Do Kids Have Too Much Homework?
Across the United States, parents, teachers and administrators alike are rethinking their approach to after-school assignments
- By LynNell Hancock
- Smithsonian.com, August 22, 2011, Subscribe
In recent studies of homework outcomes, researchers have found little correlation between the amount of homework and academic achievement. Mark Hunt / Huntstock / Corbis
Homework horror stories are as timeworn as school bullies and cafeteria mystery meat. But as high-stakes testing pressures have mounted over the past decade—and global rankings for America’s schools have declined—homework has come under new scrutiny.
Diane Lowrie says she fled an Ocean County, New Jersey, school district three years ago when she realized her first grader’s homework load was nearly crushing him. Reading logs, repetitive math worksheets, and regular social studies reports turned their living room into an anguished battleground. “Tears were shed, every night,” says Lowrie, 47, an environmental educator, who tried to convince school district administrators that the work was not only numbing, but harmful. “Iain started to hate school, to hate learning, and he was only 6 years old,” she told me in a recent interview.
A 2003 Brookings Institution study suggests that Iain’s experience may be typical of a few children in pressure-cooker schools, but it’s not a widespread problem. Still, a 2004 University of Michigan survey of 2,900 six- to seventeen-year-old children found that time spent each week on homework had increased from 2 hours 38 minutes to 3 hours 58 minutes since 1981. And in his 2001 and 2006 reviews of academic studies of homework outcomes, Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, found little correlation between the amount of homework and academic achievement in elementary school (though higher in middle school and high school). Cooper supports the influential ten-minute homework rule, which recommends adding ten daily minutes of homework per grade beginning in first grade, up to a maximum of two hours. Some districts have added no homework on weekends to the formula.
The question of how much homework is enough is widely debated and was a focus of the 2009 documentary Race to Nowhere, a galvanizing cri de coeur about the struggles of kids in high-performing schools. “I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to go in the backyard and just run around,” a teenage girl laments in the film. “I’ve gone through bouts of depression” from too much homework, another confesses. A bewildered-looking third girl says: “I would spend six hours a night on my homework.”
The results of international tests give the homework skeptics ammunition. David Baker and Gerald LeTendre, professors of education at Penn State, found that in countries with the most successful school systems, like Japan, teachers give small amounts homework, while teachers in those with the lowest scores, such as Greece and Iran, give a lot. (Of course the quality of the assignment and the teacher’s use of it also matter.) The United States falls somewhere in the middle—average amounts of homework and average test results. Finnish teachers tend to give minimal amounts of homework throughout all the grades; the New York Times reported Finnish high-school kids averaged only one-half hour a night.
Sara Bennett, a Brooklyn criminal attorney and mother of two, began a second career as an anti-homework activist when her first-grade son brought home homework only a parent could complete. The 2006 book she co-wrote, The Case Against Homework, is credited with propelling a nationwide parent movement calling for time limits on homework.
Last year, the affluent village of Ridgewood, New Jersey, was shaken by two young suicides, causing school officials to look for ways they could ease kids’ anxieties. Anthony Orsini, principal of Ridgewood’s Benjamin Franklin Middle School, eliminated homework for elective courses and set up an online system that lets families know how long many homework assignments should take. “We have a high-powered district,” says Orsini. “The pressures are palpable on these students to succeed. My community is not ready to eliminate homework altogether.”
The trend, instead, is to lessen the quantity while improving the quality of homework by using it to complement classroom work, says Cathy Vatterott, a professor of education at University of Missouri at St. Louis and author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs (2009). Cynthia Schneider, principal of World Journalism Preparatory school in Queens for 570 sixth through twelfth graders, plans to encourage all students to read for pleasure every night, then write a thoughtful response. There are also initiatives to “decriminalize” not finishing homework assignments.
As for Diane Lowrie, who left Ocean County because of too much homework, she says Iain, now 10 and heading for fifth grade in Roosevelt, New Jersey, is less stressed out. He recently spent 40 hours working on a book report and diorama about the Battle of Yorktown. “But,” says his mother, “it was his idea and he enjoyed it.”
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Comments (15)
Hey, homework gets me stressed and upset, I easily get frustrated and depressed with how much I have. Its way tooo much, I say!Kids should be spending afternoons playing or hanging out with friends. Isn't school enough! At the moment I am freaking out about homework I have 11 assignments for 1 week and this is the first day back of school. HELP ME! I just want to cry and leave schools, stress is not healthy for anybody. SO JUST STOP HOMEWORK!!
Posted by Lola on April 24,2012 | 03:57 AM
Hi! Im also a teen, just finishing middle school (in 8th grade) and it sucks. Im one of the ones that sleep more in my class, and I just sleep 7/6 hours daily (get up at 6 and get to sleep at 11 or 12) because of projects, tests, and homeworks. yesterday i just spent since 5pm to about 10pm studying for a biology test. Im eating more, getting fatter, getting stressed, depressed, and I feel I am not having a life! I miss those days in my old school where I could have swimming class, karate, art, and music (my passions!) when now I cant have even a single one of those because all i do is homework, i only have 3 hours soccer a week and 1 of guitar, which I mostly cancel for HW time and for study for tests.
Posted by meee on March 27,2012 | 06:41 PM
hello i was wounderin how many hours do children in finland spend on there homework and what is the purpose in homework there
Posted by angel on February 23,2012 | 09:23 AM
Sharon, I agree with you. My school loads on 2-4 hours of homework DAILY. I wouldn't suggest any kid to take 3 AP classes in high school(unless you LOVE to do work), because before you know it, you are no longer a kid. Come on America, LET'S LEARN FROM FINLAND AND JAPAN! :)
Posted by Lila on November 3,2011 | 02:00 AM
Then too there is the teacher who stands up on the first day of class and proudly announces that she "Grades on a Curve".
None of those teachers ever explained what that actually meant, it wasn't until many years later that I finally learned their intent. The curve that is being referred to is the "Bell Curve". But you won't learn about it until you take a class statistics.
What the "Bell Curve" observes is that given a sufficiently large number of random events, such as balls falling into chutes, the majority of events shall occur in the middle of the range with fewer and fewer of those events occurring at the extremes of the range. When plotted it takes the shape of something which vaguely resembles the outline of a Bell, thus the name.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Standardizing_normal_random_variables
Now one would hope that every teacher wants each of their students to be a success. But that is antithesis to what the teacher who grades on a curve actually intends; for when you "Grade on a Curve", it means that you have already decided in advance that -- Irrespective of the students actual performance -- so many of them are going to "win" and so many of them are going to "fail" and the rest will just be average.
"Grading on a Curve" is an abomination that should be banned. It's only purpose is to define winners and losers, it has nothing to do with actual academic achievement.
Beyond the fact that it unfairly grades the students without regard to their actual performance. It is also a massive abuse and misapplication of the "Bell Curve Principle" and any teacher using it is seriously deficient in their own education. The "Bell Curve" only properly applies to the classification of "Random Events", and one would certainly hope that the teaching that goes on in a classroom is not random.
Posted by manyshoes on September 8,2011 | 09:25 PM
One fundamental mistake that permeates the educational system is the confusion between memorization and knowledge. Is it just a question of laziness or are the teachers so overburdened themselves that they take this massive shortcut? It is far easier to tell students to memorize something and vastly easier to test what they have memorized. But helping students to actually understand something, to actually think about something, and then trying to design a test to see if they understood it, is much much harder. Of course the Finnish answered this dilemma by getting rid of the test and focusing on comprehension rather than memorization, while keeping the environment relaxed and fun.
Recently I saw the results of some sort of statewide academic contest, it was very telling that the contest was won by a student who had been home-schooled.
People ignore the value of the "one-room-school-house" effect. Most educators are completely oblivious to the natural osmosis of students at different levels learning from each other and from being exposed to more advanced material.
Then too, another severe problem, which is only in the early stages of being addressed, is the problem of bullies run-amuck. Far too often, teachers and administrators have turned a blind-eye to this problem and left vulnerable children without protection, or worse yet to accuse them of instigating the problem. The emotional scars of such abuse can last a lifetime. Until every child is provided with a safe and respectful environment, how can they possibly be expected to devote their full attention to learning?
With the American Education system in such disarray, is it any wonder that this country is on the wane?
Posted by manyshoes on September 8,2011 | 08:37 PM
School has become a burden to endure. All the joy of learning and the excitement of exploration has been sapped out of it. When I was a senior in high-school I was appalled at how many of my classmates expressed their relief that school would soon be over and how glad they were that they would never have to learn anything ever again. This I believe is the result of having been force-fed endlessly.
I am reminded of a study that was done back in the days when coal was still shoveled by hand. The natural inclination was to expect the workers to haul as much as they could carry and to go as fast as they could walk. But they tired quickly and productivity was low. Then someone came along and figured out that if they took smaller loads and frequent rest breaks that they could actually haul more coal per day.
This "No child left behind" nonsense, however well intentioned, is a recipe for disaster. The sooner we are rid of it the better. Placing greater burdens upon the students, placing even more emphasis on rote memorization, forcing teachers to teach to "the test". All of these things have the net effect of destroying the true learning that ought to be going on.
Posted by manyshoes on September 8,2011 | 08:35 PM
So many of the assignments that I received as a child were just "make-work", dull repetitive boring assignments with no real goals other than to demand that we prove over and over again that yes indeed we really have memorized that 2+3 equals 5. Children are not as stupid as many adults assume them to be. Ignorance is not the same as lack of intelligence. Children know very quickly which assignments challenge them to learn something new and which are just designed to fulfill some formulaic requirement of time consumed in order to justify funding levels and conform to lesson plans.
Then too, there is another huge, very huge assumption being made. This is the assumption that every child has an idealistic home life; that they will go home to supportive parents and a quiet place for uninterrupted study. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every child does not experience this, only the lucky ones do.
A far too frequent reality is that after spending 7 to 8 hours at school, plus the addition of a not uncommon 1 hour commute each way; that child must now often face a mountain of chores and a mountain of homework, before they even have an inkling of a chance to be children who go outside for some carefree play.
This is not a formula for a happy childhood.
Posted by manyshoes on September 8,2011 | 08:34 PM
Formulaic school work -- both in and out of class -- is precisely what is wrong with the American Education system.
Have our children been produced in a Clone Factory, that they are all so predictable and uniformly compliant? This country claims to extol the virtues of individuality and creativity and yet the current structures treat people, especially children, as so many interchangeable black-boxes, each with identical behavior and abilities.
I ask you, just how exactly is it that a homework assignment can be determined to take 10 minutes to complete?!? 10 minutes for whom? 10 minutes for the teacher? 10 minutes for the top students who happen to have an innate ability with that subject, 10 minutes for the average student? or 10 minutes for the student who is already overburdened and struggling to keep up.
Posted by manyshoes on September 8,2011 | 08:34 PM
We should also look into kids working after school as well. American kids according to a NBC special several years ago work more than any other students in the developed world. Many need to help support their families , often times managers push them to work long hours. Between lots of homework and part to full time jobs and a test ,test , test mentality of our education system maybe we're doing some things wrong.
Posted by Craig on September 2,2011 | 10:41 PM
The improvement of student outcomes is not related to homework, but hours of instruction and quality of instruction. This could be in a well-organized larger class, but is much easier in a classroom with fewer than 20 students.
Posted by Emily Blanck on September 2,2011 | 03:34 PM
yes they do have too much homework!!! i can't even pick up my son's book bag! it's time to lay off them and let them have time to be a kid!
Posted by sharon on September 2,2011 | 12:54 PM
I am all for parents who make certain their children aren't being mistreated or harmed, but I also feel that parental "hovering" is to blame for much of the stress our school-age kids are feeling. School is work, and sometimes school is no fun, but children who are too sheltered from ever stretching themselves beyond what is "comfortable" aren't well trained for life beyond school and college.
Posted by C.J. Hays on September 2,2011 | 12:32 PM
I so admire parents that DO something about too much homework! It is easy to complain and force children to do meaningless homework, but it takes courage and resolve to speak up and stand up to teachers, principals and districts.
Posted by Angela of Family Homework Answers on August 27,2011 | 08:00 PM