Should homework be abolished?

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angell1

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currently, in my province, there’s a movement pushing for banning homework by schools

I’m wondering what you guys think of this?

reasons given is that parents spend too much time fighting with their kids about having to do their homework and it causes stress in the families and it takes away childhood and family time

i don’t elieve the fact that a child doesn’t want to do something shold be a sufficient reason to make such a big societal change

other reasons include how only privileges kids benefit from homework whereas others may have to work, take care of younger siblings or sick family members.

this, i get a little more

on the flip side, you learn a lot of time management skills and how to submit things at deadlines. also, teachers can’t possibly solidify all concepts for a child in the short amount of class time they have

a proposed solution is to have kids learn concepts at home and then come to do assignments in class. not sure what makes them think kids will want to learn at home if they don’t want to do homework though.

what are your opinions?
 
On the one hand, I remember thinking when I was in school, that if I were a teacher, I would make this deal with students: Give me your complete and undivided attention and listening skills for one hour, and you will never have homework.

On the other hand, I recall a conversation with a parent not long ago. Upon learning that her daughter had gotten an “A” on a paper, she asserted, “Well, she’d better get an A. I put a lot of work into that paper!”
 
I am of two minds about this. My own kids aren’t old enough to have homework yet, but I used to assign homework as a teacher, and I remember my own experiences as a student.

I know that there are some high pressure schools where children are, in fact, completely overbooked and overwhelmed. But overall, no, I don’t think kids are actually encouraged in independent learning and study skills, which are IMO vitally necessary regardless of what one does after they leave school. GOOD homework should help with that. But there’s a lot of pushback. I had a hard time getting kids to read 10 pages of a book a night, when the book was several grades below the reading level. But I got to hear about how many hours they spent playing Call of Duty.

Independent reading, in particular, used to be an enormous part of school, for any subject, especially at the secondary level. Now there’s an expectation that all reading will occur in the classroom. I graduated from high school just over 10 years ago, and we could finish a decent sized novel in three weeks in English class. When I was teaching, it was much more standard to take two months for a book well under grade level. Blahhhhhhh.

(I remember being regularly accused of “being harder than the honors teacher.” Well, yeah, kid, because I actually want you to learn the stuff you’re supposed to.)
 
JimG said:
On the one hand, I remember thinking when I was in school, that if I were a teacher, I would make this deal with students: Give me your complete and undivided attention and listening skills for one hour, and you will never have homework.

On the other hand, I recall a conversation with a parent not long ago. Upon learning that her daughter had gotten an “A” on a paper, she asserted, “Well, she’d better get an A. I put a lot of work into that paper!”
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lol, I’m in university and I can’t even give my teacher an hour of undivided attention. nevermind elementary or high school kids
 
pensmama87 said:
I am of two minds about this. My own kids aren’t old enough to have homework yet, but I used to assign homework as a teacher, and I remember my own experiences as a student.

I know that there are some high pressure schools where children are, in fact, completely overbooked and overwhelmed. But overall, no, I don’t think kids are actually encouraged in independent learning and study skills, which are IMO vitally necessary regardless of what one does after they leave school. GOOD homework should help with that. But there’s a lot of pushback. I had a hard time getting kids to read 10 pages of a book a night, when the book was several grades below the reading level. But I got to hear about how many hours they spent playing Call of Duty.

Independent reading, in particular, used to be an enormous part of school, for any subject, especially at the secondary level. Now there’s an expectation that all reading will occur in the classroom. I graduated from high school just over 10 years ago, and we could finish a decent sized novel in three weeks in English class. When I was teaching, it was much more standard to take two months for a book well under grade level. Blahhhhhhh.

(I remember being regularly accused of “being harder than the honors teacher.” Well, yeah, kid, because I actually want you to learn the stuff you’re supposed to.)
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yeah exactly, if kids get in to the habit of just having everyone change things just because they don’t want ot do it, wha twill happen when they get older?
 
I think the push-back occurs because the amount of homework can be overwhelming. In fourth grade, one teacher almost single-handedly destroyed our family’s home life. DD would get home from school at 2:30 and do homework until bedtime, which we pushed back from 8:00 until 8:30 to accommodate it, with only a short break for dinner. More often than not, it was homework that required adult support. That was the year we excused DD from pre- and post-dinner chores and ended our evening walks as a family. At school events, this teacher bragged that she deliberately required parental involvement in homework to foster closer family ties. Much of the work had little value and was never returned.

I know of many HS students who participate in one extracurricular activity, return home and do homework until 1:00 a.m. That is clearly overkill.

This summer, my DGS, who began kindergarten last week, had three to four pages of homework every single day, all summer long. I walked in one day to see him trying to determine whether words had one or two syllables. Syllables! Before kindergarten! It wasn’t so long ago that he couldn’t explain what a “word” was.

I don’t think that many people object to a reasonable amount of relevant homework. Inordinate amounts of homework for the sake of homework are another story.
 
Book_Worm said:
I think the push-back occurs because the amount of homework can be overwhelming. In fourth grade, one teacher almost single-handedly destroyed our family’s home life. DD would get home from school at 2:30 and do homework until bedtime, which we pushed back from 8:00 until 8:30 to accommodate it, with only a short break for dinner. More often than not, it was homework that required adult support. That was the year we excused DD from pre- and post-dinner chores and ended our evening walks as a family. At school events, this teacher bragged that she deliberately required parental involvement in homework to foster closer family ties. Much of the work had little value and was never returned.

I know of many HS students who participate in one extracurricular activity, return home and do homework until 1:00 a.m. That is clearly overkill.

This summer, my DGS, who began kindergarten last week, had three to four pages of homework every single day, all summer long. I walked in one day to see him trying to determine whether words had one or two syllables. Syllables! Before kindergarten! It wasn’t so long ago that he couldn’t explain what a “word” was.

I don’t think that many people object to a reasonable amount of relevant homework. Inordinate amounts of homework for the sake of homework are another story.
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that’s the thing though, we’re not talking about extreme cases like yours.

there’s one school that abolished homework altogether in the last year.

many people think that a 7th grader doing an hour of homework a day is too much.

many high school teachers aren’t assigning deadlines for assignments, students can just hand them in whenever they feel like it.

not to mention unlimited makeup tests until the student is satisfied with their result
 
No, I don’t think homework should be abolished.

I was a quiet student in class; I disliked putting my hand up and I hated being picked on to give an answer. If I hadn’t have gotten homework, I would have probably been forgotten about. A lot of the time in subjects such as Maths and certain parts of Science, I never truly understood the concept until I went home and did the homework. I had a maths teacher in high school who never failed to give out homework every week. I admired her for that, as it gave me a chance to see that I wasn’t as bad at Maths as I thought I was, and it greatly improved my confidence.

In my opinion, homework gives students a chance to see just what they’re capable of, and it gives them a chance to develop researching skills as well as teaching them how to study independently.

That being said, I am very against homework being given out just for the sake of it. At my school the teachers were inspected to make sure they were giving out homework regularly, so some of them only gave out homework because they had to. They would then never mark this homework until an OFSTED inspection :rolleyes:. I would have much preferred my high school history teacher’s methods - wait until we had finished a topic, then give homework (normally an exam question and to make something like a mind map to revise from for the exam), before giving each individual detailed feedback and going over anything he felt we were struggling with.

Another problem with my school was sometimes the teacher’s didn’t seem to realise that we got homework in other subjects. A lot of the time, it would take me over three hours to do one piece of homework and then I would have to do everything else. One example of this is another maths teacher I had, who would give out homework on a Wednesday and expect it in two days later on the Friday. This was before I had the maths teacher I admired, and I really struggled with it. This maths teacher didn’t work on a Thursday, so I couldn’t tell her that I needed help. On Parent’s Evening, my parents told her how much I was struggling and her response was “If you sign the homework to say she’s tried, she doesn’t have to finish it”. There was no offer of help, and even though the whole class complained about the time allotted, she never let up. Needless to say, this shattered my confidence in my own ability, and made me despise the subject. It was only when I got the maths teacher I spoke about earlier that things began to get better for me. But if I hadn’t been given the homework by the good maths teacher, I would never have realised that my maths ability wasn’t so bad.
a proposed solution is to have kids learn concepts at home and then come to do assignments in class. not sure what makes them think kids will want to learn at home if they don’t want to do homework though.
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I don’t think this will work at all. If kids can’t be bothered to do homework for a concept they already know, they definitely won’t bother to learn something new. All that will happen is the teacher will end up teaching the concept and giving them assignments, which will rush them a lot and won’t benefit anyone.

Lou
 
I am still undecided. For in considering the usefulness of homework one must concede that it might provide for an improved work ethic as well as foster time-management skills…yet equally important is the consideration that unimportant busywork has had the effect of sapping interest in a given subject. If one is to consider how children learn in a natural environment a great deal of it is fun and interesting experimental learning. Breaking this down into structured lessons has the potential to remove this natural interest in new knowledge as it is married to a largely uninteresting workload. It seems a pity that children cannot have more free time to enjoy their youth…yet perhaps this too is training for their adulthood where a constant craving for free time might have a deleterious effect on one’s productivity.

It is simply a pity…
 
Yes! Isn’t that what we pay taxes for? School is a place of learning. Teachers are there to teach and if they can’t teach the necessities in 7-9 hours, why are we paying them? A child is expected and required to spend 1/3 of their lives at a school. Thats a full time job. And they aren’t paid to be there, we pay for them to be there. It is their non-paying full time job. They shouldn’t be expected to work longer hours than an adult. It’s just not right! So much of the school day is spent in non-essential “learning.” Cut the **** and use the school day fruitfully. 🤷
 
Convert_in_99 said:
Yes! Isn’t that what we pay taxes for? School is a place of learning. Teachers are there to teach and if they can’t teach the necessities in 7-9 hours, why are we paying them? A child is expected and required to spend 1/3 of their lives at a school. Thats a full time job. And they aren’t paid to be there, we pay for them to be there. It is their non-paying full time job. They shouldn’t be expected to work longer hours than an adult. It’s just not right!
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As I said in my earlier post, independent study has always been a big part of “book learning.” A typical school day is not nine hours - seven is closer, but not all of that is straight instructional time (nor should it be - we don’t expect adults to work completely break-free, either.)

I agree that for most of the elementary years, there is probably very little need for additional work outside of school. But at the secondary level, nope, not buying it. The concepts taught in the major subjects at the secondary level should require some additional work that is best done by the individual student not during instructional time.
 
I remember reading summaries from a couple of studies a few years back that showed that the amount of homework had almost zero correlation to academic success. Many kids entering ivy league schools also had to take remedial math and English classes. So despite averaging 4-5 hours of homework each night for 5+ years and having 3.5 or higher averages, they still didn’t learn the stuff required to make them ready for college level work.

The problem (at least in the US) is that primary and secondary education is rarely about higher level thinking, but rather regurgitating facts on command. Most homework has little to do with critical thinking or analytic skills. When a student understands a math concept after working 2 or 3 problems, what is the benefit of requiring them to spend an hour plus answering 60 questions each night? Why is it that most students that plow through homework can’t tell you about most of the work 2 - 3 week later?

Repetition helps a subset of students, but it essentially penalizes those that pickup the material quickly. I remember 25 years ago sitting in a math class in high school. The teacher was working a problem on the board and made a mistake. I corrected them by asking if step X was correct and offered an easier way to work the problem. My reward? An extra 20 problems for homework so I could learn to “do it right”. If we did in 5 steps what the books said should be 12, only partial credit. Stuff like that killed any love of academics I had. I love to learn, but hate the proceduralized version of academics that dominate the US.

As far as I am concerned, homework is about reinforcing what should be presented in class. It should not be a way to cram more stuff in over filled brains or used as a way to punish or penalize students. If the homework is not helping a student learn critical thinking or analytic skills then it’s busy work that serves little purpose.
 
I don’t think the fact that there is homework is the problem. The problem is the type of homework. I’m in college now, and it seems as if our homework actually has meaning now, ya know, because we are working to a degree. But in high school I remember the worksheets we had to do and all the busy work that went along with it.

Heck, I am 18 and even I know that schools everywhere don’t teach enough about taxes, budgets, bills and all that other stuff we need to know.
 
Rbaker said:
I don’t think the fact that there is homework is the problem. The problem is the type of homework. I’m in college now, and it seems as if our homework actually has meaning now, ya know, because we are working to a degree. But in high school I remember the worksheets we had to do and all the busy work that went along with it.

Heck, I am 18 and even I know that schools everywhere don’t teach enough about taxes, budgets, bills and all that other stuff we need to know.
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👍
 
In our school district, the idea of abolishing homework has come up several times. The arguments are generally that using homework as a grade is unfair to students whose home life is not conducive to doing homework. I can certainly see that as growing up, my mother often didn’t allow us to do our homework if our chores weren’t done yet or if she had some other activity planned for the evening. Her opinions on education were unconventional and she felt that school shouldn’t infringe on family life. Some of the schools that I attended had a LOT of busy work for homework, and I know my grade was penalized for not getting it done, even though I had mastered the concepts and the information. The other argument against homework is sort of the opposite. That students with parents that sit and force their kids to do the homework (or flat out do it for them) get an unfair advantage because some teachers were grading on the completion of homework, rather than on the mastering of the material.

Because of this, we actually have a district homework policy. Completion of homework can’t be used as a percentage of a grade in a class. Assignments can be required to be done at home, however, they have to be graded on their merit and not simply on completion and there has to be a reasonable window of time for students to complete such assignments. The exception is reading logs. Elementary schools can require reading logs of no more than 20 minutes per school night, but they have to allow for students to choose to read extra on one night in order to make up for not reading another night. Drilling assignments, math packets, and flashcards can be sent home for extra study, but can’t be figured into the students grade.
 
Convert_in_99 said:
Yes! Isn’t that what we pay taxes for? School is a place of learning. Teachers are there to teach and if they can’t teach the necessities in 7-9 hours, why are we paying them? A child is expected and required to spend 1/3 of their lives at a school. Thats a full time job. And they aren’t paid to be there, we pay for them to be there. It is their non-paying full time job. They shouldn’t be expected to work longer hours than an adult. It’s just not right! So much of the school day is spent in non-essential “learning.” Cut the **** and use the school day fruitfully. 🤷
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Actually, very little time is wasted in most schools these days. At the school where I work, the kids get 20 minutes of recess a day and 20 minutes of lunch. That’s it. I’ve got 5th grade teachers outside my room trying to quiz kids on math and science while they’re waiting in line to use the bathroom! I’m not sure what you consider “non-essential”, but practically every minute of the day is filled.
 
Allegra said:
Because of this, we actually have a district homework policy. Completion of homework can’t be used as a percentage of a grade in a class. Assignments can be required to be done at home, however, they have to be graded on their merit and not simply on completion and there has to be a reasonable window of time for students to complete such assignments. The exception is reading logs. Elementary schools can require reading logs of no more than 20 minutes per school night, but they have to allow for students to choose to read extra on one night in order to make up for not reading another night. Drilling assignments, math packets, and flashcards can be sent home for extra study, but can’t be figured into the students grade.
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That seems to be a reasonable compromise. When I was in high school back in the stone age I had several classes where up to 30% of our grade was homework. My math grades could fluctuate between a C and A depending on the homework grading policies each semester.
 
angell1 said:
lol, I’m in university and I can’t even give my teacher an hour of undivided attention. nevermind elementary or high school kids
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Then what’s the point of having a teacher if he or she is only getting 40% or 50% attention? Listening is a skill, and can be learned. If student listens well, there won’t be much need for taking notes.
 
JimG said:
Then what’s the point of having a teacher if he or she is only getting 40% or 50% attention? Listening is a skill, and can be learned. If student listens well, there won’t be much need for taking notes.
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Well, yes and no. One of my listening strategies is to take notes. Even if I don’t refer to the notes later, the act of writing while listening helps me commit ideas better to memory than if I hadn’t written down anything at all.

Actually, in college, I found I had to do a lot less studying in particular for exams because I had done the readings when assigned and showed up to class and paid attention/took notes. It boggled the minds of some of my friends that I apparently “did not need to study,” but what they really meant was I “did not need to cram.”
 
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