California School District Abolishes Homework for Elementary and Middle School
The Helendale School District in California is instituting a no-homework policy for students in K-8th grade beginning this fall. According to vvdailypress, “First- through sixth-graders will complete any independent work during daily lessons, while seventh- and eighth-graders will get an added ‘homework time’ class period.”
Which school district will be next?
It seems like every state (and parts of Canada and the U.K.) are committed to actually caring about kids, except mine. If anybody wants to know why things are going incredibly slowly in terms of change, go to http://www.johntaylorgatto.com. And, go to http://www.nicolefilms.com and watch the 4th Purpose Promo. We can’t change things as well unless we know the causes.!!!!! They are very interesting!
May 9th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
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To me it’s not very smart to abolish homework from a school district because then how will the students get extra practice. There is a point where a student can have too much homework, but that doesn’t mean that you have to stop them from having it. You will most likely see a change a grades, so BEWARE!!
May 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
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I’m terribly sorry if you think that the message above is Sara Bennett, this is Sara Darice.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
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I think it’s a great idea. As a parent. It gets annoying when your kids come home from school and all they do is sit in their room for hours doing homework. Sure I want my kids to get good grades but I also want them to have a social life outside of school. In my opinion, homework is taking away my kids ability to even leave the house let alone have a social life. Believe it or not people, we learn more outside of school then we do inside of school.
I believe that if homework was abolished in schools, students would have much higher averages and be a lot less stressed out. Even the teachers and parents would be much less stressed. Everyone bennifits from this. Not just students.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:09 am
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I am a student and I don’t think that homework should be abolished. It is very important for extra practice. However, I think there is such a thing as TOO MUCH homework.
January 27th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
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I believe homework should be abolished. We should have classwork instead.
January 27th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
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I believe homework should be abolished. We should have classwork instead.
January 27th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
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I feel homework is damaging to a childs self esteem. Children are in school for too many hours. I work in the Law enforcement field and too many child are failing due to homework. Most children are so overwhelmed when it comes to homework. Our society is no longer geared to give children time to do any work at home. Children are too stressed to get everything done in one day. Homework puts stress on the family. There is not enough hours in the day to work, go to school, and force homework on childen. Ultimately the homework grade should be given to the parent. My daughter has two small children and kindergarten and second grade. They spend 2 hours on homework. It is a fight everyday. The kids I see everyday give up on school because they are not successful doing their homework. Their grades are worse due to not doing home work. I am an advocate to abolish all homework including in high school. We forget that not all kids will go to college. The kids that go to college do not have homework and if they do it is their responsibility to complete it and their parents are exempt from the negative atmosphere and fighting.
I want to do what ever I can to stop homework in the U.S. Children and parents can take the stress. We talk about children in our country being obesse well lets get them out side. We can do that by letting them play instead of spending 2 hours on homework. What can we do?
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:40 pm
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I teach 7th grade middle school math. I agree that students shouldn’t be spending hours on homework–10 to 30 minutes per subject, depending on their age. We tell parents that if their child is spending more than 2 hours on homework, clearly there is a distraction (TV, Facebook, etc.) While at school, students are able to explore new concepts, have group discussions, etc. However, it is essential that students practice those topics that they learn during the school day. Homework should be just that–practice. It shouldn’t be a surprise or too difficult. A good teacher will assign homework that reflects what they did in class that day.
In response to the stress that homework gives students, there are many other factors that contribute to that. Some parents put stress on their children to get straight As while some parents put stress on their children to be great at sports. Sadly, some parents are not involved at all. If students didn’t have homework, there is no guarantee that kids will be outside playing or that their parents will be spending time with them. The unfortunate reality is that many parents are not involved in their kids’ lives.
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
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Anonymous- With all due respect, why is it “essential” that 12-14 year olds spend two hours on homework after a seven hour school day? Yes, practice makes perfect. However, these kids do need some down time. Your comment re: other factors in their lives causing stress proves our point. How much stress does a 12-14 year old need? In response to your comment re: parents who are “not involved in their kids’ lives”; how is this germane to homework?
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:29 pm
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I think that homework should be banned! I understand projects like science projects and leftover schoolwork, but Going to school is sort of like doing homework for seven hours. I NEED A LIFE! I haven’t been with my friend for almost a month because we both have too much homework. My piano is suffering, I haven’t learned anything useful from homework, and I find myself depressed every day! It is Sunday, and I am working on my homework while my family goes out and has fun. Then I wake up early, go to math, English, ect. for 7.5 hours, after 8 hours of sleep, ( I need at least 10) come home, want to paint, or learn how to build a bow and arrow, but am suck doing my h-work. I rush through it, because I do so much of it a day. I have the ability to be a straight A student, great ERB and star test scores, but am a B and C student due to late homework. I am usually up till 9:30 but don’t want to go to bed, but have to.
March 14th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
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I agree that homework is pointless. As a 3rd grader I remember doing three pages of math homework a night, it took hours. Why was it necessary? I believe that I could have had better grades in high school but I was living on my own and working 30 hours a week to pay the bills, there was no time to do the two to three hours of homework assigned so my grades suffered do to homework not my test scores.
March 27th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
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Sarah, you hit on a seminal point. What the kids who must work to support the family or themselves, the ones who can’t afford an entire computer infrastructure at home complete with Power Point and high speed internet? What about the older kids who must watch the younger ones? In the old days, homework was clearly pointless too (that is why adults remember so little of it. It was taught the wrong way and didn’t stick) but the amount was reasonable.
How did we get to this point? How did homework eat up our children’s lives so that those who can’t devote all afternoon get penalized?
It’s like that Huffington Post piece I posted yesterday. High school teachers overload for several reasons but the main one, I’ve always felt, is to look good to parents, to not look lazy. It has nothing to do with all the sacred reasons we are fed.
The dirty little secret I discovered while homeschooling is how easy it is to find assignments on the web. I can’t believe hyper-competitive parents still judge teachers favorably by how much homework they send home. Wouldn’t it be better if parents questioned, wait a minute, if she’s sending it all home, just what happened at school?
March 27th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
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Homework is pointless!
May 6th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
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I think homework in moderation is okay. My son is in kindergarten and he is at school for 6 hours then has appx 6-7 pages of homework due every friday. He is also in special ed for mild to moderate autism and its very hard for me to get him to do his homework and I do think it’s overwhelming for him.
January 18th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
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The government wants the kids watching more TV so they can be better & more uniformly proganized.
July 5th, 2011 at 3:20 pm
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Regret that I haven’t had the opportunity to read your book. Might be that the answer to my question is already there. But I’m wondering, are you aware that in California, from the late 1890s to about 1916, it was illegal to give homework to anyone under 14 years of age?
September 18th, 2011 at 10:44 pm
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Homework, to me, is exceptionally pointless. I am a good student, and always finish my homework on time, but often I have to give up studying for an upcoming test in order to finish. I have other sports I am involved in, and because of practice, I often have to stay up very late in order to finish. Don’t colleges like it when a kid is well-rounded? Well, how am I supposed to be well rounded when I spend all of my time doing homework. MY grades are suffering due to the fact that I am up all night doing homework for other classes instead of studying. I do think some homework is okay…but homework on weekends? That’s just stupid.
October 16th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
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