Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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The politics of homework
In his online Class Struggle column this week, Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews takes on two recent books that bemoan what they describe as the escalating homework load piled onto American kids in recent years.
But Mathews counters with a strong opposing view, using the same statistics cited by the authors to show that while homework is up, to demonstrate time kids spend on it is still small compared to the time they spend on other activities, most notably playing video games or watching T.V.
I’m inclined to side with Mathews on this issue.
I think the homework crush possibly is a problem in some high end school districts, but for many schools, expectations for class preparedness (which can only be achieved through at least some review and independent work at home) are perhaps not high enough.
But I’ll make two points that lean toward the anti-homework side:
—Good homework is never bad, but bad homework is a waste of time. I like homework that truly adds to learning — extra reading on the subject, hands on challenges to put concepts learned into action, etc. But sometimes teachers assign wasteful busy work. I’m thinking in particular of photocopied worksheets from dubious lessons in subpar textbooks or other low quality sources. I see these sometimes covering schools and kids usually hate them. But good homework? I’m all for it.
—Kids should be taught effective study skills. In fairness, many kids do know what they need to do to be successful and just choose not to do it. That is an infuriating problem for teachers and I don’t have a solution. But sometimes kids who are decent students really don’t know the sorts of work they should be doing on their own that could make them into excellent students. But rarely are students actually taught study skills. And it’s often the self-guided exploration of a subject that can turn a kid on to a topic.
—At times, some coordination among teachers could be helpful I’m thinking of high schoolers now, who sometimes report that their English teacher took an extra two weeks talking about Hemmingway and now is rushing to cover Fitzgerald, leaving just two weeks for them to turn in a long paper on Fitzgerald instead of the planned three weeks. Meanwhile, math and science teachers have the big semester exams planned for the same week the paper is due. Sometimes teachers forget that there is a world out there the kids live in besides their class. Inevitably, homework can really pile up for kids at certain times of the year. If teachers communicated better with each other, perhaps they could coordinate in a way that could avoid such a crush.
What’s your take on homework? Is there too much or too little of it?
(Image credit: Salon.com)
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Mary
November 25, 2006 8:44 PM | Link to this
What you say is true, Terri. That is why schools need to come up with better ways to teach and sort students of varying abilities and backgrounds. Sorting students simply by ages does not work. Some students are bored out of their gourd into low achievement.By Terri
November 24, 2006 5:51 PM | Link to this
One person’s busy work is another person’s practice for fluency.By Oldprof
November 22, 2006 2:31 PM | Link to this
The Sept. 6 issue of Education Week has a back-page commentary by Alfie Kohn about this very issue. He notes that some students (the good ones) don’t need much homework, and the other students can’t benefit from it. He reports that no research clearly shows a connection between lots of homework and lots of academic progress. Indeed, many students are turned off by all that busywork—and didn’t we see that study, just recently, that reported one of the leading causes of dropping out was that students were bored to tears? Now, I can see certain types of homework as appropriate: reading novels and newspapers, preparing research, practicing an instrument. But the notion that kids who put in a six-hour day need an extra two to four hours of study per night—particularly in early grades—is counterproductive. We continue to measure education by time rather than achievement; students should be given instruction and assignments until they’ve mastered an objective, and then they should be free to move on to the next objective; having learned to add accurately, there’s zero benefit to requiring page after page of standard addition.By Mary
November 22, 2006 2:24 PM | Link to this
I agree there can be a problem with “busy work”. From my perspective, that is what drives the vast majority of grades and GPA. The “busy work” can be a real big headache for parents of gifted students, particularly boys and some girls who will outright rebel and refuse to do it. That is why so many bright students fall into the trap of underachievement, grades slip because of so many incompleted assignments, and parents start to pull out their own hair. The same student will usually ace any test on the subject. I think homework is no substitute for the lack of a challenging curriculum.