myth about homework

The Myth About Homework

S achem was the last straw. Â Or was it Kiva? My 12-year-old daughter and I had been drilling social-studies key words for more than an hour. It was 11 p.m. Our entire evening had, as usual, consisted of homework and conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about homework. She was tired and fed up. I was tired and fed up. The words wouldn’t stick. They meant nothing to her. They didn’t mean much to me either. After all, when have I ever used sachem in a sentence–until just now?

As the summer winds down, I’m dreading scenes like that one from seventh grade. Already the carefree August nights have given way to meaningful conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about the summer reading that didn’t get done. So what could be more welcome than two new books assailing this bane of modern family life: The Homework Myth (Da Capo Press; 243 pages), by Alfie Kohn, the prolific, perpetual critic of today’s test-driven schools, and The Case Against Homework (Crown; 290 pages), a cri de coeur by two moms, lawyer Sara Bennett and journalist Nancy Kalish.

Both books cite studies, surveys, statistics, along with some hair-raising anecdotes, on how a rising tide of dull, useless assignments is oppressing families and making kids hate learning. A few highlights from the books and my own investigation:

• According to a 2004 national survey of 2,900 American children conducted by the University of Michigan, the amount of time spent on homework is up 51% since 1981.

• Most of that increase reflects bigger loads for little kids. An academic study found that whereas students ages 6 to 8 did an average of 52 min. of homework a week in 1981, they were toiling 128 min. weekly by 1997. And that’s before No Child Left Behind kicked in. An admittedly less scientific poll of parents conducted this year for AOL and the Associated Press found that elementary school students were averaging 78 min. a night.

• The onslaught comes despite the fact that an exhaustive review by the nation’s top homework scholar, Duke University’s Harris Cooper, concluded that homework does not measurably improve academic achievement for kids in grade school. That’s right: all the sweat and tears do not make Johnny a better reader or mathematician.

• Too much homework brings diminishing returns. Cooper’s analysis of dozens of studies found that kids who do some homework in middle and high school score somewhat better on standardized tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night in middle school and more than 2 hr. in high school is associated with, gulp, lower scores.

• Teachers in many of the nations that outperform the U.S. on student achievement tests–such as Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic–tend to assign less homework than American teachers, but instructors in low-scoring countries like Greece, Thailand and Iran tend to pile it on.

Success on standardized tests is, of course, only one measure of learning–and only one purported goal of homework. Educators, including Cooper, tend to defend homework by saying it builds study habits, self-discipline and time-management skills. But there’s also evidence that homework sours kids’ attitudes toward school. “It’s one thing to say we are wasting kids’ time and straining parent-kid relationships,” Kohn told me, “but what’s unforgivable is if homework is damaging our kids’ interest in learning, undermining their curiosity.”

Kohn’s solution is radical: he wants a no-homework policy to become the default, with exceptions for tasks like interviewing parents on family history, kitchen chemistry and family reading.

Or, in a nation in which 71% of mothers of kids under 18 are in the workforce, how about extending the school day or year beyond its agrarian-era calendar? Let students do more work at school and save evenings for family and serendipity.

Bennett and Kalish have a more modest proposal. Parents should demand a sensible homework policy, perhaps one based on Cooper’s rule of thumb: 10 min. a night per grade level. They offer lessons from their own battle to rein in the workload at their kids’ private middle school in Brooklyn, N.Y. Among their victories: a nightly time limit, a policy of no homework over vacations, no more than two major tests a week, fewer weekend assignments and no Monday tests.

Why don’t more parents in homework-heavy districts take such actions? Do too many of us think it’s just our child who is struggling, so who are we to lead a revolt? Yup, when it comes to the battle of homework mountain, we’ve got too many Indians and not enough sachems.

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October 23, 2010 / 21 Comments

25 Myths About Homework

Last night I asked people for help with my presentation on Myths about Homework which I am presenting today at Skeptic Camp in Vancouver. Within 15 minutes, we had 20 Myths, within another 15 minutes we had a total of 26 myths about homework with one duplication. Thanks for your help, I’ve turned these myths into a presentation you can view below. I think that homework may still be something which has value, but which probably needs to take a much different form than what it looks like now. Here’s the pretty plain version using Google Docs.

What was really neat about this experience was watching the ideas pour onto the page. I liked working with people, some of whom had other suggestions and ideas about how homework should be done. If your slide or work or idea didn’t make it into this presentation it is because this presentation was about the myths of homework rather than the benefits. I’m sure if I had started a similar project on the benefits of homework I could have had as much participation and good ideas about how to best implement homework.

I’ve created a Prezi version which is the one I actually ended up using. It’s missing some of the myths from above but would probably look a bit nicer when it’s actually being used.

Myths about Homework on Prezi

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21 Comments

Add yours →.

Jacob Vohs says:

Great presentations raise good questions and your’s did that. I think you need to write a book with the same title.

October 23, 2010 — 8:37 pm

David Wees says:

Actually someone has already written a pretty popular book on this very subject called “The Homework Myth”. Check it out on Alfie Kohn’s website. http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/hm.htm

October 24, 2010 — 2:22 pm

tulvannitle says:

Hello. I am a CA Jourist, I would share somthing here soon.

November 5, 2010 — 10:04 am

Aaron Akune says:

For the most part, I think students should be doing their work ‘in class’. This allows for the teacher to assess student learning and provide immediate feedback if a student requires assistance. If a student is unable to grasp a concept in class it is highly unlikely that he/she will be able to understand it on his/her own for homework. On the other hand, if a student is receiving help in class from the teacher, I think it is important that a student continue to work on these areas at home. In this sense, reinforcing learning at home is purposeful.

An area I do have concerns about is the assessment of homework. I do not believe it is fair to assign a mark to students’ work until there has been an opportunity for them to have received feedback from the teacher. Too often, students complete homework, receive a poor mark and are given little to no opportunity to improve their learning.

The key to any work, whether it be in class or homework is that it must be a learning opportunity for students and should be assessed in a manner that motivates students to continue their learning!

November 15, 2010 — 1:36 am

There are two issues with the continuation of work from the class at home.

1. If a student only kind of gets it, when they get home they may practice some more and make some mistakes in their logic, and end up practicing a bunch of mistakes instead of the correct work. They don’t receive feedback on their mistakes until at least the next day, or possibly the "test" at the end of the unit. What we know about learning suggests that for routine repetitive tasks, such as those you can practice with homework, you need feedback within 5 minutes. Otherwise you remember the mistake instead of the correct answer.

2. Who is doing the work when it goes home? If the student goes home and "works" on their homework, often they have copied it from a friend, got way too much help from an older sibling or parent, or copies the assignment verbatim from the Internet. Sometimes an assignment done in French for example, they may use Google translator to help them out.

Update:  It’s recently been pointed out to me that the research on the necessity of feedback in learning is more nuanced than I’ve made it seem in this comment. See the post I’ve linked to, which itself links to further research on feedback in learning.

November 15, 2010 — 8:44 am

argyle says:

I love the points you’re making but, ugh, I can’t believe you transformed it from an elegant ppt to a Prezi. Please. If you’re going to fancy up a ppt in Prezi, keep it simple. Simple side-to-side transitions, please, not meaningless, endless twists and turns.

December 11, 2010 — 6:34 pm

Point taken. Fortunately I still have both presentations. I’d actually like to convert the text presentations to photos demonstrating each point at some stage, if I ever present on this topic again.

December 12, 2010 — 12:45 am

That sounds like a good idea. Sorry about the harshness of the original comment, Prezi is sort of my one overly-sensitive pet peeve. Cool web site, by the way. Really awesome to see so much content about student inquiry and more experiential learning. Reminds me of some of my favorite teachers.

December 12, 2010 — 12:52 am

George Hobson says:

David – want to make two points. The first is the enduring power of posts – yours was published almost a year ago and yet somehow it was Diigo-ed today. I note from the comments posted that there has been no activity in 2011, yet it was picked up by someone who thought it worthy of sharing in the Diigo group that I am in. The second one is more serious. You obtained the 25 myths from people who helped you and it makes an interesting list – and certainly one that can fuel discussion. As such it is worthy. I just want to put another view which is based on research. Reading “Visible Learning – a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement” by John Hattie (2009, Routledge, London and New York). Fascinating book and particularly worthwhile reading for a mathematician like yourself. Firstly, from p17 a quote which seems to support the myths ideas: “The typical influence after introducing homework was just below the typical effect across all possible influences. Thus, when the influence of homework is compared to the more usual zero point, those who argue that homework is effective would say “yes”, but when the effects from classes without homework are compared to the typical effect across all other influences, then homework is well below an average effect – there are many more innovations that have greater effects.” However, when students age is taken into account, Hattie reports a different story. Primary (Elementary) students gain less from homework (0.15 standard deviations) but Secondary (High School) students have greater gains (0.64 sd). Hattie signals 0.4 as the “hinge” point above which these changes are significant. So, for Secondary/High School students homework has a significant positive effect. Some would argue that the attitude to doing homework and the establishment of “good study habits at home” starts in the Primary/Elementary school – and should thus be done! But that is another study…..

September 6, 2011 — 10:35 am

I’ve read the same research suggesting that homework has a positive effect on the performance of high school students. I’ve also read research suggesting that it can have a small negative effect on elementary school students, and has essentially no impact on middle school students. However, when you look at the research on high school drop-outs, one of the common reasons students cite for leaving school is that they no longer have to do homework. This suggests that, for some students, homework can have a negative effect on high school completion rates.

I think personally that good study habits happen when one has control over one’s study habits, rather than when they are enforced externally. So I’d support students working at home with much more control over what they study, rather than being assigned homework of dubious value. If the work is to be of dubious value to learning either way, perhaps having choice over the assignment will help develop self-control and personal motivation. Much of the work that is assigned today for elementary school students especially is not of value, and I don’t personally believe that people learn self-reliance by following someone else’s scripted homework.

I’m also deeply suspicious of the numbers thrown around in the homework debate, like the 10 minutes per grade a day rule. I’ve recently read that Cooper, who is widely cited when that rule is implemented in schools, essentially modelled the number after a conversation he had with a teacher at a conference. I don’t think that someone’s offhand remark about how much homework they assign should hold so much sway over the lives of so many children.

One of the problems we have is that we don’t have a lot of comparisons to make. The homework debate usually rangers between the anti-homeworkers and the strong supporters of homework, without many people proposing alternatives. I’ve created a list of 15 things parents can do instead of homework , and I wonder what the relationship between success in schools and my list would be. This list offloads some of the responsibility of choosing learning activities from the teacher to the parents, and for parents who are not able to support these kinds of activities, we should provide support through the schools. My feeling is that self-directed learning opportunities abound for most kids, and that these types of activities, which are not necessarily tied directly to curriculum outcomes, would show a stronger improvement overall in the learning of children than either traditional homework, or no learning activites outside of school whatsoever.

September 6, 2011 — 2:55 pm

David – what you propose could be viable and worthwhile alternatives to homework. However, all this is set in particular cultural settings and expectations. Self-directed opportunities are great. But equally, for some students, the routine of worthwhile homework is valuable.

September 7, 2011 — 3:13 pm

High School Student says:

I believe homework holds much value in the lives of students. Without it a student would return home and no longer be pondering the ideas taught in class that day. Now, I am not saying we need to give excessive amounts of homework but at least one question for each new concept taught in class that day. I also disagree with your statement “However, when you look at the research on high school drop-outs, one of the common reasons students cite for leaving school is that they no longer have to do homework. This suggests that, for some students, homework can have a negative effect on high school completion rates.” I am a high school student and under no circumstances would I leave high school based solely on the matter that I would no longer have homework to do. Those who drop out for that purpose exhibit laziness. Regarding your 15 things to do other than homework list, I have to say all of those skills are quite important for children. However, they should be taught alongside of that taught in a classroom. What happens in the classroom and how well a student performs will shape the kind of opportunity they will encounter, upon their departure from high school.

January 11, 2012 — 6:11 pm

You are relying on anecdotal evidence (your own story) and generalizing that evidence to the entire student population. Research shows us that one reason commonly cited by teenagers who do drop out of school is that they received excessive amounts of homework, and that the completion of this homework seemed irrelevant to their success.

If a student goes home and chooses to do homework, and has the support to do that homework, then they should feel free to do so. It is when students do not have the capacity to do the homework (for example: they are homeless, or are required to take care of their siblings) or when this homework is excessive/meaningless in nature that I strongly feel that homework is a hindrance to student learning.

As for your ‘students returning home and no longer pondering the thoughts for the day,’ this is a clear problem with our system that the reflection required for learning does not generally happen during the school day . Reinforcement and reflection works best when the learner has both the time to do it, the support to learn how to do it effectively, and for many, many parents, neither of these are their strong points.

A good thing about homework is that it forces the conversation between students and parents about the work they are doing at school. There are other ways to do this though, and perhaps the homework that is assigned, if it is to have this purpose, should be built around this purpose.

January 12, 2012 — 12:15 pm

Robert Talbert says:

I’d encourage all readers here, rather than simply *say* that these are “myths”, to take it to the next level: Create 25 separate blog posts detailing the research that debunks each statement as a myth. Where no such research exists for a given statement in the presentation, turn that statement into a research topic and study it scientifically, THEN report on the research you do. If the research that exists, or the research you do, fails to debunk a statement as a myth, remove it from the list.

September 13, 2011 — 7:44 pm

That is a terrific idea Robert. We’d have to find some volunteers to split up the work, but we really do need to be careful not to peddle stuff which isn’t true. Would you like to volunteer to take one myth, and I’ll take another one? We’d just need 23 more volunteers.

September 13, 2011 — 8:18 pm

Statement #16 seems to be one of the more testable statements on the list, so I’ll take that one. I’ll do a lit review to see what’s out there, and I might even try a simple study of my own with the two sections of Calculus II I’m doing right now, as long as people are OK with this statement being tested using students at the university and not K-12 level. (Lots of collateral questions suggest themselves — does age matter? Does it matter if the homework is coming in a course where the student has some vested interest, like a required course in a major? Etc.)

September 13, 2011 — 8:40 pm

Natalie says:

Well, I was quite delighted to stumble upon this page today. I am developing a board game for parents for a workshop I’m doing next month on The H Word: Homework! The sentiment is quite true, that people seem to either be fervent advocators for or against homework: however, I think it has its benefits, provided it is creative, it engages the learner, and it is not overwhelming. As the mom of three pre-teen girls, all with learning disabilities, I can tell you that the hours associated with math worksheets and other such memory work did nothing for my girls–but the thrill of reading and talking about a favourite story, or the opportunity to play cards or a dice game sure did! I work for a literacy organization and spend a lot of time encouraging parents to get actively involved in their child’s learning through play: your 15 ideas are great!

December 6, 2011 — 3:40 pm

Anonymous says:

for a completely different reason than to learn. For most students, homework is the number one grade raiser, as they frequently do not grasp the material and do worse on tests. To complete homework one only needs a computer and access to the internet. Voila. Instant grade raiser. On any question in any test that requires understanding (there are rather few of them), students generally score lower. I am a high school student and I have observed the behaviors of both my classmates and teachers. I happen to be the one of the two people I know of to which homework is a never ending nightmare and the ultimate grade lowerer(I know there is no such word, but for the purposes of this comment…). I can tell you about almost everything done in class, as I nearly always pay attention (unlike some people), and at home I research other things, like airplanes or proof that homework is not beneficial. A friend sitting behind me in french class cannot properly conjugate etre(to be) or avoir(to have), two basic verbs that one studies as some of the first(they are the basis for many tenses and structures). She has a 96%. In French 2. God bless her though, it is not her fault. The homework issue should be addressed from the eyes of the students, those who are awake enough to notice the pointlessness of today’s ‘education’.

January 29, 2013 — 6:10 pm

But how does the homework raise their grades? Is this simply because their teachers are using homework as part of their grades, or because the homework helps students do better on the in-class tests?

I know that preparation by a student makes a difference, but I have rarely seen the type of homework assigned that would help a student actually learn how to prepare for an exam or other in-class assessment. Most of the time the homework that assigned is just more routine practice. I help my students learn how to prepare and study in class so that I can give them feedback on the process and help them develop better study strategies. As for developing better study habits (ie. doing more of their own independent study), I find that once students have better strategies in place for studying that they see help them, they will often choose to study on their own time independently, particularly in the higher grades.

A student who chooses to study on their own is unlikely to be demotivated by developing this habit.

January 29, 2013 — 6:22 pm

Mark Isero says:

Thank you very much for this post. It is excellent. I’m still very much in the middle of the homework debate, but I appreciate hearing the perspectives of the no-homework proponents. I also like alternatives to traditional homework (like independent reading!). My hope is that we can find a sensible answer that will serve students and their academic goals.

April 20, 2013 — 12:38 am

I know many teachers use khanacademy, deltamath, kuta math for homework.

I have mixed feelings about homework overall. If I had to make an easy recommendation it would probably be that a teacher assign 3 to 5 problems from one of those resources as practice. In my own experience teaching students who got it in class could do the homework and those who did not get it didn’t do the homework or at least not successfully. It seemed most valuable as an incentive to help students during tutoring and give them more attention. There were some exceptions such as projects that allowed students to be creative but I wonder if I could have just budgeted class time for those projects.

September 27, 2015 — 6:47 pm

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Debunking Homework Myths

"Do you have any homework tonight?" I asked my daughter Mercedes.

"No, I don't have any homework! Yeah!" she exclaimed.

"When is your next test or quiz?" I countered.

"It's Friday," she quipped.

"Today is Wednesday, shouldn't getting ready for the test be your homework?" I questioned.

"That's not homework. That's just study," she responded, as if I didn't know anything.

"Oh, I get it, homework is not study...it's..." I conjectured while Mercedes finished my sentence.

"...it's worksheets and problems at the end of the chapter. Just busywork," she told me.

It's an obvious myth that students think homework is for their benefit. I wonder how many other students also view homework as pure busywork, or as something you do just because the teacher assigned it for a grade? With that attitude, a student may think, "It doesn't matter how I get the homework done, just as long as it is done before the teacher checks it. Right?" This is why on the day the homework is due a group of students can typically be seen frantically huddled over the "smart girl" copying her answers.

This of course applies to students that are motivated by grades. If not motivated by grades, what is the incentive to do homework, for the joy of learning? Hm, let me think -- not! I know it wasn't until I went to college that I understood that I always had homework whether it was assigned or not. I had to review my notes, read the chapters, and prepare for the exams on my own homework schedule.

As a teacher, I became a proponent of homework in my master's degree program when I learned that by assigning homework, the teacher significantly extends the classroom learning time. I also learned that a teacher should never assign homework on a topic that has not been practiced first in the classroom. It should be focused on one concept and should be difficult enough to challenge a student, but not so difficult that the student feels overwhelmed.

Students need the habit of homework and that every day homework should be graded and feedback should be provided. Those ideas made sense to me at the time because I didn't really understand the conceptual myths that they engendered.

Myths vs. Reality

It didn't take too long for me to figure out that were some things about the homework strategies I had learned that were more mythical than real. For example, while daily homework was supposed to be a major part of the learning, the myth was that I typically only made it worth a quarter of the student grade. Additionally, I soon discovered the myth that in assigning homework, the students would be doing the heavy lifting. I realized that giving homework every day was exhausting not only my energy but also my time. I felt a huge burden in grading the 120 workbook papers daily. Another myth that I debunked was that homework would actually save time in the classroom.

Because I assigned homework every day, I felt compelled to take valuable classroom learning time to review the homework, that sometimes took half the class period, or more, leaving little for instruction and practice of new concepts and skills. I justified this investment of time because I wanted to make sure that the students were "getting it" before we moved on. Feeling defrauded about my fervor for homework, I began questioning my original thoughts on homework:

• Why was I assigning homework?
• Was I doing it to increase learning or to absolve myself of the responsibility for student learning deficits (the I-taught-them-so-they-should know-it syndrome)?
• Was assigning all that homework helping the students learn more?
• What about the students that struggled doing the homework, or the students that simply copied the work from another student, or what about the students that never did the homework?
• What benefit were they getting from homework?

These were all poignant questions and I was fortunate enough to have experienced mentor teachers who were able to help me answer these questions and shared with me some of their strategies.

Homework: Facing Reality

I had to come to the determination that homework was extended learning time only if the students were inspired enough to want to practice the skills obtained in class. My worksheets were hardly inspiring, so I had to change what I assigned as homework. I heard other teachers, and I still hear teachers, recite this worn out myth, "I don't assign homework because my students aren't the kind of students that do homework. Now if I had Mr. Sullivan's students, I would assign homework because they would do it."

My answer then and now was, "Then make homework worth doing so they will want to do it."

A New Approach

I began assigning projects that required the students to apply their learning from class. Instead of filling in the blanks on a worksheet I requested that students find a Spanish speaker and have a discussion with them using what they knew. I asked the students to teach a family member how to introduce themselves in Spanish. I asked them to fill out a family history tree by interviewing family members. I had them reporting on Spanish language movies and television shows they watched at home.

I assigned the task of finding Spanish advertisements, news articles, and personal ads. I had them creating Spanish menus, trip itineraries, and illustrated dictionaries. I assigned groups of students to create reader's theaters, reenactments of historical events, game shows, detective who-done-it similar to CSI, Spanish class newspapers, fashion shows, sidewalk art, food bazaars, travel agencies, restaurants, and department stores.

I also had to change how I graded the homework assignments. I was savvy enough to know that if the homework was not recorded in some fashion, students would see it as optional and not do it. I also knew I could not sustain the daily grind of 120 papers to grade, dealing with late work, and keeping up with the grade calculations. One of my mentors suggested a method that simplified this for students and for me.

Homework was due at the beginning of class every day. Class started with a warm up sponge activity while I took roll. I asked the students to pull out their homework so I could see it as I walked around the class, recording one of three things on my grade book: full credit if the homework was completed, half credit for not fully completed, zero for less than half completed.

Stamp of Approval: Grading

Students needed to know that I had recorded their work so I stamped their papers with a smiley face if it was completed, a frowning face if it was not completed (I turned the stamp upside down).

Students who had done their work or even tried to do it were insistent that I stamp their completed papers. It took me five minutes to look at the homework and give feedback to every student. To check their understanding, I asked the students to teach their elbow partners what they learned in the homework.

They then traded papers and we quickly went over the correct answers to the homework on the overhead projector, again it took only five minutes. I found that the students liked this system because it was less tedious and provided immediate feedback. I liked it because I had more time to inspire learning and I got an immediate pulse of where my students were in their learning progress and what students needed my attention for that class period.

What About Blended Learning?

As a teacher I have never experienced blended learning; I have observed teachers in schools over which I was the administrator be successful in flipping the classroom and turning homework into the major learning tool. During my time as a high school principal, students all had iPads and some of the teachers set up learning management accounts (LMS) on places like Moodle. They assigned students work and research projects through the LMS and students did the work at home. When they came to class, the teacher would either review what they had done individually, or step up the learning by providing further opportunities to apply their knowledge in group projects.

So, as I understand it, in blended learning at home or wherever they are, students acquire the skills and gained content knowledge, and in class the teachers prepare scenarios, case studies and projects in which the students could apply the skills and content knowledge. This brings me back to the question of what is the purpose of homework. I would say that the purpose of homework is to not only extend classroom learning time, but to create independent and enthused learners.

Whether it is a blended learning environment or a regular classroom, we must make sure our homework is worth doing. What myths about homework have you debunked and what strategies have you discovered to be successful in engaging students in homework? Please share in the comments section below.

The Truth About Homework

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Children cannot be made to acquire skills. They aren’t vending machines, such that we put in more homework and get out more learning.

There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data. Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic, caring communities. Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them. Homework continues to be assigned—in ever greater quantities—despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.

The dimensions of that last disparity weren’t clear to me until I began sifting through the research for a new book. To begin with, I discovered that decades of investigation have failed to turn up any evidence that homework is beneficial for students in elementary school. Even if you regard standardized-test results as a useful measure, homework (some vs. none, or more vs. less) isn’t even correlated with higher scores at these ages. The only effect that does show up is more-negative attitudes on the part of students who get more assignments.

In high school, some studies do find a correlation between homework and test scores (or grades), but it’s usually fairly small, and it has a tendency to disappear when more sophisticated statistical controls are applied. Moreover, there’s no evidence that higher achievement is due to the homework even when an association does appear. It isn’t hard to think of other explanations for why successful students might be in classrooms where more homework is assigned—or why they might spend more time on it than their peers do.

The results of national and international exams raise further doubts. One of many examples is an analysis of 1994 and 1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, data from 50 countries. Researchers David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre were scarcely able to conceal their surprise when they published their results last year: “Not only did we fail to find any positive relationships,” they wrote, but “the overall correlations between national average student achievement and national averages in [amount of homework assigned] are all negative. ”

Patti Raine

Finally, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the widely accepted assumption that homework yields nonacademic benefits for students of any age. The idea that homework teaches good work habits or develops positive character traits (such as self-discipline and independence) could be described as an urban myth, except for the fact that it’s taken seriously in suburban and rural areas, too.

In short, regardless of one’s criteria, there is no reason to think that most students would be at any sort of disadvantage if homework were sharply reduced or even eliminated. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of American schools—elementary and secondary, public and private—continue to require their students to work a second shift by bringing academic assignments home. Not only is this requirement accepted uncritically, but the amount of homework is growing, particularly in the early grades. A large, long-term national survey found that the proportion of 6- to 8-year-old children who reported having homework on a given day climbed from 34 percent in 1981 to 58 percent in 1997—and the weekly time spent studying at home more than doubled.

Sandra L. Hofferth of the University of Maryland, one of the authors of that study, has just released an update based on 2002 data. It shows that the proportion of young children who had homework on a specific day now has jumped to 64 percent, and the amount of time they spent on it has climbed by another third. The irony here is painful, because with younger children the evidence to justify homework isn’t merely dubious—it’s nonexistent.

So why do we do something where the cons (stress, frustration, family conflict, loss of time for other activities, a possible diminution of interest in learning) so clearly outweigh the pros? Possible reasons include a lack of respect for research, a lack of respect for children (implicit in a determination to keep them busy after school), a reluctance to question existing practices, and the top-down pressures to teach more stuff faster in order to pump up test scores so we can chant, “We’re Number 1!”

All these explanations are plausible, but I think there’s also something else responsible for our continuing to feed children this latter-day cod-liver oil. Because many of us believe it’s just common sense that homework would provide academic benefits, we tend to shrug off the failure to find any such benefits. In turn, our belief that homework ought to help is based on some fundamental misunderstandings about learning.

Consider the assumption that homework should be beneficial just because it gives students more time to master a topic or skill. (Plenty of pundits rely on this premise when they call for extending the school day or year. Indeed, homework can be seen as a way of prolonging the school day on the cheap.) Unfortunately, this reasoning turns out to be woefully simplistic. Back “when experimental psychologists mainly studied words and nonsense syllables, it was thought that learning inevitably depended upon time,” the reading researcher Richard C. Anderson and his colleagues explain. But “subsequent research suggests that this belief is false.”

The statement “People need time to learn things” is true, of course, but it doesn’t tell us much of practical value. On the other hand, the assertion “More time usually leads to better learning” is considerably more interesting. It’s also demonstrably untrue, however, because there are enough cases where more time doesn’t lead to better learning.

In fact, more hours are least likely to produce better outcomes when understanding or creativity is involved. Anderson and his associates found that when children are taught to read by focusing on the meaning of the text (rather than primarily on phonetic skills), their learning does “not depend on amount of instructional time.” In math, too, as another group of researchers discovered, time on task is directly correlated to achievement only if both the activity and the outcome measure are focused on rote recall as opposed to problem-solving.

Carole Ames of Michigan State University points out that it isn’t “quantitative changes in behavior”—such as requiring students to spend more hours in front of books or worksheets—that help children learn better. Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and then respond to the learning activities and situation.” In turn, these attitudes and responses emerge from the way teachers think about learning and, as a result, how they organize their classrooms. Assigning homework is unlikely to have a positive effect on any of these variables. We might say that education is less about how much the teacher covers than about what students can be helped to dis cover—and more time won’t help to bring about that shift.

Alongside an overemphasis on time is the widely held belief that homework “reinforces” the skills that students have learned—or, rather, have been taught—in class. But what exactly does this mean? It wouldn’t make sense to say “Keep practicing until you understand,” because practicing doesn’t create understanding—just as giving kids a deadline doesn’t teach time-management skills. What might make sense is to say “Keep practicing until what you’re doing becomes automatic.” But what kinds of proficiencies lend themselves to this sort of improvement?

The answer is behavioral responses. Expertise in tennis requires lots of practice; it’s hard to improve your swing without spending a lot of time on the court. But to cite an example like that to justify homework is an instance of what philosophers call begging the question. It assumes precisely what has to be proved, which is that intellectual pursuits are like tennis.

Regardless of one's criteria, there is no reason to think that most students would be at any sort of disadvantage if homework were sharply reduced or even eliminated.

The assumption that they are analogous derives from behaviorism, which is the source of the verb “reinforce” as well as the basis of an attenuated view of learning. In the early 20th century, when John B. Watson was formulating his theory that would come to dominate education, a much less famous researcher named William Brownell was challenging the drill-and-practice approach to mathematics that had already taken root. “If one is to be successful in quantitative thinking, one needs a fund of meanings, not a myriad of ‘automatic responses,’ ” Brownell wrote. “Drill does not develop meanings. Repetition does not lead to understandings.” In fact, if “arithmetic becomes meaningful, it becomes so in spite of drill.”

Brownell’s insights have been enriched by a long line of research demonstrating that the behaviorist model is, if you’ll excuse the expression, deeply superficial. People spend their lives actively constructing theories about how the world works, and then reconstructing them in light of new evidence. Lots of practice can help some students get better at remembering an answer, but will not help them get better at—or even accustomed to—thinking. And even when they do acquire an academic skill through practice, the way they acquire it should give us pause. As the psychologist Ellen Langer has shown, “When we drill ourselves in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature,” we may come to perform that skill “mindlessly,” locking us into patterns and procedures that are less than ideal.

But even if practice is sometimes useful, we’re not entitled to conclude that homework of this type works for most students. It isn’t of any use for those who don’t understand what they’re doing. Such homework makes them feel stupid; gets them accustomed to doing things the wrong way (because what’s really “reinforced” are mistaken assumptions); and teaches them to conceal what they don’t know. At the same time, other students in the same class already have the skill down cold, so further practice for them is a waste of time. You’ve got some kids, then, who don’t need the practice, and others who can’t use it.

When an activity feels like drudgery, the quality of learning tends to suffer.

Furthermore, even if practice were helpful for most students, that wouldn’t mean they needed to do it at home. In my research, I found a number of superb teachers (at different grade levels and with diverse instructional styles) who rarely, if ever, found it necessary to assign homework. Some not only didn’t feel a need to make students read, write, or do math at home; they preferred to have students do these things during class, where it was possible to observe, guide, and discuss.

Finally, any theoretical benefit of practice homework must be weighed against the effect it has on students’ interest in learning. If slogging through worksheets dampens one’s desire to read or think, surely that wouldn’t be worth an incremental improvement in skills. And when an activity feels like drudgery, the quality of learning tends to suffer, too. That so many children regard homework as something to finish as quickly as possible—or even as a significant source of stress—helps explain why it appears not to offer any academic advantage even for those who obediently sit down and complete the tasks they’ve been assigned. All that research showing little value to homework may not be so surprising after all.

Supporters of homework rarely look at things from the student’s point of view, though. Instead, kids are regarded as inert objects to be acted on: Make them practice and they’ll get better. My argument isn’t just that this viewpoint is disrespectful, or that it’s a residue of an outdated stimulus-response psychology. I’m also suggesting it’s counterproductive. Children cannot be made to acquire skills. They aren’t vending machines, such that we put in more homework and get out more learning.

But just such misconceptions are pervasive in all sorts of neighborhoods, and they’re held by parents, teachers, and researchers alike. It’s these beliefs that make it so hard even to question the policy of assigning regular homework. We can be shown the paucity of supporting evidence and it won’t have any impact if we’re wedded to folk wisdom (“practice makes perfect”; more time equals better results).

On the other hand, the more we learn about learning, the more willing we may be to challenge the idea that homework has to be part of schooling.

A version of this article appeared in the September 06, 2006 edition of Education Week as The Truth About Homework

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The Cult of Homework

America’s devotion to the practice stems in part from the fact that it’s what today’s parents and teachers grew up with themselves.

America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed , which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.

The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s . Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study , for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.

But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.

Read: My daughter’s homework is killing me

Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.

“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”

Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.

Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.

Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”

Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their school community, this benefit of homework can seem redundant. “They don’t need it,” Schneider says, “so they’re not advocating for it.”

That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that homework is more vital in low-income districts. In fact, there are different, but just as compelling, reasons it can be burdensome in these communities as well. Allison Wienhold, who teaches high-school Spanish in the small town of Dunkerton, Iowa, has phased out homework assignments over the past three years. Her thinking: Some of her students, she says, have little time for homework because they’re working 30 hours a week or responsible for looking after younger siblings.

As educators reduce or eliminate the homework they assign, it’s worth asking what amount and what kind of homework is best for students. It turns out that there’s some disagreement about this among researchers, who tend to fall in one of two camps.

In the first camp is Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s , and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on in-class tests. This correlation, the review found, was stronger for older students than for younger ones.

This conclusion is generally accepted among educators, in part because it’s compatible with “the 10-minute rule,” a rule of thumb popular among teachers suggesting that the proper amount of homework is approximately 10 minutes per night, per grade level—that is, 10 minutes a night for first graders, 20 minutes a night for second graders, and so on, up to two hours a night for high schoolers.

In Cooper’s eyes, homework isn’t overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He points to a 2014 Brookings Institution report that found “little evidence that the homework load has increased for the average student”; onerous amounts of homework, it determined, are indeed out there, but relatively rare. Moreover, the report noted that most parents think their children get the right amount of homework, and that parents who are worried about under-assigning outnumber those who are worried about over-assigning. Cooper says that those latter worries tend to come from a small number of communities with “concerns about being competitive for the most selective colleges and universities.”

According to Alfie Kohn, squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , considers homework to be a “reliable extinguisher of curiosity,” and has several complaints with the evidence that Cooper and others cite in favor of it. Kohn notes, among other things, that Cooper’s 2006 meta-analysis doesn’t establish causation, and that its central correlation is based on children’s (potentially unreliable) self-reporting of how much time they spend doing homework. (Kohn’s prolific writing on the subject alleges numerous other methodological faults.)

In fact, other correlations make a compelling case that homework doesn’t help. Some countries whose students regularly outperform American kids on standardized tests, such as Japan and Denmark, send their kids home with less schoolwork , while students from some countries with higher homework loads than the U.S., such as Thailand and Greece, fare worse on tests. (Of course, international comparisons can be fraught because so many factors, in education systems and in societies at large, might shape students’ success.)

Kohn also takes issue with the way achievement is commonly assessed. “If all you want is to cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week, yeah, if you give them more time and make them do the cramming at night, that could raise the scores,” he says. “But if you’re interested in kids who know how to think or enjoy learning, then homework isn’t merely ineffective, but counterproductive.”

His concern is, in a way, a philosophical one. “The practice of homework assumes that only academic growth matters, to the point that having kids work on that most of the school day isn’t enough,” Kohn says. What about homework’s effect on quality time spent with family? On long-term information retention? On critical-thinking skills? On social development? On success later in life? On happiness? The research is quiet on these questions.

Another problem is that research tends to focus on homework’s quantity rather than its quality, because the former is much easier to measure than the latter. While experts generally agree that the substance of an assignment matters greatly (and that a lot of homework is uninspiring busywork), there isn’t a catchall rule for what’s best—the answer is often specific to a certain curriculum or even an individual student.

Given that homework’s benefits are so narrowly defined (and even then, contested), it’s a bit surprising that assigning so much of it is often a classroom default, and that more isn’t done to make the homework that is assigned more enriching. A number of things are preserving this state of affairs—things that have little to do with whether homework helps students learn.

Jack Schneider, the Massachusetts parent and professor, thinks it’s important to consider the generational inertia of the practice. “The vast majority of parents of public-school students themselves are graduates of the public education system,” he says. “Therefore, their views of what is legitimate have been shaped already by the system that they would ostensibly be critiquing.” In other words, many parents’ own history with homework might lead them to expect the same for their children, and anything less is often taken as an indicator that a school or a teacher isn’t rigorous enough. (This dovetails with—and complicates—the finding that most parents think their children have the right amount of homework.)

Barbara Stengel, an education professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, brought up two developments in the educational system that might be keeping homework rote and unexciting. The first is the importance placed in the past few decades on standardized testing, which looms over many public-school classroom decisions and frequently discourages teachers from trying out more creative homework assignments. “They could do it, but they’re afraid to do it, because they’re getting pressure every day about test scores,” Stengel says.

Second, she notes that the profession of teaching, with its relatively low wages and lack of autonomy, struggles to attract and support some of the people who might reimagine homework, as well as other aspects of education. “Part of why we get less interesting homework is because some of the people who would really have pushed the limits of that are no longer in teaching,” she says.

“In general, we have no imagination when it comes to homework,” Stengel says. She wishes teachers had the time and resources to remake homework into something that actually engages students. “If we had kids reading—anything, the sports page, anything that they’re able to read—that’s the best single thing. If we had kids going to the zoo, if we had kids going to parks after school, if we had them doing all of those things, their test scores would improve. But they’re not. They’re going home and doing homework that is not expanding what they think about.”

“Exploratory” is one word Mike Simpson used when describing the types of homework he’d like his students to undertake. Simpson is the head of the Stone Independent School, a tiny private high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that opened in 2017. “We were lucky to start a school a year and a half ago,” Simpson says, “so it’s been easy to say we aren’t going to assign worksheets, we aren’t going assign regurgitative problem sets.” For instance, a half-dozen students recently built a 25-foot trebuchet on campus.

Simpson says he thinks it’s a shame that the things students have to do at home are often the least fulfilling parts of schooling: “When our students can’t make the connection between the work they’re doing at 11 o’clock at night on a Tuesday to the way they want their lives to be, I think we begin to lose the plot.”

When I talked with other teachers who did homework makeovers in their classrooms, I heard few regrets. Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Joshua, Texas, stopped assigning take-home packets of worksheets three years ago, and instead started asking her students to do 20 minutes of pleasure reading a night. She says she’s pleased with the results, but she’s noticed something funny. “Some kids,” she says, “really do like homework.” She’s started putting out a bucket of it for students to draw from voluntarily—whether because they want an additional challenge or something to pass the time at home.

Chris Bronke, a high-school English teacher in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, told me something similar. This school year, he eliminated homework for his class of freshmen, and now mostly lets students study on their own or in small groups during class time. It’s usually up to them what they work on each day, and Bronke has been impressed by how they’ve managed their time.

In fact, some of them willingly spend time on assignments at home, whether because they’re particularly engaged, because they prefer to do some deeper thinking outside school, or because they needed to spend time in class that day preparing for, say, a biology test the following period. “They’re making meaningful decisions about their time that I don’t think education really ever gives students the experience, nor the practice, of doing,” Bronke said.

The typical prescription offered by those overwhelmed with homework is to assign less of it—to subtract. But perhaps a more useful approach, for many classrooms, would be to create homework only when teachers and students believe it’s actually needed to further the learning that takes place in class—to start with nothing, and add as necessary.

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The Homework Myth Hardcover – August 21, 2006

• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Da Capo Lifelong Books
• Publication date August 21, 2006
• Dimensions 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0738210854
• ISBN-13 978-0738210858
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Da Capo Lifelong Books; 1st Da Capo Press Ed edition (August 21, 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0738210854
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0738210858
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
• #1,412 in Parent Participation in Education (Books)
• #2,936 in Philosophy & Social Aspects of Education
• #17,521 in Parenting (Books)

About the author

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He is the author of twelve books and hundreds of articles. Kohn has been described by Time Magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades and test scores.” He has appeared twice on “Oprah,” as well as on “The Today Show,” NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” and on many other TV and radio programs. He spends much of his time speaking at education conferences, as well as to parent groups, school faculties, and researchers. Kohn lives (actually) in the Boston area – and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.

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The Homework Myth

How to fix schools so kids really learn

Alfie Kohn on May 29, 2024

Educational traditionalists and behaviorists like to invoke "evidence" or the "science of learning," but those terms are often misleading.

Alfie Kohn on April 25, 2023

We (and our kids) don't remember most of what we were taught, but that's not an argument against school. It's an argument against traditional, "bunch o' facts" schooling.

Alfie Kohn on October 10, 2022

It's good when kids are absorbed by something they're doing. It's better—and more likely to be intellectually beneficial—when what they're doing is driven by their curiosity.

Sport and Competition

Alfie Kohn on February 14, 2022

We've been raised to assume that playing a game means struggling to defeat other people. But activities without winners or losers actually reveal how much fun competition isn't

Alfie Kohn on November 5, 2021

Why is it "political" to teach the history of racism in this country but apolitical to ignore it? Or do conservatives actually fear kids' being taught to think for themselves?

Environment

Alfie Kohn on September 27, 2021

When conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and climate science deniers claim to be brave truth-tellers and skeptics, how do we distinguish that from genuine skepticism?

Alfie Kohn on May 3, 2021

What's harder than either traditional or hands-off teaching? Artfully complicating students' thinking. And being in control of putting kids in control.

Alfie Kohn on March 8, 2021

A meditation on why sugarcoating is best avoided, both literally (in cereals) and figuratively (in education and parenting).

Alfie Kohn on December 21, 2020

Why do so many teachers privilege test scores (falsely endowing them with "objectivity") over their own, more meaningful knowledge of how kids are faring?

• Relationships

Alfie Kohn on October 16, 2020

The pervasive (and poignant) desire to be known by millions of strangers—or to bask in the reflected glory of famous people—is an intriguing psychological puzzle.

Alfie Kohn on September 23, 2020

There's a substantial cost to students, and perhaps especially to working-class students, of our extreme ideology of individualism.

Alfie Kohn on May 21, 2020

Having some control over what happens to us is a basic human need. Selfish individualism is not.

Alfie Kohn on January 29, 2020

Part 3 of 3: A new review of 50 years of research finds little support for ABA. The evidence actually supports treating autistic kids as human beings, not bundles of behaviors.

Alfie Kohn on January 28, 2020

ABA can objectify and dehumanize autistic children, with mindless compliance the price for acceptance. Is it any wonder it's widely despised by the children to whom it's done?

Behaviorism

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Part 1 of 3: Research has long shown that rewards inevitably backfire. That includes "positive reinforcement" to manipulate children with special needs.

Alfie Kohn on October 18, 2019

There's a big difference between being politically progressive (when talking about education policy) and also being educationally progressive.

Alfie Kohn on July 16, 2019

Let's quit the Millennial bashing and, while we're at it, stop the simplistic summaries of Baby Boomers, Gen X'ers, and other huge groups that only have age in common.

Alfie Kohn on May 23, 2019

The low points of higher ed: How the system for deciding who's accepted makes our society more inequitable, and how the teaching isn't always so hot for those who do get in.

• Child Development

Alfie Kohn on March 7, 2019

Educators often use a metaphor from the construction industry to describe giving students temporary help. But a closer look suggests the idea is more controversial than it seems.

Alfie Kohn on November 26, 2018

Progressive teaching is hard to do well. But describing its rationale to skeptical outsiders is also important.

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The Homework Myth

by Alfie Kohn

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A compelling expose of homework—its negative effects, why it's so widely accepted, and what we can do about it. Death and taxes come later; what seems inevitable for children is the idea that, after spending the day at school, they must then complete more academic assignments at home. The predictable results: stress and conflict, frustration and exhaustion. Parents respond by reassuring themselves that at least the benefits outweigh the costs. But what if they don't? In The Homework Myth , nationally known educator and parenting expert Alfie Kohn systematically examines the usual defenses of homework—that it promotes higher achievement, "reinforces" learning, and teaches study skills and responsibility. None of these assumptions, he shows, actually passes the test of research, logic, or experience. So why do we continue to administer this modern cod liver oil—or even demand a larger dose? Kohn's incisive analysis reveals how a mistrust of children, a set of misconceptions about learning, and a misguided focus on competitiveness have all left our kids with less free time and our families with more conflict. Pointing to parents who have fought back—and schools that have proved educational excellence is possible without homework— Kohn shows how we can rethink what happens during and after school in order to rescue our families and our children's love of learning.

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• DOI: 10.5860/choice.44-4580
• Corpus ID: 142021249

The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing

• Published 3 April 2007

134 Citations

The case for and against homework., abusing research: the study of homework and other examples, special topic / the case for and against homework teachers should not abandon homework. instead, they should improve its instructional quality., driving away the homework blues analyzing student views, homework in primary school: could it be made more child-friendly, “you need to be more responsible”: the myth of meritocracy and teachers’ accounts of homework inequalities, investigating homework as a family practice in canada: the capital needed, “i haven’t had that conversation yet”: how homework is (or isn’t) addressed in teacher preparation, grading homework and it's effects on the 21st century learner, what did my students do when they did their homework last weekend, related papers.

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4 Homework Myths That Parents Should Consider

Feelings about homework have a tendency to be extreme, but parents can help kids by taking a measured look at the research.

Whether there’s too much or none at all, grade school homework is known to produce big emotions. From the teachers assigning it to the children bringing it home and the parents puzzling over the new math systems, every stakeholder in the homework game likely has a passionate opinion. Teachers give homework because they feel they need to in order for their students to truly succeed. The children at the table before dinner would much rather be doing anything else. And parents are either tired of battling with their kids, or just plain resentful about the amount of work sent home.

READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Homework

But few of those caught in the constant tide of homework, truly understand if the worksheets and long hours are actually worth it. The whole system thrives on tradition, superstition and a touch of willful ignorance. The truth about homework, as an educational boon or unnecessary burden, requires a measured exploration and a great deal of nuance. Here are the four homework myths that thrive more on passion than facts.

Studies Show That There Are No Benefits to Homework

Those adults who find themselves in the “homework is terrible” camp will point to research that has shown few benefits to homework, particularly where the youngest learners are concerned. They’ll also note that any studies that do show a positive benefit to homework focus on correlation and not causation.

While these two things might be true, it does not mean that there isn’t research that has uncovered benefits of homework. In fact, the researcher who’s meta-analysis of homework research is most often cited by the anti-homework set, has become a homework advocate based on more modern research than the 2006 update of his study. That research shows that homework can help children develop creative skills and comprehension.

ALSO: 4 Homework Myths That Parents Should Consider

More than that, homework help parents become oriented to the course of their children’s education. It can also help parents surface learning concerns to teachers and specialists who are often more than willing to help. Finally, it can allow parents to give kids a good perspective on the importance of education — as long as the parental attitude about homework isn’t negative.

It should also be noted that the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association have agreed on pretty specific guidelines on how much homework is beneficial. The guideline is called the 10-minute rule and it states that children should only receive 10-minutes of homework per numbered grade level. So a 1st grader should only receive 10 minutes of homework per day while a senior in high school should receive two hours of homework per day. Which is line with where the benefits of homework are most generally manifest: in the upper grades.

Homework Leads to Greater Academic Success

Just because there are benefits to homework does not mean that homework itself leads to academic success. It is, in fact, important to understand that many of the studies that have connected homework to achievement rely on correlation and not causation. Also, the benefits are largely reaped by older students.

There’s very little evidence suggesting that the youngest learners should be toiling over homework. In fact, some studies suggest that homework can cause children to take a dim view of school. And if there was ever an age to get kids excited about learning it is in the earliest grades.

In reality, the youngest learners probably benefit more from playing outside after school than hunching over homework before dinner, even if it does help them with creativity and comprehension.

Homework Benefits All Children Equally

One of the biggest issues with homework is that it’s wholly dependent on the home environment. That means that even if there are benefits to homework, children whose parents are not engaged or live in economically challenged households may not see the benefits their peers do. This is one of the reasons it’s so hard to get studies to show homework causation in the first place. There are simply too many variables to control for.

So while some children may have parents with the time, patience and education to sit and help them learn, other children have parents who are absent during homework hours due to work obligations or are too busy with parenting duties to participate. Still, other children may be asked to spend their time at home working in the family business or providing care to siblings.

And it’s not as if homework doesn’t require an investment outside of time. Modern homework costs now include access to the internet and a computer. Families also need to have the income to buy project supplies, or simply pens and paper. In the direst circumstances, there are children who struggle with getting enough food and sleep, both of which will impact the ability to concentrate on homework.

There Are No Real Alternatives to Homework

So if not homework, then what should kids be doing to further their learning outside of school? It turns out there are plenty of ways to foster a child’s educational success without forcing them to crunch numbers on a worksheet.

One of the best ways to help children is to ensure that they are reading outside of the school. In fact, some school districts have done away with homework in lieu of mandatory reading at home. When children read, they aren’t only learning about language, they are also seeing the world through another’s eyes, building empathy and stretching their imagination.

MORE: Elementary School Homework Probably Isn’t Good for Kids

Aside from reading, a kid engaging in outside free play is also exploring their world. They learn about the limits of their bodies while learning about physics as well as the seasons and the natural world.

Even when access to the outdoors is limited, children can learn by playing games. Adding numbers in board or card game is still adding numbers. Also, games require interpersonal skills and often, strategy. Which is to say that homework does not hold the monopoly on the kids learning at home.

This article was originally published on April 10, 2018

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The Homework Myth

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[ ] [ ] Web, myth narration and graphics created and maintained by Nick Pontikis Copyright © 1995 Nick Pontikis Thanasi's Olympus Greek Restaurant Copyright 1999 The Myth Man persona copyright 1988 Nick Pontikis

• Edit source

Pingping (萍萍) is a character in Black Myth: Wukong .

Background [ ]

Born to a fate of trials and woes, Who pities the ebb and flow of those? Better to live in nature's embrace, Freely to wander, freely to repose.

After delivering her homework to her mother, Pingping went to the Height of Ember. Her brother had asked her to meet him there, saying he had something important to discuss.

When she arrived, she saw Red Boy standing with his hands on his hips, directing Quick as Fire and Fast as Wind to burn the bull guais to flee as his way of training them. Amused at the scene, he laughed loudly and boisterously.

"Brother," Pingping called softly. Ever since Red Boy returned from Guanyin's tutelage, she felt he had changed. Every time she spoke to him, a subtle fear tugged at her heart.

Upon seeing her arrival, Red Boy waved to halt the training and turned to her, "Pingping, let's engage in a game," he proposed, "You will run, and I shall chase you. Let us see if I can catch you before an incense stick burns out."

In the past, Pingping would transform into a little fox, leaping through rocks and crevices, always having the upper hand. Yet this time, Red Boy shattered her hiding rocks with a single spear thrust, scorched her standing deadwood with a breath of fire, and flew over the cliffs she jumped across as a red cloud.

In less than half the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, Red Boy effortlessly caught her and sighed, "Mother's teachings are still too gentle."

Seeing his sister's gloomy face, Red Boy took her to rest by the cliff in the Furnace Valley. To cheer her up, he twirled his Firepoint for her entertainment.

Seeing his little sister clapping and cheering, Red Boy asked, "How do you think my skills compare to Father's?"

Pingping couldn't answer. She had never dared to make such a comparison. She took out the Fire Dates her mother had rewarded her and shared them with Red Boy, changing the subject to talk about anecdotes in the mountains. Seeing this, Red Boy didn't press further and responded perfunctorily.

Pingping cautiously said, "Brother, you and I have always been the closest. If you have something on your mind, you can tell me. It's not easy for our family to be reunited. I just want to live peacefully in these mountains, away from worldly strife."

Gazing at the burning clouds, Red Boy said, "Sister, you should see more of the outside world. There's no such thing as living away from worldly strife. It's just self-deception of losers!"

Pingping wanted to ask him who he was competing with and why he had to compete. But before she could speak, she felt a blow to the back of her neck and fainted.

• 1 Sun Wukong
• 2 Red Loong
• 3 Yaoguai King