Stop Homework

Today’s guest blog­ger, Mary Sul­li­van, is a free­lancer writer and mother to two fifth graders and a sev­enth grader in sub­ur­ban Chicago. I tracked her down after she posted a Com­ment link­ing to her web­page, Too Much Home­work, and I asked her to write about what moti­vated her to post her own page.

Too Much Home­work
by Mary Sullivan

Like many par­ents here, I’m proud of our dis­trict and appre­ci­ate that teach­ers care and work hard. But in terms of home­work, there are issues with both vol­ume and con­sis­tency. Par­ent­ing twins has been reveal­ing over the years, as the amounts (not to men­tion types) of home­work they’ve received from dif­fer­ent teach­ers within the same grade has var­ied dra­mat­i­cally. Other par­ents of mul­ti­ples I know locally have said the same thing. Through the PTO we did some research last year with fam­i­lies and found the incon­sis­tency is sys­tem wide, espe­cially in about grades 4 and up. Part of this, of course, is that some stu­dents take much longer than oth­ers to do the same amount of work. But that can’t be the whole explanation.

I still don’t think many teach­ers know about Har­ris Cooper’s 10-minutes-per-grade-level rule, its basis in meta-analysis of 40 years’ worth of well-crafted home­work stud­ies, and the sci­ence behind mod­er­a­tion as the most effec­tive approach to home­work. I’m sure many par­ents don’t know, either, and feel con­fused and help­less when their kids are over­whelmed and miss­ing out on ade­quate sleep, exer­cise, read­ing for plea­sure and other essen­tial “nutri­ents” for devel­op­ing minds and bod­ies. Hop­ing to reach both par­ents and teach­ers, I wrote the Squidoo arti­cle based on our family’s expe­ri­ences and on what I’ve learned over the past sev­eral years about home­work – from The Case Against Home­work and other sources.

Some­thing else we learned through the PTO research is that a large per­cent­age of par­ents feel their kids should be spend­ing more time on “chores” and “help­ing others” – which to my mind are closely related. Both house­hold chores and service/volunteerism are “other directed” activ­i­ties, unlike some­thing like home­work, which requires much effort but is ulti­mately self-directed. (The only ben­e­fi­ciary is the stu­dent, through good grades, praise, etc.) I tried to touch on this in the Squidoo arti­cle through the box on “what kids could be doing if they had less home­work.” Life skills like tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity and act­ing as a con­tribut­ing mem­ber of a com­mu­nity need to start at home. With hours of home­work, kids have no time for chores, or par­ents take pity and just do things for them. As par­ents we need to run a “gut check” on all this and speak up when it doesn’t feel right. Kids should work hard, but in a *bal­anced* way that makes intu­itive sense.

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Be sure to visit Too Much Home­work.

Posted in category Moms (and Dads) on a Mission on October 21, 2009 at 8:14 am
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