacher assessment of homework.” Academic Exchange Quarterly , Fall 2003, p. 71+. Academic OneFile , https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A111848824/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=fb190beb . Accessed 14 Nov. 2018.

Abeles, Vicki. “Why Homework Should Be Banned From Schools.” Time , Time, 14 Apr. 2017, time.com/4740297/homework-should-be-banned-from-schools/.

Ascd. “Special Topic / The Case For and Against Homework.” How Student Progress Monitoring Improves Instruction – Educational Leadership , Educational Learning, Mar. 2007, www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx .

“The debate about homework.” Gifted Child Today , Fall 2007, p. 6+. Academic OneFile , https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A170020751/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=54f146d7 . Accessed 13 Nov. 2018.

Pope, D. (2016, April 16). Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework. Retrieved from

https://news.stanford.edu/2014/03/10/too-much-homework-031014/

(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.master-and-more.eu/en/news-detail/news/top-40-

education-systems-in-the-world/

“Urge The National PTA: Support Healthy Homework Guidelines.” Change.org , Race to Nowhere, 2012, www.change.org/p/urge-the-national-pta-support-healthy-homework-guidelines .

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Is Homework Illegal? (Arguments In Support and Against)

Homework is not illegal in the United States.

But from a legal standpoint, it is a really fun argument to make!

In this article, we’ll cover some points that you could use for or against the question of the legality of homework, whether you are the student, parent, or teacher in this debate.

Is Homework Illegal? (FOR and AGAINST)

The contents of this web page are for informational purposes only, and nothing you read is intended to be legal advice. Please review our  disclaimer about law/legal-related information on this website  before taking action based upon anything you read or see.

Legal vs Illegal vs Unconstitutional

To make the argument that something (like homework) is illegal, there needs to be a law or statute or case precedent or SOMETHING that is the basis for the alleged illegality.

People have argued that homework is illegal because it counts as a form of “slavery.”

And since “slavery” was abolished by an amendment to the constitution, it is therefore “illegal.”

This argument fails.

It is illegal to restrict/control with force the movement/life of other individuals if you do not have authority to do so (as parents do with their minor children).

It is illegal to commit the other acts slavery is well known for (assault, harassment, and more).

And the individual statutes (state and federal) addressing those specific acts are the basis for the conclusion that something is “illegal” and “legal.”

Not everything that would be unconstitutional (or goes against the stated words in the constitution) would be considered illegal, and vice versa.

Instead, if you were going to make the argument that homework was illegal, you’d be better off consulting the various statutes that make certain conduct illegal.

For example:

Let’s accept that homework is an act, and that the victims do not want to commit or engage in this act, and the victims (students) only do the act because of the threat of some other result (punishments, consequences, etc).

Perhaps then you could argue that forcing kids to do homework is an illegal act, assuming that the threats of consequences are coming from an individual or entity that does not have legal authority to provide the threatened punishments, or those punishments are themselves illegal.

Sounds a lot like the crime of coercion , doesn’t it?

If you want to argue that homework is illegal, look for a statute like coercion to support your argument.

And if you want to use the 13th amendment in support of your case against homework, argue that homework is “unconstitutional” rather than “illegal.”

But if you want to argue more about the constitution, you could argue that homework infringes the rights contained in the 14th amendment to the constitution which present the state from depriving any person life, liberty , or property.

Children under the age of 18 surely qualify as “any person.” And they have a right to “liberty” which homework surely infringes.

Consent As The School’s Defense

One of the arguments that homework is illegal or constitutes slavery is that the children do not want to do the homework.

They are being made to do it.

They did not agree to do the homework.

But here’s the thing.

People under the age of 18 in the United States cannot make most decisions for themselves.

While the children may be in school against their will, and the homework is against their will, their parents or legal guardians have consented.

The parents have agreed on the children’s behalf to the homework.

Thus, technically, because the parents have voluntarily sent their children to the school, the parents have voluntarily consented to the homework, and the consequences of not doing the homework.

The child might not consent to the homework, but in the end, the parents have given their agreement.

The parents take the children to the school.

No one is pointing weapons at them to make them.

The parents sign their names to forms.

No weapons there either.

And since a crime like coercion requires that the act (the homework) be an act against the will or interest of the victim, a case cannot succeed because the will of the parents is substituted for the will of the child.

Arguing That Parents Did Not Consent

We just talked about how a debater could argue that homework is not illegal or against the will of the child because the parent’s will is substituted for the child’s will.

But what is the consent of the parent was not voluntary?

What if the parent was coerced to send their child to school, or to the homework?

What is sending their kids to school (and to do homework) was involuntary?

In most states, there are laws covering the attendance of children at school.

Absent an exclusion or a valid reason to opt out (like homeschool), a parent could face criminal prosecution if he/she does not send a child to school.

Think of what it means to make a voluntary decision.

It involves a lot of free will, and no pressure or undue influence.

If the school were to argue that the parents consented for the children to school (and then the homework), the argument against the consent is that the parents cannot voluntarily consent to the homework.

Parents are under the threat of fines and jail time.

Their consent is being obtained essentially by force.

A weapon of a different kind.

After all, a parent who goes to jail might lose his job, his driver’s license, or maybe even custody of his children.

A parent who goes to jail might lose his right to vote, or his position/status in society.

A person cannot consent at the business end of a weapon.

State Laws Do Not Compel Homework, Just Attendance

Another fun wrinkle in this argument, especially as we get down into whether parents have consented or can consent to homework, is whether the applicable laws have any impact on homework.

A student is not lawfully required to do homework.

If you look at the laws about education, there are laws about parents sending their kids to school.

There are laws about kids actually going to school.

But are there any laws that require children to complete the homework.

Like really?

I mean, doing homework is important to getting a good grade.

But aside from showing up at school (and not hurting or disrupting others), can schools actually make children do homework?

Schools can implement consequences for failing to turn in homework.

But they can’t physically punish a child (like hitting him, in most cases), or prevent him from eating or drinking while at school.

And once the child is at home with his homework, he is subject to the will of his parents or legal guardians.

Browse our  free legal library guides  for more information.

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Poland’s kids rejoice over new rules against homework. Teachers and parents aren’t so sure

The Associated Press

April 11, 2024, 8:48 AM

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Ola Kozak is celebrating. The 11-year-old, who loves music and drawing, expects to have more free time for her hobbies after Poland’s government ordered strict limits on the amount of homework in the lower grades.

“I am happy,” said the fifth grader, who lives in a Warsaw suburb with her parents and younger siblings. The lilac-colored walls in her bedroom are covered in her art, and on her desk she keeps a framed picture she drew of Kurt Cobain.

“Most people in my class in the morning would copy the work off someone who had done the homework or would copy it from the internet. So it didn’t make sense,” she said.

The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk enacted the ban against required homework this month amid a broad discussion about the need to modernize Poland’s education system, which critics say puts too much emphasis on rote learning and homework, and not enough on critical thinking and creativity.

Under the decree, teachers are no longer to give required homework to kids in the first to third grades. In grades four to eight, homework is now optional and doesn’t count towards a grade.

Not everyone likes the change – and even Ola’s parents are divided.

“If there is something that will make students enjoy school more, then it will probably be good both for the students and for the school,” said her father, Pawel Kozak.

His wife, Magda Kozak, was skeptical. “I am not pleased, because (homework) is a way to consolidate what was learned,” she said. “It helps stay on top of what the child has really learned and what’s going on at school.”

(Ola’s brother Julian, a third grader, says he sees both sides.)

Debates over the proper amount of homework are common around the globe. While some studies have shown little benefit to homework for young learners, other experts say it can help them learn how to develop study habits and academic concepts.

Poland’s educational system has undergone a number of controversial overhauls. Almost every new government has tried to make changes — something many teachers and parents say has left them confused and discouraged. For example, after communism was thrown off, middle schools were introduced. Then under the last government, the previous system was brought back. More controversy came in recent years when ultra-conservative views were pushed in new textbooks.

For years, teachers have been fleeing the system due to low wages and political pressure. The current government is trying to increase teacher salaries and has promised other changes that teachers approve of.

But Sławomir Broniarz, the head of the Polish Teachers’ Union, said that while he recognized the need to ease burdens on students, the new homework rules are another case of change imposed from above without adequate consultation with educators.

“In general, the teachers think that this happened too quickly, too hastily,” he said.

He argued that removing homework could widen the educational gaps between kids who have strong support at home and those from poorer families with less support and lower expectations. Instead, he urged wider changes to the entire curriculum.

The homework rules gained impetus in the runup to parliamentary elections last year, when a 14-year-old boy, Maciek Matuszewski, stood up at a campaign rally and told Tusk before a national audience that children “had no time to rest.” The boy said their rights were being violated with so much homework on weekends and so many tests on Mondays.

Tusk has since featured Matuszewski in social media videos and made him the face of the sudden change.

Education Minister Barbara Nowacka said she was prompted by research on children’s mental health. Of the various stresses children face, she said, “the one that could be removed fastest was the burden of homework.”

Pasi Sahlberg, a prominent Finnish educator and author, said the value of homework depends on what it is and how it is linked to overall learning. The need for homework can be “very individual and contextual.”

“We need to trust our teachers to decide what is good for each child,” Sahlberg said.

In South Korea, homework limits were set for elementary schools in 2017 amid concerns that kids were under too much pressure. However, teenagers in the education-obsessed country often cram long into the night and get tutoring to meet the requirements of demanding school and university admission tests.

In the U.S., teachers and parents decide for themselves how much homework to assign. Some elementary schools have done away with homework entirely to give children more time to play, participate in activities and spend time with families.

A guideline circulated by teachers unions in the U.S. recommends about 10 minutes of homework per grade. So, 10 minutes in first grade, 20 minutes in second grade and so on.

The COVID-19 pandemic and a crisis around youth mental health have complicated debates around homework. In the U.S., extended school closures in some places were accompanied by steep losses in learning , which were often addressed with tutoring and other interventions paid for with federal pandemic relief money. At the same time, increased attention to student wellbeing led some teachers to consider alternate approaches including reduced or optional homework.

It’s important for children to learn that mastering something “usually requires practice, a lot of practice,” said Sahlberg, in Finland. If reducing homework leads kids and parents to think school expectations for excellence will be lowered, “things will go wrong.”

AP writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut, and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed.

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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