You see this in lots of "nice" activities that kids do, which are actually just time sinks that they are pressured or cajoled into. The most prominent example is playing instruments. Like half of kids learn to play an instrument at some point, but hardly any of them keep up with it when they are adults. Some people lament this as though it were some loss of innocence, but if playing an instrument was really a good use of time for most people, adults would do it, and kids would do it willingly. After 18 or more years of this sort of thing, I think it really sinks in that your time is basically worthless, and that it's not worth carefully considering how you spend it.
Of course, the opposite is true. Your time is the most precious, and in fact the only, resource that you have. You should guard it jealously, and only spend it on worthwhile things.
In this district it's two things:
1. Parents freak out when their kids don't have a lot of homework. How do I know? One teacher told me they got complaints if they assigned too little homework, and complaints = being fired.
2. Fear of not being good enough to complete in the rat race. This is on the part of parents and it drives #1.
I had long discussions with the principal of my son's middle school and I could tell he was completely powerless to make any changes. His job was to listen to me and make me feel heard. Problem was, I wanted action. I made my son update a spreadsheet, daily, of his homework per class. Estimated time to finish and actual time. It was a lot of data and when I delivered it to the principal he was a little speechless. He said he'd get back to me.
Btw, the spreadsheet proved one thing: the official amount of homework per day was complete bullshit. Officially it was 1.5 hours. In reality it was 3-4.
Weeks later I saw him at a school concert. He looked annoyed. He thanked me and said it was a "big help" and I could tell he thought he had more power than he did. He probably showed it to the superintendent of the district and they laid down the law. I never heard another word.
The problem is institutional, massively reinforced by the parents.
So we could ask, why are parents like this? One I touched on. The other is fear of what their kids will get into if they have free time away from home. I shit you not, I never see kids out and about in my city. On weekends, a little. During the week, never. Kids don't have free time (here) anymore. They have school. Some have sports and activities. The rest is eating and sleeping.
It is complete craziness and I hate it and I feel terrible for my kid, but I can't afford private school and we're locked into this until he's out of this particular system.
However, we live in an area (Berkeley) where yes, kids have homework, but every single day of the week, after school, all the kids on the street are running up and down, riding bikes, playing wall-all, shooting hoops, and running in and out of eachothers' homes.
In the evening, right when it gets dark, you see parents walking around or calling out their front door to ask the kids to come home. My son now carries a walkie-talkie with him and we signal to him to come home.
Your experience is likely a function of your environment. Our neighborhood school is definitely not a top 20 CA school--or even a top 100 or 250 school. But, our kids are happy (except when they have to come in for the night!) and in turn, so are we.
There is a startlingly huge gulf between the schools were the worry is "too much homework" and the schools were many children can barely read. I think the too much homework problem is legitimate...it's just amazing to me those schools and my schools can exist in the same country, in some cases just miles from each other. I think if my kid winds up with too much homework I will mostly be grateful that she is not spending instructional time outside waiting for the firemen to amble inside after another alarm.
My own life experience tell me that success in elementary school does not equate with success in life. In fact even high-school and sometimes college are almost irrelevant to the kinds of tasks people have to solve once they get hired. It's more important to be creative, curious and passioned about something.
They attend a charter school. We live in the same school district that I attended as a child. The local schools are decent but the charter school is getting some fantastic results. These schools are taking children from low performing, impoverished areas and getting test scores that rival(or equal) test scores from affluent areas.
One of my children usually finishes her homework before she leaves school and the teacher gives her "Extra credit" work to keep her from getting bored.
The other one needs several hours after school to finish her homework. She has a low threshold for frustration and takes several breaks as she works on the homework. As her father, I can say that she needs the work in order to learn the material.
I guess that the optimal load varies wildly from child to child and unfortunately, schools don't have the ability to adjust the workload individually and still provide objective evaluations of their performance.
I'm not sure why, but they are terrible at creating happy, healthy, and intelligent children.
Your post adds more fuel to my inner argument.
> [snip]
> The problem is institutional, massively reinforced by the parents.
> [snip]
> It is complete craziness and I hate it and I feel terrible for my kid
I sincerely can't understand what it is I'm reading.
My daughter has started taking music lessons and in the last 6 months I've noticed a very similar thing happening. Ever since she started taking guitar lessons, she has started displaying more patience and confidence in herself than in other tasks like reading and school work than before. It's like it's starting to click with her that reading and math are like her music lessons; it takes practice, and she'll get it soon.
The ability the play the instrument is not nearly as valuable as the experience in learning, improving, and using your brain in ways that doesn't involve math and reading.
There's a lot of controversy over whether kids should be "pushed" or "forced" to learn music. My observation (my own childhood and my kids) is that some kids will push back on anything that they're asked to do, even if it's something that they genuinely want to continue doing.
I'm lucky, and delighted, that music "took" with my kids. They're teenagers now, and actually like classical music.
If possible, I suggest looking for a program where your daughter can play in ensembles, group lessons, recitals, etc. For instance Suzuki violin programs involve the youngest kids in recitals, and there are people teaching guitar in the same way. This will bring out yet another of the benefits of music, namely the interaction with other people in a cohesive activity. And performing, in and of itself, is a beneficial skill. A lot of what I do in professional life is akin to performance.
Doing any sort of sport will likewise teach you that "practice makes perfect". So would knitting, drawing, singing in a choir or doing magic tricks with cards.
What are school-aged people spending their precious time on?
Clash of Clans? Snapchat? Call of Duty? Binging Netflix? 4chan...ning? Smoking pot?
Maybe it's okay if we ask them to set aside a few hours to read a book or practice solving an equation or trying to do something that isn't immediately easy.
When I was a kid (at a Montessori school — no homework) I used my free time to learn programming, tinker with chemistry kits, and read while my public school friends toiled away at homework.
I guess that other kids could squander their free time in pointless gaming or Internet browsing, but there will be a few (or ALL of them, if you buy Maria Montessori's thoughts on the matter) that will use their free unstructured time to learn something interesting to them.
Why are these any less beneficial than homework that's been demonstrated to have no benefit to the child? Until high school, there's literally no reason for the kid to be practicing math after school.
The incredibly difficult trick is to find the right balance between relaxing and working, and to encourage an interest in valuable educational activities without forcing it.
Why do you think so many fail to keep up with an instrument as an adult? Oh that's right, upon entering adulthood we figure out that we have to dump 40+ hours into earning pennies while the company we work for earns millions.
Earning even a basic income is the real time sink. What most people do all day long, at least 5 days a week, is the real busywork. Society would be much improved if every adult spent a good chunk of their time in the arts. Yet we continue to pretend that if every adult doesn't spend 40 hours doing corporate busywork that the economy would fall apart.
Unfortunately all of that neuroplasticity is wasted on the young. :)
That’s definitely not true. I’ve spent enough time hanging out with small children of various backgrounds to observe that they are in general far more curious and self motivated to learn and explore than adults are. (Of course, some adults maintain this same imagination and curiosity.)
What they often aren’t motivated to do is memorize lists of irrelevant-seeming facts or work through endless identical arithmetic problems.
On the other hand, I believe that the time can be far more wisely spend on actual interesting things, incorporating this "mindless busywork"/repetition - it's just not simple or easy to figure out what the activities and problems should be, and in many cases the children need some guidance as well, and/or should be in groups doing this. Given that many parents are unable to help their children because they lack the knowledge to do so, the teachers do the next best thing they know.
Secondly, it's not easy. So sticking though with it teaches you self discipline.
I know a lot of adults and kids who do it willingly. Myself included. The reason we do it willingly is because at some point we were forced to learn how to play music and we stuck with it for a few years; after all that time we got good at playing instruments, and started enjoying it. It also became much easier to learn new instruments and songs, boosting the enjoyment.
But we would never have reached this point if we weren't forced to drudge through the years of hard work.
I would argue, regarding the value of learning a musical instrument, that it's worth children sampling many things to even figure out what they will like spending their time on. How will they know they will care about music without exposure to it?
-Buckminster Fuller
The German educational system that "the west" generally uses hasn't had a "git push" in at least 150 years. Until widespread recorded music technology and broadcast technology existed, being a musician was a very realistic vocational choice. Relative pay was much higher than now. Sure the pay wouldn't be as good as a carpenter or plumber, but its a nice mostly indoor and clean job, true the employer might want you to cross train as a waiter or bartender, but patrons like hearing music and before radio and records, music came directly from middle-class-ish hands. Some day public schools will advance beyond 1900 in general. Some day.
Another aspect of mass aspirational education is its a window into what the middle class thinks the upper class does all day. The fact that it has nothing to do with what the upper class actually does is completely irrelevant, as long as they can easily and visibly compete among themselves for superiority in their imaginary game. So the middle class has built a whole elaborate mythology about the path into the promised land being reading the finest literature to each other and poetry and gazing into fine art paintings and, yes, playing and listening to classical music. That way you can fool the college admissions and interview counselors into thinking you're actually a Vanderbilt, or come from old European royalty, etc. I assure you they are not that stupid, but its an unstoppable belief, its an article of faith for middle class people. Amusingly due to my grandparents, I spent time as a little kid with the kids of extremely wealthy people, and I can assure you that in reality the 7 year old of a billionaire digs in the mud and plays catch and makes sand castles just like any other kid, and very rarely indeed recite Greek poetry, listen to Mahler, or gaze into old dutch master paintings. They do have very interesting "money is no object" life experiences but most of their time is spent not spending money at "no object" rates of speed. Very early I learned upper class people get very pissed off when you compliment them on their stuff, on the implication that they don't have enough money for the best. With the side effect that they feel no need to show off (showing off is a middle to upper middle class thing) so you'll never see a real Picasso in an upper class kids bedroom, but you will see a Picasso reproduction or poster in an upper middle to middle class kids bedroom.
My school was quite forward thinking. E.g. they taugh us recursion using Logo in year 3 of primary school. This was early 90s.
But still, our homework was completely useless and incredibly time consuming. I vividly remember it was calibrated to make us spend 2.5 hours on it per day, and this was after a 9-5 sequence of lectures. Completely insane and alienating.
The whole experience of learning is about practice. Early on this can be in well crafted exercises and simple homework.
I'm sure that homework can be counterproductive and poorly managed, but I've seen it succeed in moderation (2-3 hours daily).
Thanks to my parents and teachers encouraging me to study music, today playing and listening to music brings me great joy.
Our elementary school did mandatory xylophones in 2rd grade and recorders in 3rd for all the kids. From 4th grade on you could opt in to playing any instrument, though if you needed to play a school instrument is was the usual suspects of violin, flute, clarinet, sax, and trumpet. If you already had access or were playing one you could bring your own.
I was gonna bag it and not opt in. My parents (strongly) suggested I pick one for the year and give it a whirl. I tried the violin and sucked so very badly. Mid year I switched to clarinet because that's what was available and I was going to quit entirely if I had to continue with violin.
Side note- my sister played as well and has gone into software development after excelling at school and university, specifically science. My brother did terribly in school, didn't graduate, and gave up on music on about day two (he's wound up being very successful any way though).
By my 8th grade year I was an extremely accomplished clarinet and sax player (first chair, solos, competition band, marching band, performed on some recorded albums, etc.) and I swear I started feeling dumber after I gave it up. I played in my very limited free time in highschool as I was way more dedicated to sports and our HS band was good enough that you could do sports or band, you could absolutely not do both.
I looked into it and there are a few studies that suggest people that participate in playing instruments often do better in school and are more mathematically inclined. I'm lacking sources as I'm on my phone.
I agree that most busywork homework is bullshit. I'm okay with the monthly/bi-quarterly assignments that require free form thinking and finding your own way on a subject like research papers, craft based projects, book reports and such. Anything that lets my child delve into their thoughts I'm okay with, as long as they get a sufficient amount of time that they are able to go deep, and not just churning out crap.
I will absolutely cajole my kids to try a plethora of instruments. If we get through strings, woodwinds, percussion, and brass and they haven't found a winner- then we can bag it. I expect it'll be two or three years of trying. If they seem like they really hate it or we've exhausted our options, we'll let it be. Given the amount of music we surround them with now, and how they interact with it (drumming, Casio keyboard, dancing), I think we'll find a way to keep them involved in music.
I think the important lesson for learning an instrument is that you improve by putting in effort. There are gonna be songs that you couldn't play a month ago but now you can and that gives you a sense of achievement and an appreciation of hardwork. The actual technical skill of playing is just a vessel for this character learning.
I will say, as someone who has worked in education, education as an area is incredibly cargo cult-filled. Even educational research, and educational theory is full of culty trends (that seemingly change entirely every few years) and aren't what I'd call scientifically rigorous.
As this article itself says we've known since the 1980s that homework at that age was harmful and we've known since the 1990s that older kids need a later start, but has that changed anything? Not that I've seen, High School level kids still start at 7:30am here and homework is still given to elementary school-age kids.
Education has remained largely unchanged since the 1950s or before (technology not withstanding), and we've likely spending more on educational research and training now as we ever have, and what are the results? How much has school really changed in our lifetime? If anything they've only doubled-down with classical education being popular again, homework for homework's sake, learning for the tests, heavily structured classes, and subjects which both kids and staff call useless.
I just want to say I am not shitting on teachers. Teachers do a fantastic job under difficult conditions and near constant criticism. This is a structural problem, not a teacher problem. It is at the school district/state education/educational research level, it is also somewhat intertwined within teacher education itself (e.g. continuous learning, but learning this year's latest trendy teaching technique which will be forgotten and discarded in a year).
People are resistant to change even when they say they want change (politics is a great of example of wanting "change" but having a fit when things actually change).
It doesn't matter if its stupid or effective, there's a common theme of very early adult learning experiences such as military basic training, young doctors 36 hour shifts, apprentices in the crafts, where something akin to hazing turns teens into productive adults. So you do pushups in the mud until you puke, suture lacerations until you collapse asleep, and sweep floors and other grunt work for your first months with the journeymen and masters. Programmers haze noobs by forcing them to recite algorithms in whiteboard interviews.
Now I emphasize that its probably a stupid way to train a doc or a plumber or an attack helicopter mechanic, but its just how we haze while telling ourselves its learning, and wrapping it all up in layers of rationalization. And for parents, critically its the most recent example of learning. Even if their own school experience didn't suck, their internship or apprenticeship or basic training sure did, and that's how its supposed to be, in an abused grow up into abusers mentality.
So "obviously" the kids need to do timed arithmetic worksheets for hours until they cry, or stay up half the night writing essays the teachers won't read anyway. That's what "real learning" is all about, right?
Also, the idea of homework is that the kid will try to learn the material at home and parents will help. If you remove that, you put more pressure on the teacher to teach them the things they are supposed to know. You've already got them testing or preparing for tests for a large part of the day, teaching them things is really going to cut into watch-a-video time.
Think Neo being pulled out of the Matrix, only in reverse.
Of course different nations are going to have their own biased version of the things listed above, but I suppose that's okay.
What's undeniable is that we have reached the point where it's impossible for any human to even be able to consume all the art produced by mankind, let alone understand all our technology, in a single lifetime.
Until we figure out medical immortality, children should be informed of all the options available to them, as early as possible. Fluency in tools that are a de facto requirement of modern society; cars, computers, smartphones, even things like Facebook and online privacy – should be taught as soon as possible.
Teaching broad concents seems better than fluency in any individual techology (that will be complete outdated before the kid reaches adulthood). I'm not even sure how that would work: Here kid, here are all of the technologies that we think are important to you (and whose companies have supplied us with training materials). You shall learn an iPhone, the internet through Bing, a Honda car, and how to use Facebook. We won't teach you how any of these work, or even any of the basic concepts behind the world you live in, you can figure it out yourself by using Bing.
education as an area is
incredibly cargo cult-filled.
we've known ... homework at
that age was harmful
You can carve a block of wood to look like a radio and mutter into it all day, but generally speaking it's not going to summon a cargo-airplane to your airfield of chopped reeds.
The terrifying thing is that nearly every field (including, eg, medicine) is like this. Once there's a system in place that mostly kinda works, people are extremely reluctant to make any serious changes.
Making small changes over the years is the right thing to do unless you want to play the mad scientist with other people's lives. Of course do not change anything at all is bad, but the "serious change" approach is frightening, or at least should be.
Getting to school is very difficult for some people, especially if they come from a poor family. In high school, just getting there was such a hassle. I took three different busses. I remember getting up a 5 a.m. to get to there. And my student advisor(the principal) told me I needed to work on my attitude.
To take it further, never understood the reason to be at pretty much any job before 10 a.m.
Construction is notorious for early hours. Pretty much nothing gets done before that first coffee break.
In high school we normally started at 8:30am. Because my school didn't have enough room for everyone, we started at 2pm twice a week.
The 2pm days were my favourite.
Yet we put our kids in school five days a week, eight hours a day, then we give them homework for nights and weekends!
Do kids spend 8 hours a day at school now? Back when I was in school, it was 9-3, including an hour for lunch, plus 5 minutes between classes. On top of that, we got a lot more vacation than I've gotten at any job. If I do the math on it, we spent a total of less than 1000 hours a year in school, less than half the time I spend at work in a year.
Plus lunch and 8 minutes between classes.
The school day is from 9 - 4.
This is very different from the school I taught at in Massachusetts which starts before 7am and has seven 45 min classes (plus lunch).
It really all depends on your district. It seems many commenters here believe that all schools work the same way their school works, but they are actually remarkably different across the country.
8h/weeks, 1h homework. Extra activities on 'spare time'. Extra homeworks for those who wishes to compete with elite/private schools on national exams while being substantially given less teachers, less rooms, less credits worse appreciation in a so called meritocratic egalitarian system.
This WAS SPARTA!
This how I was raised. And I wish that to no kids on earth.
EDIT: the idea you got it tough in life will makes you stronger and more likely to succeed is a plain big lie given by the one with a silver spoon in their mouth to divert the attention from their case. The first part is true : you get stronger. The success part is false. Success is mainly a game that is based on rigged randomness.
I used to get on the school bus at 7, start school at 8, go to 2:30 with around an hour for lunch/recess, then two hours of sports practice (or two hours of killing time, then two hours of practice, during basketball season, since we only had one gym), and get home either at 5 or at 7. That's a long day, and throwing an hour or more of homework on top leaves you with pretty much nothing left.
College, now those were the days. 2-3 hours of class, and maybe half the time 2-3 hours of work study.
They have a 180 day year spread over 42 weeks, so that's 30 days off during that time. If extended for a full 52 week year, that'd be close to 37 days of vacation.
Which schools are in session 8 hours/day? I'm ignoring optional extracurricular activities since those are at the discression of students/parents.
Why would I expect more of a child?
As in many things, there is a balance somewhere. You need some level of rote homework to drive home basic concepts. Sorry--vocabulary, spelling, and times tables, for example, need spaced repetition and learning them sucks. But they suck whether you are 5 or 50.
However, I find this statement laughable: "Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught?" If doing homework is a power struggle in elementary school, you're a poor parent and are raising an entitled brat.
Depends greatly on the reason. "I don't want to do homework because I'd rather play video games" isn't generally going to fly (though having some free time is not something to discount entirely). "I don't want to do homework because I'd rather be reading" seems a lot more more reasonable. "I don't want to do homework because I already know all of this material and I'd learn nothing of value by doing it" is often completely reasonable, and a sign that either there's far too much homework or the class is far below the student's level.
And, to put it bluntly, quite a lot of K-12 school is a power struggle, and an object lesson in how power can be abused when one side has no recourse. Learning that meta-lesson, recognizing it as a problem, and finding ways to solve it is a critical life skill. Long after K-12 school ends, adults regularly encounter systems that are partly or completely broken. Sometimes the correct solution is "screw this system", and other times the preferable solution is "right or not, do I really want to pay the cost of fighting this battle in this case, or should I choose to lose and deal with it despite being right?". But 13 years of the former always being the only option on the table will not help people learn and maintain that skill, which will not help people learn to find, fix, or build new systems that suck less, whether in education or other areas of life.
If it's forced reading then you're likely to sap intrinsic motivation from many of the students. I would imagine that the studies you're referencing don't disambiguate whether the child chooses to read the book or is assigned it. But this is speculation since you didn't actually cite anything.
Source? I don't know your study, but most these reading studies just end up measuring socioeconomic status. Rich people make their kids read more, and rich people's kids are more successful, therefore reading as a kid correlates with success.
But I don't see any reason to believe those kids would be any better off if they didn't read. It's not like reading increases your IQ or gives you knowledge you couldn't learn much more efficiently elsewhere. At best reading increases your skill at... reading. Which is valuable, and I will mention that next. But it isn't magic like many people believe it is.
>As in many things, there is a balance somewhere. You need some level of rote homework to drive home basic concepts. Sorry--vocabulary, spelling, and times tables, for example, need spaced repetition and learning them sucks. But they suck whether you are 5 or 50.
And yet people who grew up without homework in elementary school seem to be able to do these things fine. Why can't they be learned in the 6 hours of school they are already attending? Why do they need even more hours of studying to learn these basic things?
I also object to the idea that learning needs to be tedious and boring, but that is just my opinion. Still, you learn vocab best through just absorbing language naturally as all children do. Not being forced to memorize vocab words. Spelling likewise comes naturally after you learn to read. Times tables are basically unnecessary in the age of calculators, and just teach children to grow up hating math.
>However, I find this statement laughable: "Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught?" If doing homework is a power struggle in elementary school, you're a poor parent and are raising an entitled brat.
You have no idea. I was that kid. I fought so hard in the fourth grade against excessive homework. I had very bad ADHD. I just couldn't focus. Forcing myself to do hours of homework, at that age, was torture. I had to be prescribed large doses of stimulants, as a child, to keep up.
Yeah kids are so entitled these days. They'll have all the time in the world to have their childhood, when they get to 65.
I did take the power of hindsight, but I realize now how good my elementary education was at that school. And how many kids don't get to have that same level of education. It wasn't cheap, but it's a shame all kids don't get to experience that.
The most important thing I learned there was how to think critically and come to my own conclusions on matters.
EDIT: Now that I'm reminiscing, my favorite memory is over the course of a few afternoons in 7th grade retreating to the comfy reading area and picking up and reading the classroom's copies of Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies.
It's incredibly expensive but also well worth the sacrifice.
"It's incredibly expensive"
It is possible that the second obeservation has somthing to do with the first... and perhaps more than the Montessori method itself does.
> It's incredibly expensive
I suppose this depends on where you live. We're perfectly happy with what we spend in the Dallas area and would gladly spend more. However, the 18 months we lived in the Seattle area, Montessori was unfortunately not an option. On the low-end, it was 2.5x as much. To have similar quality facilities, it was easily 5x as much.
So, no more wearing the cape to school!
That's so true. They taught us how to be functioning individuals who could take care of ourselves.
It all makes a lot of sense to me, but I have one thought. In many activities I find I need an initial period of tedious repetition before the fun part kicks in. Things like playing an instrument, learning a language, and some parts of mathematics. And nothing saps motivation at school more than being behind the class from the start and completely lost.
So is there a role to play for homework in pushing through the hard part at the beginning?
is there a role to play for homework
in pushing through the hard part
A N Whitehead has said it better than I can, so let's quote him: "Many think we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
Homework helps with repetition even for extrinsically motivated students, which leads to the ability to perform without thinking, which is the basis of mastery and enjoyment.
Einstein is quoted as "Never memorize what you can look up in a book."
I can agree with this for math homework or word puzzles etc but much of what he gets is not useful.
To cap it all off, often I find they have a day doing very little. How about they master maths during school time and not for parents to educate their kids after school!
Sorry, but that's just plain wrong!
It's not the amount of homework that's the problem, it's the quality. I've been waiting to weigh in on K-12 US education for quite some time, so excuse my long reply. I hope some find it informative.
Here I go with my Eastern European perspective on homework in grades 1-6.
My education in the US started in 7th grade, after completing grades 1-6 in Bulgaria.
I studied German from grades 1-4, when enrolled in a music academy and played percussion instruments (drums and xylophone), and also learned the basics of playing the piano, and folklore dancing. I practiced playing percussion for at least 2 hours a day and did homework for another 2-3 hours a day in those grades.
During the Summer after 4th grade, I was taking private lessons in Math, as I was applying to a specialized Math and Science school. In those private lessons, I learned about linear equations, mathematical series (geometric, etc), and how to derive their formulas, among other subjects that are typically taught in grades 7-10 in the US.
After taking the placement exam, I got into the school, where I also had to pick German or English. I picked English and had about 10-12 actual hours of English classes a week.
Every day we learned 15-25 English vocabulary words, and for homework, I had to write each word 20 times in a notebook, which was periodically graded by the teacher. This was on top of learning grammar and memorizing short stories (2-3 times a semester) that I'd have to recite for a grade.
I also had extra curricular Math classes on Saturdays that discussed special math topics.
On average, I'd spent anywhere between 2-4 hours a day on homework for all of my classes, sometimes a lot more.
That was in 5th and 6th grade.
Classes were taught in 2 different schedules. 7:30 - 2:30pm OR 11pm - 6pm. Which alternated every semester.
Also, I had plenty of time to play around with kids in the neighborhood and enjoy my childhood. That stuff you see in those youtube videos of Russian kids climbing old abandoned soviet buildings and doing crazy parkour stunts? Yep, I did all of those too!
Kids, especially in elementary school, should be taught the principles of hard work and time management and be exposed to as many different subjects and skills as possible. There isn't a better time for it, because the older you get, the less free time you have to do the things you want!
The doom of american education is standardized scantron tests. Students should be tested on how well they know and apply concepts, instead of how well they can eliminate answers and guess the correct one.
Unfortunately you'll never see a student in the US be graded on his ability to solve a math problem on the chalk board, or recite a poem, or history lesson in front of the class. That is what I had to do in grades 1-6. It teaches you to always be prepared, because the instructor can call on you at any time.
I had anywhere between 3-7 actual grades (marks) in most of my classes. Some of them were impromptu examinations by being called on randomly to do a math problem on a chalk board, explain the significance of a particular king/ruler in history class, recite a poem in literature class, recite a short-text in a foreign language class, and the rest were tests and midterms.
Compare that to the US, where you have 10 up to 20 graded assignments per class in K-12.
I found homework assignments in 7-12 grade in the US to be a complete joke. Fill out blanks on a piece of paper by copying them from the textbook or complete a huge packet of boring mind numbing problems? What in the world?
I'll assume that's because those are easy to grade, but in reality, it's much better to give fewer more complex assignments that require a lot more knowledge and skills to complete. Quality over quantity!
How are you going to get that time back? Are you making more money now as a result of all that extra work? Planning to retire early? Perhaps you enjoy life more that the less well educated?
Time is our most precious resource, and those young and carefree days are the most precious of all. Work should be as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Students in your age group in the US were still learning their times tables, and counting jellybeans.
Notice that the article did not argue against the value of repetitive homework for learning algebra, a musical instrument... Or for memorizing what is essentially historic trivia.
The US is an enormous country. Educational policy is defined at the state level. There are 50 states, each with a different and unique educational system. Even within a single state, much policy devolves to individual districts and to the administration of particular schools.
Besides the standard state-run schools, there are numerous private schools, religious schools, and charter schools (privately run but funded by the state). All of these are free to do whatever they like in terms of educational policy (within very broad general limits.)
At the very least I'm not convinced that reading a few chapters of an age appropriate book or the odd creative project (draw something, etc.) or short writing assignment can be bad (or take more than an hour).
On the other hand, I'm sure writing all 25 of your vocabulary words 5 times each isn't particularly helpful. (This was the main homework assignment I remember getting as a 2nd grader. I hated it because it made my hand sore (possibly because I was always trying to do it as fast as possible) and was boring.)
A ton of homework is a smell that I've learned to look into in order to see if I need to meet with the teacher and possibly talk to the school administration.
But then I had other teachers who assigned homework which was likely motivated by a need to have things in the gradebook that weren't tests
And lectures should be replaced with multimedia learning at HOME.
Here is my proposal I am working on. If anyone reads this and wants to join me, email me: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
See [1] for a nice lit review.
1. http://www.studiesuccesho.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/flip...
She should be out of doors riding her bike, exploring the woods, discovering weird new bugs in the dirt, interacting with friends, reading books, building stuff, play-acting, playing music, dancing, and generally being the amazingly creative kid that she is, that most of us should have been, had that creative spark not been quantified and tested and pigeonholed out of us by years of dreary deadlines and shouting matches and power struggles.
The poor kids. I hated homework, school in general actually, for most of my student life, and now I get to watch it crush the next generation. Very jealous of the families who home school.
I'm just interested in ideas about this: I've been seeing schoolwork darken the life of my niece; her parents are trying to help, and all I can do is mention my opinion to my brother once or twice. I also think homeschooling would be better.
School is all-in or all-out. You either play by their rules, or go somewhere else. I think for grade 6+, we're going to look around a bit but the reality is, we're like most other families, too busy and stressed and not enough funds to really do the right thing which would be home school, or else alternative school.
But, maybe we will. She's worth it!
edit: a typo
This is why it's detrimental to have all these Journal articles locked away from public view. A researcher can make a claim that influences public opinion, but the general public must pay a lot of money to actually review what the claim is based upon!
The paper is, incidentally:
Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research, 76, 1-62.
Luckily there is a copy of that article you can find here:
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Does-Homework...
The abstract reads, in part:
No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework-achievement
link and the outcome measure (grades as opposed to standardized tests) or the
subject matter (reading as opposed to math). On the basis of these results and
others, the authors suggest future research.yes, thank you for the catch.
Cooper compiled 120 studies in 1989 and another 60 studies in 2006. This comprehensive analysis of multiple research studies found no evidence of academic benefit at the elementary level. It did, however, find a negative impact on children’s attitudes toward school.
The 1989 reference is the book _Homework_ by Cooper, and the 2006 reference is "Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003", Cooper et al 2006 http://upload-community.kipa.co.il/819201525856.pdf
If you are going to only have two research paper/book references, comprehensive meta-analyses are good choices. FWIW, the claims are consistent with what I've always read about homework research and there's no contradiction in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homework either.
> "With only rare exception, the relationship between the amount of homework students do and their achievement outcomes was found to be positive and statistically significant."
Yeah so let's ban elementary homework, amirite??
> "Kids burn out," Cooper said. "The bottom line really is all kids should be doing homework, but the amount and type should vary according to their developmental level and home circumstances. Homework for young students should be short, lead to success without much struggle, occasionally involve parents and, when possible, use out-of-school activities that kids enjoy, such as their sports teams or high-interest reading."
I'd need to track down the whole paper to know for sure, but his attitude here seems to advocate 10 minutes of homework (varied topic, positive, etc.) for elementary school kids, in addition to the 20 minutes or so of reading time they should have. This is what I see at the elementary school (public) where I teach. And I think it works well.
Are we really railing against 10 minutes of homework for an elementary school kid? I need this time - to check in with my kids when they finish and talk about the answers together.
[1] http://today.duke.edu/2006/03/homework.html
EDIT: Here's another synopsis of the same group of studies, but backed with some actual data, along with recommendations for how homework could be more effective.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar0...
I experienced what you describe, and it was never even called homework. It was learning spelling, times tables, or reading a chapter of a book. Probably from age 8-11, with no homework before age 8.
If we are chosing between two buckets, "homework for elementary" and "no homework for elementary", the second is much much safer, especially in the age of helicopter parents.
I was skeptical moving into the district, but I'm actually kind of surprised at how little of a difference it makes. Same grades, same progress, less stressed kids.
Also, from my experience as a student my prior for that benefit is pretty low. I went to what turned out to be relatively good schools for the U.S., and I still think that before college they were mostly a waste of time that actively turned people off learning. What I mean by skeptical, above, is that hearing of these studies only shifts that opinion a little.
If all you do is absorb lessons without the underlying practice, the material will evaporate from your brain within a short time.
Imagine if you had only seen division or multiplication being done on the blackboard by the teacher, and never practiced it. Today, you'd at best have a faint, dim recollection of having seen such a thing, and you'd be powerless without a calculator when confronted with some matter involving two digit numbers.
We should also look at other things that impose a "high cost" on children: spending hours playing video games or noses constantly buried in mobile devices.
My son is in year 1, and he doesn't have very much homework (neither does my daughter to be honest), but after getting him settled at a desk he just tends to do it very quickly then run off and plays.
I found that for my daughter, I was able to imbue a love of learning when she was in Kindy and year 1 by buying a whiteboard and getting her to do her work on it. Also, my clear excitement and my own love of learning (I was and still am studying mathematics) rubbed off.
In fact, I was going through Trigonometry again at one stage and she was interested why there were circles and triangles on the whiteboard, so I explained what an angle is and that trigonometry is the relationship between angles and sides. I would say she was the only year 1 in her school who knew what trigonometry was - I think her teacher was rather surprised when she used the word, and even more surprised when she was able to explain what it actually was! :-)
I know a few teachers in some really poor areas and many teachers have to fight against unearning at home.
Homework helps with this. I also don't think a student can learn enough in the classroom. With ever growing class sizes, students just can't get all they need in terms of learning, without homework.
I just have to shake my head at one more thing that will put our future generation behind the rest of the world.
So it looks like the homework in public schools is a stopgap for lousy teachers.
That teacher said: classes are not for real learning, but for getting the first contact, or solving doubts. Homework is where the magic happens. Small amount of (handwritten) homework, related to the same day class, and a good sleeping night.
He also advocated for less class time, some school time for homework, and more time of extra activities not related to TV watching or internet procrastination. Also, reading, reading and more reading.
Learning requires doing some exercises. There is no time for that in class, because the class is for lecturing. If homework is handed out at the start of the class, and you start doing it in class, then you aren't paying attention to the class.
Homework isn't work to be done specifically at home, just work to be done outside of this class, before the next class. Let's call it school work.
If the class is one hour long, three times a week, then that leaves 165 hours in the week in which work for that class can be scheduled.
Homework should be reasonably brief, of course; it shouldn't have unnecessary repetition of trivial material.
School should also be reasonably short. Classes should end at around noon. Class work should be done after lunch, in lab classes dedicated to that work. Then when school is out at, say, 3 p.m., the class work is done. Those who goofed around in class work labs will have to do some of it at home.
That's an effect you'd see if the study was conducted over 10 years but not if it was conducted over a single year.
This did cost me some good grades. I got a worse grade for not making my homework AND I got demotivated by it and did less for the class.
On the other hand, I was never really good at school. Only average. And after I went to university I realized that doing this practical stuff at home helped me more to understand it, so I would probably got better grades if I did homework at school.
Luckily I found out that good grades aren't necessary to study computer science. So I got my "dream" degree anyway.
I never did homework either, where I could avoid it. There was other stuff I wanted to do (as a child, mostly read for hours). I did well in school and enjoy a fulfilling adult life, and am probably much better for how I chose to spend my time.
That said, I had very invested parents, I probably "studied" more than I knew because we went over stuff and regurgitated what we learned with our parents, who were both educators, even while I avoided doing hours of homework. In that way I was very lucky.
While traditionally school time in Germany ended at 1pm, there are now models, where the children stay at school after lunch and working on their "homework" in special sessions where some teacher is present for questions and interaction, not taking any of the homework home.
"Before going further, let’s dispel the myth that these research results are due to a handful of poorly constructed studies. In fact, it’s the opposite. Cooper compiled 120 studies in 1989 and another 60 studies in 2006."
However, the 2006 meta-analysis explicitly says that all 60 studies had design flaws. To quote the conclusion:
"We hope that this report has demonstrated the value of research synthesis for testing the plausibility of causal relationships even when less-than-optimal research designs and analyses are available in the literature."
There were annual mathematics competitions which placed your ranking compared to other students in Australia, and - at the time I did that homework - I was in the top 1%.
Fast forward a few years where we stopped doing maths exercises and just started relying on what the primary and then subsequent secondary school taught. My grades dropped, going from top 1% to 10% nationally and then lower still. The reason was that I wasn't exposed to enough content from the school itself.
Simply put, it is fallacious to argue that less exposure to learning materials puts children in better stead.
As far as the idea of disillusionment of children with the world goes: this is more a function of teaching things in an interesting and real-world-applicable way. Entertainment is the name of the game here, not less work. Kids are inspired by what they find fun.
Why are we so crazy about cramming so much info into the minds of children? Short of reading, writing, and math what does a kid need to know that can't be taught (probably faster) starting a bit later in life?
Shouldn't kids be playing with sticks and frogs and getting fresh air and sunshine? Not having the creativity squeezed out of them in buildings that resemble my office on the inside?
At the same time we spent fewer and fewer hours in the classroom as school on Saturday was cut and more special off days were introduced. I think teachers working for these changes meant well but I'm not at all convinced it did any good.
First of all I can't imagine average joe from American schools to crack it(not saying that few gifted/ self-home hardworkers can't get thru) at level of 12 grade.
And if the post advocates to remove that minimalistic homework..then I can only wish to God save your children.
For generations and generations, children have whined about homework. Of course; nearly everyone would rather play than work, and the goal of many working people is to put together enough moola in order to get out of the rat race permanently. People who win big lottery jackpots tend to say "oh, I will still keep going to work; nothing changes". Doesn't last.
The historic first may be that now children are starting to have millennial parents who do the homework whining for them.
I have to imagine there is a huge difference between homework done with a parent helping vs independent study.
I bet homework where the parent is involved is successful (at least it was for me... and no not the parent doing the work) as it is basically extended school time and I wish the study looked into that more.
Also what about an option to choose a particularly subject for homework. That is give the child a choice of which subject to learn more about after hours.
"there was generally consistent evidence for a positive influence of homework on achievement" [1]
[1] Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research by Harris Cooper et al. http://rer.sagepub.com/content/76/1/1.abstract
Multiple choices within a district? Vouchers? Something!