Stop Homework

Today’s guest blogger is “FedUpMom”, the mother of a 10-year-old who attends a public school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. This is FedUpMom’s third post; you can read her other entries here and here.

How we left the public schools
by FedUp Mom

As her 5th grade year began, I noticed that my daughter was becoming depressed. She came home from school miserable, looking like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. She said she hated school and she was jealous of her little sister who doesn’t go to school yet. When I told her that school shouldn’t be a miserable experience for her, she looked genuinely surprised. This broke my heart.

One day she wasn’t at chess club, which I run at her school during the recess period. When I asked her about it later, she said she wasn’t able to come because the math teacher had kept her in from recess for forgetting to get our signature on a test. The first teacher conferences were coming up, so I made an appointment to talk to the math teacher. At the appointment, I told him I wanted to cut back on homework, which we were able to work out. But we ran out of time before we could get to the recess issue.
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Here’s an email I received from an adult who dropped out of school because of too much homework. The writer, now 35, told me he went on to get an associates degree, joined the military, worked as a flight attendant, and is now a contract worker, using skills he picked up in the military:

I dropped out of high school during my junior year. Why? I got tired (of homework). I was mostly an A and the occasional B student while growing up. Honor roll student every quarter/semester. But I failed my first course ever in the first quarter of my junior year. In fact, I failed four of six classes that quarter! Why? Homework. Believe it or not, I quit doing my homework. I had enough.

I was a bright student. I was quick to learn. And, I still passed all my tests. A’s. Maybe the occasional B. I paid attention in class. I took in the knowledge. And, I gave that knowledge right back to them when tested. Typically you would think that my test scores would show competency and success. I understood what I was taught without a doubt. Yet I failed four courses! Because I wouldn’t (no, because I couldn’t!!!) do my homework. It was too much. Way too much. Years and years of excessive homework took its toll on me. I was tired. I was fatigued. I was beat. And I dropped out.

The system turned a successful, smart kid into a worn out dropout.

A middle-schooler from South Dakota has this to say about homework:

Homework: It’s Not Worth It
Homework: it stresses you out, causes writer’s cramps, and simply takes up your time to relax and be yourself. Teachers assign homework because they believe that it builds character, academic skills, and work habits. What homework really builds is an immense pile of textbooks and paper resembling a mountain. For middle school students, homework should be less than one hour per night, but the average middle-school student has 1-2 and a half hours of homework. If you have less than an hour of homework each day, you really don’t know how blessed you are.

Research says this: Homework demands limit the amount of time students spend in sports and community projects. Too much homework may cause students to dislike the subject, or even learning. Students may also get confused by their parents’ teaching methods because they may be different from the teacher’s teaching methods. Homework also may (believe it or not) encourage cheating.
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About a year ago, I posted a guest blog entry by Chris Elssasser, an associate professor of education at Pepperdine University, in which he analyzed how much time high school students really have and asked what students should give up for homework.

A middle school teacher responded, writing that students have plenty of time for homework. It’s important to read what the teacher had to say, because it shows why some teachers believe that parental complaints are baseless.

Here’s what the teacher wrote:

Why are you accounting for exercise PLUS sports PLUS assuming the students have gym class. And last time I checked that 45 minutes for breakfast was more like 5, and the 45 minutes for lunch a part of school.

6 AM Wake up
8-3 School
3-5 Afterschool activities
5-6 Relax
6-6:30 Dinner
6:30-9:30 Homework
9:30-10 TV
10 Bed

As a middle school teacher, we aim for between one hour and 90 minutes a day. I doubled it, and still find this to be an honest expectation. The students I find can’t complete the homework are either in a day care that doesn’t enforce homework time and have no study skills themselves and don’t begin till 7 when their parents come home; or the students who are over dedicated to sports and have multiple 3-hour-a-day practices during the week and feel that athletic achievement and ‘well-roundedness’ are more important than school.

Before I wrote The Case Against Homework, I rarely corresponded with authors about their books and ideas. But since the publication of my book, I’ve heard from thousands of readers and I’ve been inspired to write to other authors as well.

Last week, I exchanged books with Carl Honore, author of Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting. Honore is also the author of the best-selling In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. Under Pressure is an easy-to-read, common-sense musing on how parents’ natural instinct to want the best for their children has backfired, turning childhood into a rat race.

I’ve also corresponded with Roger Schank, author of Coloring Outside the Lines. Schank, the Founder of the renowned Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, explains that being smart doesn’t necessarily mean getting straight A’s, and he writes about the importance of, among other things, nurturing our children so that they can speak convincingly and eloquently, think on their feet, create original ideas that push the boundaries, be willing to risk failure, and feel free enough to color outside the lines.

These books are all worth reading.

According to seattlepi.com, a Seattle middle school science teacher has been suspended for two weeks without pay for refusing to administer the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). The teacher, Carl Chew, who has been teaching for about eight years, said he has seen kids struggle through the test with few positive results to show for the time and effort expended.

You can read the rest of the story here and read his statement here.

A sophomore at a Rhode Island public high school sent me this essay he wrote for English class. When he’s not doing homework, the student likes to do yoga and is a member of two clubs, People Respecting Individual Differences and Equality (formally known as the Gay-Straight Alliance) and Students for Social and Environmental Justice.

Homework Should be Optional
by a Rhode Island Sophomore

The time a student spends in school is generally six and a half hours. The bus ride can be anywhere from five minutes to over an hour, each way. The day begins at seven thirty-two in the morning, with a twenty-two minute lunch and a five minute break between classes. And when the student reaches home, more work awaits him or her: some times many hours, if the student does all of his/her homework. Yet, this nightly practice is often unneeded and causes much unnecessary tension and stress. Homework should not be mandatory; rather, it should be optional.
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Today’s guest blogger, Frank Bruni, the father of a 12-year-old seventh grader, lives in Toronto, Canada. Frank was a driving force in pushing the Toronto District School Board to review and revamp its homework policy. You can read Frank’s other guest blog entries here and here.

Just Start
by Frank Bruni

On April 16th 2008, Toronto Canada became one of the first jurisdictions in North America to pass a substantive homework reform policy.

The policy reduces the homework burden on middle school and high school students and all but eliminates homework in the elementary grades. In addition, homework will no longer be allowed during vacations.

The new policy mandates that teacher’s co-ordinate their efforts and that the homework that is sent home is “clearly articulated and carefully planned” and “require no additional teaching outside the classroom”.

This policy is a major breakthrough for those of us who have been advocating for homework reform.
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