<p>After years of teachers piling it on, there’s a new movement to … Abolish homework
Vicki Haddock, Insight Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006</p>
<p>High school teacher Phil Lyons has become a heretic: He refuses to assign homework. At Palo Alto’s Gunn High School, where he teaches world history and advanced-placement economics, his no-homework policy leaves many new students anxious and their parents aghast, at least initially.</p>
<p>[Podcast: Jim Finefrock and Vicki Haddock on the backlash against homework. ]</p>
<p>"At back-to-school night every hand goes up, and they bombard me with various versions of the same question – ‘What are you doing?’ " Lyons says. “This year I pre-empted it by opening with an explanation of why homework is a failed approach, and why their kids will actually learn more without it.”</p>
<p>He also noted that his students achieved a 94 percent pass rate on the advanced-placement test, one of the highest in the country – and a success rate that has risen since he jettisoned homework assignments.</p>
<p>I don’t think homework should be gotten rid of all together, I think a gradual approach through highschool- freshman still have it and on the way through seniors, the “homework” ebbs to more and more resemble college work</p>
<p>My oldest son who teaches Brit Lit in HS said he just wrote a “mini essay” the other day to a panic stricken parent who had e-mailed each of their child’s teacher’s to ask why that student was not having (much) homework. My son also wondered if it occurred to the parent to be concerned that the student WAS being assgned homework and it just was not being done…</p>
<p>Any way, my son’s philosophy about homework is much the same as the one cited in the article noted above. And it seems to work very well for his students. The teachers at that school work those kids pretty diligently for 6-plus hours every day…they generally do not need another 3-4 hours of work on top of that. </p>
<p>I assign homework fairly regularly in my A.P. course but it only counts as 10% of their grade. If the students do not do homework that alone will not really have that much of a mathematical impact on their grade by the end of the marking period.</p>
<p>Rather I am trying to stress to the kids (sophomores) that the purpose for homework is not to get a grade but to help them become better able to perform well on exams. (90% of their grade)</p>
<p>I’ve just argued that there are projects and there are projects. I’ll argue here that there is homework and there is homework. It is not a good idea to think that all learning happens in class. Not everything can be or should be done in class. </p>
<p>There is busywork (not good) and there is practice (how much depends on the students) and there is research (that should be done outside classtime). </p>
<p>In college, my S has weekly problem sets; he has weekly readings that he must be prepared to discuss in section; he will have several response papers and term papers. All of this is worthwhile and not busywork. I believe that the weekly problem sets count for a very large chunk of the final grade, too (40%), and so do the response papers and term papers.</p>
<p>As an English teacher, I just don’t see how it would be possible to avoid homework. If I had to cram reading and discussion and essay writing into class time alone, I imagine that I could get through two, maybe three, novels in a year. I can see it now: “Okay class, today begins week ten of our Huck Finn unit. I know you might be getting a little tired of the book at this point, but we really need to finish up the last few chapters so you guys can get started on your essays. Starting Friday, we’ll be meeting in the computer center for the next couple of weeks so that you can all type at the same time as you work on your essays. Oh, and remember, second semester we’ll turn our attention to the 20th century. We’ll start with Gatsby, then end the year with two poems by Elizabeth Bishop…”</p>
<p>I agree with above poster about “busy work”. It is in the same category with “craft projects” in my opinion. I actually had my HS kids bring home word searches to do! In elementary these might be okay, as the students are learning spelling words, etc.—but as high school homework! I liked the teachers (math classes come to mind) who assigned homework problems and just checked if the kids tried to do them. The “grade” was if the work was all attempted. If no attempt was made, then a zero for the assignment. This method not only cut down on stress for the “right answer”, but eliminated copying and put forth the premise that homework was for learning.</p>
<p>Darn it! I misread the title, seeing “housework” instead of “homework”. If someone comes up with a method of getting rid of housework, please let me know. :)</p>
<p>spoonyj, I should perhaps clarify that my son teaches in a block scheduled environment…each class lasts about 11/2 hours. They cover one year’s material in a single semester. They do have reading and some writing assignments and such as “homework”, but not a bunch of it.</p>
<p>Also, for those who would compare high school to college…normally, a college course load would be 3-4 academic subjects. Not 5-6, as in high school. And in college, these classes do not meet daily…BIG DIFFERENCE!</p>
<p>True, but there’s nothing preventing high school teachers from assigning homework due the following week rather than the following day. </p>
<p>The point is that there is a lot of work that simply cannot be done in class or that should not take up class time. </p>
<p>My S has two classes that assign weekly problem sets; each take about 10 hours per week to do, so that’s 20 hours of homework right there. In addition, his other two classes call for a couple hundreds of pages to read per week.</p>
<p>A student who gets little or no homework in high school may not learn the study skills necessary to do well in college, including time management as well as learning independently.</p>
<p>I agree marite that teachers who assign homework with due dates in the future are doing a couple positive things. One, they are allowing for individual circumstances in students’ lives (such as sports and other class work). Two, they allowing the student to learn time management that will benefit them later in college.</p>
<p>As I see it, the main problem with homework is that it perpetuates inequality of opportunity for students in different socioeconomic situations.</p>
<p>In school, all students have access to the same resources. At home, they don’t. Some students have a quiet area for study, parents who arrange the family schedule to allow for homework time, and all the supplies they need. Some students have none of these things. They may be living in a three-room apartment with six other people, all of whom have concerns (such as survival) that take precedence over homework.</p>
<p>In my version of the ideal world, the school day would be extended by an hour or so, with the extra hour devoted to homework time, with the kids working independently under the guidance of some sort of teacher’s aide, in rooms equipped with paper, pencils, dictionaries, Internet-equipped computers, etc. And there would be plenty of help available for any kid who needed it.</p>
<p>An hour only for homework? For every class? Hmmm… And what about ECs or afterschool work? And what about students learning to study independently without asking for help from teachers, or learning time management? Is this good preparation for college?</p>
<p>The Star Ledger article touched on a pet peeve of mine: homework for parents. Not just parents overseeing the homework or assisting if the child has difficulty, but homework that actually involves the parent directly. Play this game with mom or dad, interview a parent about X, have mom or dad help you do y, etc. I once told a teacher that if she planned to assign me homework also, then she needed to at least give me more than one night to work on it because sometimes I have meetings and other commitments in the evenings. Last week my 3rd grader brought home 2 different fact sheets with the instruction: “Parents, please make sure your child learns the following:”</p>
<p>Also, in terms of the attitudes of school personnel, the homework burden has shifted to the parents’ shoulders in the sense that if the child does not complete assignments, the parent is held as responsible as the child. When a child doesn’t do homework, the parent is considered negligent. My youngest daughter always does all her homework. One day last week she forgot to bring home a necessary component for one daily assignment (not a big project–just a small thing), so she wrote the teacher a note apologizing and said she’d complete it for the next day. The teacher still sent a note home to me about it with a warning that D would get a zero if it wasn’t turned in the very next day. Yikes!</p>
<p>I should have clarified that I was talking about elementary and middle schools.
At the high school level, I still think that a service like this should be available, but I can see where it might need to be for a longer period of time and that kids might need to opt out of it.</p>
<p>Essentially, what I would like to see is a setup akin to what happens at boarding schools – with a supervised study period, equal access to facilities, and opportunities for extracurriculars on top of it – only without the need to be a boarder.</p>
<p>I realize that this is a pipe dream.</p>
<p>TheGFG, when one of my kids was in third grade, the class had a homework assignment that involved measuring the lengths of the feet of all family members in preparation for a graphing exercise that the class would do as a group. One child apologetically told the teacher that he could not measure the foot length of one of his parents because that parent was out of town on a business trip. Not only did he get a zero, he got scolded in front of the class.</p>
<p>A good deal of what I have seen assigned as homework is simply mind numbing busywork. </p>
<p>It isn’t a popular opinion, but I think homework in elementary school is not only unnecessary, but harmful, and in middle school and high school, it is excessive. No one needs 50 math problems. If a child doesn’t get the concept after the first 10, another 40 isn’t going to do anything but make the child, and everyone else in the family, upset and frustrated.</p>