A couple of Canadian professors have just wrapped up a national study on homework. According to The Toronto Star:
While research shows some benefits to homework in grades 7 and 8 and high school, there’s scant evidence that it improves student achievement in the younger years, say professors Linda Cameron and Lee Bartel of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. … [They] also found it is often the source of stress and burnout in children, as well the cause of conflict – even marital stress – for many families. Try to turn the homework into a creative process, teach your kids the benefits of using software, an example is bibliography helper.
I personally don’t have a problem with my kids having homework. In addition to helping them master the material they’re learning, it also teaches them structure and time management. I don’t think a half-hour of homework unduly cuts into play time. Fighting with your child to complete her homework does create some amount of stress — but anytime you’re teaching a child the virtue of work before play, it’s going to cause stress. I don’t think that’s unique to fights over homework. It also happens when they have to empty the dishwasher or clean their room or do other household chores.
What do you think? Is homework good or bad in the lower grades?
100% Good. While it may not help improve “achievement” (I can’t comment on that since I didn’t do an academic study); it sure does teach important lessons regarding completing assignments / obligations before play time; the need to make choices, and the impacts of poor choices.
Nothing like getting kids into good habits in the early years when they are more malleable. Now if my kid were getting an hour or more a night in the third grade, I’d have a problem but a 15 minute to 1/2 hour homework assignment is good.
High school students should do no less than two hours of homework or extra reading a day- grade schoolers at least one hour. Develops good habits and will actually increase their knowledge and grades.
My kids are 4 and 3 months, so I have a while before homework is an issue.
I think SOME homework is not only a good idea, but its essential to reinforce in class lessons and teach time management and discipline. There are some teachers that pile on unreasonable amounts of homework, but I think they are few and far between.
The problem here is expecting people to be reasonable, when some unreasonable people think they are being reasonable.
All that said, I would be more upset with a teacher that never assigned homework than I was with one that assigned too much.
“I don’t think a half-hour of homework unduly cuts into play time.”
Ha. What is this half-hour of which you speak? I routinely had two or three hours a night in grade school. And most of it was plain busywork. Not drill on things you need to learn by rote (like math, or foreign language), but just busywork meant to eat up time and look like you were doing something (and, by extension, the teacher was doing something). Not that I had bad teachers, just that I think many of the “conventions” of homework aren’t pedagogically useful.
I rarely went to bed before midnight or 1 a.m. in high school and I had to be up at 5:30 a.m. to make it to my early bird class, although in high school I was *choosing* advanced classes. But it still seems excessive. Sometimes I couldn’t actually STUDY for tests because I had to spend so much time on homework assignments that I couldn’t review or consolidate my knowledge or go back over things. If I didn’t get it the first time, I was sort-of screwed, because there was too much homework to let you go back.
(And homework doesn’t teach time management skills. PARENTS teach time management skills to children to help them manage their homework. If homework in and of itself taught time management skills, presumably the students in my classes at ICC would have time management skills. Many don’t.)
I agree with C.J. that some amount of homework teaches time management skills and discipline, especially in younger children. I agree with Eyebrows McGee, however, that homework assigned these days can be excessive and of little purpose. My children, who are in 6th and 8th grade, routinely have 1-2 hours per night every night of the school week. It could be more, but for the fact, that they try to work ahead on the weekends during which they spend 3 to 5 hours depending on whether there is a pending project.
What is more frustrating it that I think many schools use “homework” to make it appear that the school is doing a good job, in lieu of making the curriculum more difficult. I would much rather have my children challenged during the school day, which frequently they are not, than spending all evening doing homework.
Additionally, I think it is more important for young people to be engaged in other developmental activities such as music, dance, sports, etc. than shuffling homework papers. My children are very involved in physical activities and music which I believe is a healthy way to keep them busy, but you add the huge amount of homework they typically have and it makes for a very rough schedule for all the family.
Most homework is busy work, and it is being pushed into first grade now. An half hour may be fine most days, or perhaps special projects, but when kids are in sports and other “extra curricular” activities (science fair, chess club, band, etc., etc.), two to three hours is just ridiculous. That doesn’t mean they can’t be doing extra reading, or things besides watching the boob tube in their spare time. But I think they get a lot more out of a night at Boy Scouts than two hours of “homework”. For the most part, good students don’t have much “spare time” and schoolwork belongs at school.
“and schoolwork belongs at school”…. disagree. If we leave the education of our greatest resource to others, we’re bound to be disappointed in the end result. Learning and schoolwork belong as much in the home and integrated into extracurricular activities such as boy scouts, sports, ectetera.
If a child has an inordinate amount of homework, it would be a good idea to chat with the teacher and determine if there are other issues. Some students end up taking work home that could and should have been finished at school. Additionally, because the school curriculum is sooo full, teachers have much more material to cover during the day leaving practice and reinforcement for home.
Doesn’t it depend somewhat on the child? I used to complete my homework as assigned most of the time & that was the extent of it. My heart & soul wasn’t into it most of the time. I got “b”s & “c”s. My sister, who was magna this and magna that, spent countless hours doing homework and well, that might explain her ongoing 4.0 average.
“If we leave the education of our greatest resource to others, we’re bound to be disappointed in the end result.” I agree 100% with that statement, which is why I don’t want education left to schools. School interfered too much with my education as a child, and I am determined not to let school interfere with my children’s education any more than absolutely necessary. There is a wide world of educational resources out there. Why would you want to limit your childen to schools, especially schools whose major concern is passing standardized state tests?
“Why would you want to limit your children to schools, especially schools whose major concern is passing standardized state tests?”
It’s not “schools” who decide what to teach. If funding is contingent on passing tests, that’s what teachers will teach to.
I have a four-year-old who doesn’t get “real” homework, but he does have assignments. He loves them! He is always asking me when we can do homework. I hope that continues into grade school
“If we leave the education of our greatest resource to others, we’re bound to be disappointed in the end result.”
Yes, this is why I would prefer that schoolwork remain (mostly) at school, so that I can introduce my children to enrichment activities, extracurriculars, great books, and learning they won’t get in the classroom. If they bring home three hours of homework a night in grade school, THEN I’m leaving education of our greatest resource to others. When the school eats all of my child’s time with homework, there’s no TIME for me to teach or enrich my child.
(Plus, young children learn through play and through exploration of the world. Having them sitting in a classroom all day, then sitting at the dining room table all evening doing homework, seriously and severely cuts into a very important arena of mental development.)
Right on, Eyebrows, and EP Parent is correct. I’m not blaming the teachers for the test fetish. But that is what school is about. Not education.
Eyebrows’ post of 12/11 is right on point. Parents should enrich their children’s lives through extracurricular activities, travel, and just plain relaxation time with their families.
Rather than focusing the debate on homework — too much or too little, the debate should be about what children are really learning during the time they are in school??? This comment is not meant to be an assassination of District No. 150 or any other school in the area. But, I really do not believe public education in general has kept pace with society, at least the society that Eyebrows’ envisions her children growing up in. Public education and even some private education in Peoria is focused on addressing the lowest common denominator.
We live out of the community for the time being and attend a private international school. I just returned from high school orientation for my 8th grader and the conversation primarily focused on college prep and the average to above average student. It was explained that there would be a variation of classes offered depending on your academic strengths. I went away for the meeting, thinking — FINALLY!!! I am sure I might have attended some similar high school orientation had I been living in the U.S. My frustration, however, it that I believe this type of customized discussion and education needs to be offered and to begin from grade school. A “one size fits all” public education is not working. It does not address the needs of those students that have learning challenges and are not the beneficiaries of the after school developmental activities referred to my so many of the bloggers and it most certainly does not address the needs of children that come into the classroom with the advantage of early childhood education and strong parental involvement.
I am not sure what the answer is, but it cannot be to continue doing more of the same.
Homework is ONLY appropriate when it directly extends the learning process begun in the classroom. It can not be used to replace what should be taught in the classroom and should not be used as busy, repetitive droning. Assigning dozens of math or other types of exercizes is not appropriate for work but should be done in the classroom. Appropriate homework is writing assignments, research and journals.