Stop Homework

Last week, I posted an arti­cle about how teenagers need more down­time, which was writ­ten by Dr. Daniel Got­tlieb, a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist, fam­ily ther­a­pist, and author of, among other things, Let­ters to Sam: A Grandfather’s Lessons on Love, Loss, and the Gifts of Life. On Mon­day of this week, he wrote a follow-up piece, again orig­i­nally pub­lished in the Philadel­phia Inquirer.

Inside Out | Would less home­work lead to more learn­ing?
By Dan Gottlieb

My last col­umn was about too much home­work and what to do about it. I advised ado­les­cents to form com­mit­tees of stu­dents and par­ents to exam­ine home­work prac­tices at their schools. I sug­gested they con­sult sev­eral recent books that argue that exces­sive home­work does lit­tle good and a great deal of harm. I sup­ported the posi­tion taken by many edu­ca­tors that home­work should total no more than 10 min­utes a night mul­ti­plied by grade level (90 min­utes in ninth grade, for exam­ple). And I rec­om­mended that the newly formed com­mit­tees meet with admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers to make their case.

Of course, I received dozens of e-mails. Most were from par­ents like Ginny DeLong, who said that when her daugh­ter was in 10th grade, her Eng­lish teacher would assign two hours of home­work a night just for her class (one of six). When she com­plained, it turned out the school did have a home­work pol­icy — but no one was aware of it.

Jim O’Brien wrote that his ado­les­cent daugh­ter is “buried under home­work; every night, every week­end and most hol­i­days.” I also heard from a friend whose child is in kinder­garten; he is already hear­ing about exces­sive home­work require­ments in first and sec­ond grade!

Edu­ca­tors responded as well. A mid­dle school math teacher from Glouces­ter County said she knew about the aca­d­e­mic research and had cut way back on her home­work assign­ments this year. The result? More stu­dents are com­plet­ing home­work and their over­all under­stand­ing of the sub­ject mat­ter has increased, she wrote, “because the stu­dents feel the work is more manageable.”

I heard from stu­dents like the high school senior who feels like he spends more time at school than at home, where he says he sleeps about six hours a night. He was not opti­mistic, and believes there is great resis­tance to change in edu­ca­tion. Per­haps voices such as his have not been heard. Sara Ben­nett, coau­thor of the recently released The Case Against Home­work, e-mailed me to under­score the impor­tance of includ­ing stu­dents in the dia­logue about homework.

Not every­body agreed. David Scol­nick, a father of three, thought I was all wrong. He sug­gested that much of the prob­lem is children’s atti­tudes and approaches to home­work, and that effi­cient chil­dren spend less time. Even three to four hours of home­work a night, he said, would leave a “cou­ple of hours for instant messaging.”

David did find com­mon ground with many par­ents and teach­ers who feel the cul­prit is over­sched­ul­ing. Cer­tainly that is the big­ger prob­lem. But a let­ter from a young woman in a Philadel­phia pri­vate school sug­gests we should be look­ing in another direction.

She began by say­ing she aver­ages four to five hours of home­work a night, and went on:

“I am con­tin­u­ally endur­ing stress and sleep­less nights, but I know it is for the good of my future. High schools are con­cerned about one thing: col­lege. And they feel it is their duty to help their stu­dents be #1. This leads to many of the sleep­less nights I have expe­ri­enced, and I see no end in sight. But I still believe that in the future this lifestyle may help me.”

The pres­sure to achieve is often about get­ting into the best col­lege. Once there, the pres­sure con­tin­ues. After grad­u­a­tion, it often gets even more intense. Why? It’s all in the pur­suit of secu­rity — and happiness!

The young lady in pri­vate school believes that endur­ing stress today will help her achieve secu­rity tomor­row. Yet we know that con­tin­ued expo­sure to stress will not boost resilience, and can actu­ally cre­ate depres­sion and com­pro­mise the immune sys­tem. We also know that, above the poverty level, there is no rela­tion­ship between money and happiness.

Sure, life’s chal­lenges are much big­ger than stress caused by too much home­work. But if ado­les­cents can be empow­ered to solve this one prob­lem, maybe that new­found strength will help them bet­ter care for them­selves and the larger world in the future. After all, isn’t that what we really want to get out of an education?

Posted in category Guest Bloggers, Resources on November 29, 2006 at 10:20 am
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