This thread makes me sad.
2-4 hours on a nightly basis in ridiculous. 4-6 in high school is even more insane. So lets say you finish class at 3pm every day. Schools want you doing homework until 9pm?? What about extracurricular activities? I’m a junior at an elite university and I don’t even have to spend more than 2 hours on assignments per night.
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Academically challenging does not have to mean hours of homework. This is not healthy at all. There is a lot of room between 2 hours per night of meaningful, knowledge-advancing homework and “spends that time on social media instead.”
Does the child have time to do some physical activity? Eat a snack? Do chores? Read for fun? Socialize in person? These are the questions I’d be asking.
Mine found there was much less work in college than high school or even 8th grade. I’m not sure what the point of all those endless hours of homework was.
My youngest is 7th grade and she definitely averages at least 2 hours of homework a night. There are some nights it’s a little less, but there are also plenty of nights that it stretches out to 4 hours.
Educational research does not support this amount of homework as helpful or effective in middle school. Easy to look up the studies. Just because many schools assign this much does not make it right.
My D attended one of the top public schools in Manhattan where she accelerated in math, science, and foreign language. I remember approximately 2 hours a night in the early 2000’s
Selective /screened public middle and high schools in NYC are a bear. the most coveted programs are accelerated. If you are in Manhattan, district 2 there is only a small handful of schools which give priority admission/feed into the selected, highly coveted public high schools. The specialized high schools will be a whole different animal.
@snarlatron Maybe the average kid does not respond well to hours of homework per night, but I don’t doubt that some kids out there have the focus and drive to work through hours of homework in middle school, and be better off for it.
It’s a good idea to put room for 2 hours of homework a night in the schedule, even if it doesn’t often take that long. Even if the child only is assigned 60 minutes of assignments and problems, I think it’s wise to spend another 60 doing pleasure reading and other self-directed projects.
Too much.
Teachers will sometimes admit homework is intended to keep kids busy and away from screens, as one poster mentioned above.
I went to a meeting years ago in our local school, about homework, and I remember saying that our kids are temporarily insane and need to just eat and sleep!!
Some parents WANT their kids to have a lot of homework. I think it is misguided. What is the old chestnut about kids not being buckets to fill but candles to light, or something like that?
I strongly believe that all this early academic stress leads to burnout and mental health issues later on.
In the program my D came through (Called Highly Capable Cohort) that was about the norm for homework. There was a backlash from parents after one 7th grader missed Halloween to finish up assignments. After that there was less. The program had kids accelerated with some starting Alg 1 in 6th grade. Looking back I wish we had done something different. What a loss of childhood.
Do your middle school kids HAVE 2-4 hours of homework each night? Or are you just asking?
My kids sometimes spent 4 hours doing homework…but it was interspersed with breaks, snacks, chats with friends, etc.
Are you kids actually DOING 4 hours of homework…nose to the grind for four hours…every night?
Simple answer to your actual question…is it necessary to succeed academically in college? No.
My kids were avid readers so we were careful not to put them in situations where they were overloaded with homework in middle school. It meant not always being in the “top track” for every class that was tracked but it also meant having time to curl up with a book even for 15 minutes at the end of the day and before bedtime.
I think the answer is to know your kid. No, this isn’t necessary to be successful in college. But if your kid uses leisure time to post pictures on instagram or play endless rounds of video games, then some homework every night is probably a more productive use of time.
Know your kid.
Any school that is requiring more than two hours of homework for MS students is making it harder than it needs to be. My oldest daughter took 5 APs in middle school (chem, world history, both econs and Calc AB). Then she did two years of high school at a public STEM magnet and took Calc BC, APUSH, AP Lang, the hard physics (before the redesign of physics–I don’t remember what it was called), Am gov and comparative gov. She made 5s on all, but the ones for which she prepared on her own, as a homeschooler, took a lot less time. She is a fast reader and super-efficient, but the projects in APUSH and Lang about drove her around the bend. Seeing the contrast between the amount of work required for APs studied at home versus comparable APs in a typical school setting was eye-opening. There was a lot more work required in school, with zero additional understanding. Still, though–she never averaged even 2 hours of homework/night. She was an athlete and at the gym until 9 PM through most of high school; she would never have slept with a substantial homework load. She’s just been accepted (at age 20) into a Ph.D. program at Stanford, so I would say she’s done fine even without a heavy homework load.
Is it 2 hours of assigned homework – or is that how long it takes your child to do it? There IS a difference.
I’ve seen my kids take 2 hours to do what should have taken 30 minutes.
Depends on the kid and the school. My kid transferred from a cyberschool to a rigorous private in sixth grade. First few weeks, she was doing HW from 5 or 6 until 11, crying with the stress and often not finishing.
Now, as a junior, she is much, much better at time management. She uses free periods. She uses the bus. She is still doing homework until 11, though. A lot of work is expected of the students. I think it is probably about four hours, all told. Two hours of middle school homework at a demanding prep school is not out of line. Four? Yeah, too much.
In our school district they have a homework policy. Homework is only allowed Monday through Thursday. For junior high 15 or 20 minutes per class is allowed depending on the class. (English and Math get the longer time periods) For HS either 20 or 30 minutes per class is allowed. No homework is allowed over weekends or Holidays
What does this 2 hours of homework look like?
are we talking about 30 minutes of work in each of the core 4: English, Math, Social Studies and Science?
Is your child on a 1-8 program where they are getting 20 min homework in 6 subject classes?
The thing about middle school is that your child has multiple teachers and everyone is giving their own assignments .
Is the math homework a number of problems? Is the english homework doing some close read and writing some evidence-based analysis followed my some reading and journaling in your reading log?
Very valid question; is it two hours of homework or does it takes your child two hours to get it done? I know my D did her share of dilly-dallying during homework time. She did not find the homework hard or challenging. Some days she felt no need to rush, some days she wanted to write homework using 4 different color inks.
“some days she wanted to write homework in 4 different color ink” LOL @sybbie719