Isn’t homework essential for getting kids to internalize skills and become solid in their new learning? Keeps them busy and out of trouble… and no harm in that, right?
Research says it’s not so clear that it helps… and the social-emotional effects may be grave. Here’s an excerpt from a new article in the Washington Post: Why we’re getting the homework question wrong
Two recent studies have fueled a growing debate over how much homework is too much, and whether it has any benefit at all. They reached different conclusions. One study, published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, presented findings that are consistent with about a century of scientific analysis on homework; that is, it concluded that homework offers no benefits for elementary and middle school children. In contrast, the second study found the opposite to be true. In that investigation, spending more than two hours a night doing homework led British students to achieve better results in English, math and science.
The article (by Vicki Abeles, a mother, activist, and director of the documentary “Race to Nowhere”) goes on to talk about the point that there ARE downsides, especially socially and emotionally. My own experience is that homework is a major stressor on families as well as children… yet when I was a teacher, I gave homework, and sometimes a lot (though it was almost always either meaningful reading or project work).
Abeles’ conclusion is critical: We need to consider what we really want for our children / students — and then create policies that support these goals. So often our practices (in education and families, as well as in businesses & government) actually undermine our real goals… and if we’re not very clear on what we want, it seems very unlikely that we can make it happen. As the article concludes, we’ve got to ask the right questions about homework (and everything else):
Do we want our children to grow up to be whole, thriving adults who have held onto their innate joy of learning and discovery? Or do we want to teach them it’s only work we value—and not health, family, balance, creativity and fun? We don’t need an academic study to reach the right conclusion on that.
So your homework 
assignment: Discuss with your team, your family, your community: What are the most important goals for children, and what needs to change to ensure those goals are supported? What are we doing now that’s undermining the goals? What can we do instead?
Joshua Freedman
Joshua is one of the world’s preeminent experts on developing emotional intelligence to improve performance. With warmth and authenticity, he translates leading-edge science into practical, applicable terms that improve the quality of workplace relationships to unlock enduring success. Joshua leads the world’s largest network of emotional intelligence practitioners and researchers.See 250 more posts by Joshua Freedman
mr. freedman :::
may i please correct your first sentence;
“isn’t homework [[ is ]] essential” would be enough.
and it could be ( is homework essential )
but that second [ is ] can not be there.
vlad
Thanks Vlad – I didn’t do my homework!
I fixed it now.
cannot [one word]
mr. freedman :::
i must say that i may not possibly ever agree well enough to show how much i do agree.
HOMEWORK is totaly and absolutely essential for all ohildren to become educated adults.
? how much homework ? as much as possible.
vlad
Hi again Vlad,
Just to explore this, two lines to consider:
1) “as much as possible” — no time outside? No time with friends? Home from school @ 3:45, homework nonstop ’till 9 pm then sleep? 12 hours on weekends?
2) How do you know that it is totally and absolutely essential?
8)
- Josh
Home Assignments should be an extension of what was learnt in school. The “how much” depends on whether you want the child to intensify his learning of the concept or just share with his parents..you know “involve ” them in the learning process…..”Practice does make permanent” though….but too much of it also is not good!
I believe homework is important, teach children responsibilities, and they can appreciate what they learn.
In everything balance is important , too much homework is out of balance and putting stress on kids They may become very unproductive in the long run, they may feel not good students if they don’t concentrate enough and in the mean time feeling deprived of other social activities that make them be alive and playfull.
Nice summary, Margaret – it seems like many of the comments are in line with your thinking here. My summary: Homework could be a more effective tool if it was used more thoughtfully.
How about h’work such as : Do 3 acts of kindness and write your reflections or Throw up a challenge / conflict and ask children to identify creative solutions, or write about the different kinds of trees around your house and how they are useful. These might serve all purposes !!
Reminds me of the movie, Pay It Forward. That was a cool homework assignment!
To talk about homework as a concept is to forget we are talking about children and families.
Many children have extra activities after school, dancing, sports etc things that expand their experience and develop many of their intelligences, ( Howard Gardner).
Many children go home to an empty house and have to fend for themselves, maybe they will have enough to buy themselves a bag of chips if they are lucky.
Many more children fall between these two examples. If homework enriches children’s lives, if it supports levels of capability and supports them to love to learn, then I am all for it. If it inhibits their learning and causes them stress and fear then I do not.
Unless you know the child the family and the circumstances you will not know the effect homework is having.
At our school we consider Homework as a means for fostering autonomy, thus all the activities we send must be simple enough for children to do them in their own. We also think that it s not good nor necessary necessary to give too much homework, because children spend already all day at school ans then they have other activities, so we a weekly homework, and they have to learn to administer their time and decide when are they going to do it during the week.
Isa
Such a powerful perspective, as usual Cath — we’re so good at talking about SYSTEMS when the greatest need and opportunity comes from supporting children, and their families, friends, and teachers, as human beings first.
One without appetite would not eat much, let alone enjoy the food. Excessive food or too much of the same food would make a good reason causing lost of appetite. In the same note, this is liken somewhat to that of the children’s “learning appetite”. Children are in their best state of learning when they have fun. Fun seems to be their learning “appetizer”. I am wondering if the modern teachers would entertain the idea of keeping the learning as fun as possible throughout the entire learning process. I am also wondering what would be in the mind of the children when they know that they are going home expecting to have very fun homework…?
Two things are very important while taking any decision about home work for children/students
- Firstly, it must be balanced so that children can tend to other essential activities like rest, sleep, play, eat, watch TV and socializing etc and even at times, accompanying parents for shopping. The home work MUST not take away any of the “other than home work activities”, which in my view, are equally essential, if not more, for overall development of the child.
- Secondly, home work basically is supposed to be a link between yesterday and tomorrows study at school and not an exercise to sit on the table and fill up note books mostly by copying from books without much entry of the subject in brain. An act of some how, finish the work to satisfy teachers at school or avoid punishments and embarrassments. As such, home work needs to designed imaginatively to increase the interest of the child in studies rather than act as a burden, which unfortunately is the case. Some study needs to be done to design the basics for home work.
I also believe homework is important becuase it also gives you an idea of the weaknesses and strength of your children, however if it is too much it can cause a strain between you and the children. When a child struggles you are at times forced to play the role of a teacher- rebuking and even threatening to spank. Time at home should be for other important family matters and should not be taken too much by academic work.
What has been also observed is that, homework is felt as tremendous stressful situation , and becomes more stressful when teachers ask it to be completed in certain time limit. Also home work has to be done as teachers want it and not any kind of freedom is given to children to complete it. I think if these two things made little more liberal to students they will decide on their own how to complete it and when to complete it . And they will start taking ownership of their work more than before. I also think that we cannot completely omit homework from schools but then when a student comes with a request teachers need to understand him rather than making compulsory. It should not felt by students that it is a compulsory task. And it is teachers responsibility that students are getting quality time to spend. In my school and where I teach we believe in quality time spent by students with parents also for the work he wants to do. Otherwise we cannot call the school home away from home and we will be making homes New types of schools. Homework is a big issue and New type of stress has been developed in students and in parents only because of homework. Thanks for sharing.
Why is it that home, which has been with us for generations is now suddenly “too stressful”?
As a high school teacher I do believe (wholeheartedly!) that we need to reform the education system[but that is a whole other topic] … however homework is not “the devil”. Kids lives have become busier, their lives have become more polarized to extremes, and they (almost) NEED to be completely engaged/taken in by something for it to not be “boring”, … and human nature being what it is, anytime you have to do something ‘boring’ it becomes “stressful”. I think an argument could probably be made somewhere that by coddling children and trying to ‘protect them from the horrors of homework’ we only exacerbate this situation … but that is debatable and strays into parenting & sociological issues
In college/Uni students have to do VAST amounts of self-study, this is only possible because of the ever-increasing ‘out-of-school’ work assigned by teachers. If we scrapped homework altogether students entering college would not be able to cope, and not have the self-taught discipline/mechanisms of planning/scheduling and generally ‘dealing’ with the amount of work required of them.
Moderation in all things. Homework is a good thing when used right, and all families/students should (IMO) plan for it to be there … and work to fit soccer practice, band rehearsal, etc etc around the homework, not try to squeeze the homework into their other activities.
Hello! DavidF It is vulnerable to all the teachers may be. It proves my comment above where i said that, we cannot avoid it completely, at the same time I would like to ask here that, when they will grow and start doing their studies at Graduation and PG levels, what will they think about the assignments and work? one distressful thing in life? Can’t we make it interesting enough? At facebook the other day I saw a group says, “Sorry miss I didn’t do your homework” this is the name of the group & it has huge response. Students want to go ahead but teachers and education systems still want to hang them in a load of unnecessary homeworks. We can have ONE HOMEWORK PERIOD in the school timetable, where all students will do guided study and teacher will be available there to solve their doubts BELIEVE ME IT WORKS. But because they won’t plan in future, or won’t schedule their work in future, we are afraid and with this we try to burdon them with unwanted, felt avoiding, punnishable feeling for study? They grow with this feeling, and it continues in later age. Let us all try to stop this. Let them blossom in the age when they are supposed to play and grow. Let us connect their study plans with wonderful helpful activities, just rather than completing syllabus. with due respect. with true feelings.thanks for sharing.
The “prepare for college” argument may be worth further discussion. My own experience, which is many years old now, is that I had WAY more homework in highschool with short deadlines and a lot of adult control, and WAY more independence in college — actually less hours of class & “homework,” but a lot more autonomy. In my college prep high school in Junior year we were writing 2-3 papers per week, it was deliberately arduous, a kind of “rite of passage” — but then when I went to the University of Toronto, which was quite a serious institution, many of my classes required 2 papers per YEAR. I thought it would be easy! I was wrong.
I suspect that a common expectation, as DavidF said, is that tertiary students will need to manage their own time. In that case, to prepare them, we should probably have a lot more flexible time and independence in secondary school where they have progressively larger blocks of their own time to manage.
Hi! and Thank you Josh for sharing your own experience here. The point of self study is really important & valid. Students need time to do it which they hardly get. But again, not all the students will be able to focus and persistent enough in the same way as they are expected, So Guided study or Mentorship is the very good idea.
In college, many students may want to enjoy college life and always fail to plan or plan to fail. Freedom seems tobe a good idea, specially in this digital world, they can submit their work online whenever, and wherever they want, and teacher can check it in his prescribed time. It is possible today. Only thing is they may need guidance in the terms of planning their study time with all of their activities. In the article ” The truth about homework”, Carole Ames of Michigan State University points out that, “We might say that education is less about how much the teacher covers than about what students can be helped to discover – and more time won’t help to bring about that shift.” I liked it.
The link is, http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/deberes.htm
Thanks again.
In my first comments also I had highlighted the requirement of keeping a balance between the requirements of doing home work and giving the child enough time to relax and take part in other home bound activities besides play and refresh. I am not sure, if enough research has been done on this issue, otherwise, as per my personal opinion, the 6 to 8 hrs spent at school should be good enough to inject the child with all the cognitive book knowledge. Some of our teachers, who are staunch followers of home work, must also see the other side of home life of the child rather than extending the school to home. We must remove the ghost of home work from the minds of our children and concentrate more on overall development of the child rather than making him purely bookish.
An interesting article in today’s paper on the Homework Dilemma !
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
RN Podar School students to do classwork at home
MUMBAI: Tanessa Puri, 15, is looking forward to the new academic year. A Class 10 student at RN Podar School, Santacruz, Puri is excited about doing her homework in class and class work at home.
Starting June 11, lectures at the school will take place through a technique called ‘flipped classroom’ for students from Class 4 to Class 12.
A flipped classroom inverts traditional teaching methods by delivering instructions online outside of class and moving homework in the class and learning through videos, the Internet and video conferencing.
“We will have the freedom to form our own opinions. In a classroom, a teacher teaches us what they want us to learn,” said Puri, a Bandra resident. Though school authorities said they will not replace textbooks with technology, most lectures will take place through the flipped classroom format.
“With technology coming in, the role of a teacher is changing. In a flipped classroom, the teacher will act as a guide while students will have to indulge in skill-based learning and self – learning,” said Sunita George, vice principal of the school.
For six months last year, the school carried out a pilot project of the flipped classroom method with Class 7 students where they shared links of lectures and videos.
“Once the student got back home, he would go through the links, note down all his doubts and discuss them in school the next day. Based on their learning at home, students would do assignments in class,” added George.
Besides being trained, teachers will record their classroom lectures and will share it with students for feedback. From the next academic year, students from Class 1 to Class 3 will also be taught through a flipped classroom.
“We look at homework as a task forced upon us. Through a flipped classroom, homework in school will be fun. Anyway we spend a lot of time on the Internet at home; so why not use it to listen to lectures,” said Shubham Saraff, a Class 10 student.