Cursed By Students, Homework Finds Skepticism Among Researchers

By Dan Mauzy
Oct 5, 2011, 3:50 PM
38 Comments

The kids are back in school. Time to break open a fresh pack of pencils, dust off the graphing calculator, and pull out that dog-eared copy of Strunk and White, because here it comes: homework.

For students, it’s the true end to the long, joy-filled nights of summer. For parents and teachers, it’s a critical element of education.

But is it? Maybe not as much you might think.

A recent paper from a pair of education scholars from the University of Nevada and SUNY Binghamton found that homework increased math scores a bit, but made no difference in science, English and history.

That raises a pretty big question. If it’s not making much of a difference, should students really be asked to do it?

Guests:

Alfie Kohn, author, “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing”
Janine Bempechat, developmental psychologist and professor, Wheelock College; author, “Getting our Kids Back on Track: Educating Children for the Future”

Other stories from this show:

Kathy

Besides the points already made by Alfie Kohn, *if* there is any benefit to homework (questionable) then I believe it serves to exacerbate the achievement gap between children whose parents are available to help with homework and those who parents are not. AND it is a fiction, at least for the average young child, that a child can transition to and engage in the homework by herself, and often the homework assigned assumes parental involvement EVEN in classes where the teacher has said the homework is the child’s responsibility.
Han

What a ridiculous discussion. It’s ironic that the person arguing against homework benefited from the structure he gained from hours and hours of doing homework through his academic life. Homework provides structure, time management, improved memorization skills…you need practice otherwise whatever is taught in the class is never absorbed.

Mr. Kohn talks about how valuable time is lost because of kids doing homework?! Are you serious?! Lost from their Facebook time? Lost from running around with friends? Lost from sitting in front of the computer or TV? Pfff.

david

“…you need practice otherwise whatever is taught in the class is never absorbed.”

Do you bring home extra work from you job to help you absorb what you learned that day? This argument about practice ignores many studies that show that reinforcement learning only works within the framework of the memorization of facts and not in the development of critical thinking. Answering a question on a test based on rote memorization does not help comprehension, or the understanding of what was taught, it merely spits out robots who learn how to hold information in their short-term memories long enough to pass a test.

I did not have homework until high school, and only then homework was work that wasn’t completed in the classroom, never assigned. Students were given ample time to demonstrate mastery or seek guidance in the presence of a teacher which is what we pay them to do. I did just fine in college, both in undergraduate and graduate programs, and am a functioning member of society. I don’t feel my lack of homework put me at a disadvantage in any way or left me unable to manage my time, structure my life, or otherwise impair my memorization skills.

Jenn

yes I do – I often attend technical training sessions that may last 2- 5 days that require that I study after the class. I often bring home reading to do at home that I need to learn something new or refresh something I haven’t done in a while. And that’s with a 9 hour workday. Homework is necessary because kids simply do not have enough time in school.

target

Too bad your exceptional educational career failed to teach you proper grammar. Also, regarding the mention of your 9+ hour work day, how is that relevant?

65noname

perhaps your kids spend their free time sitting in front of a TV but other kids long for time to learn music, do sports, read, in other words, be kids.
wenhen

Maybe your children (if you are a parent) are not in after school sports/clubs. I have four kids. Four of the Five week days my kids have an activity (dance, soccer, swim, gymnastics) and soccer is on saturday. So 5 days a week we are busy with after school activities. I’m not complaining these are fun and add variety to my kids lives. They also enjoy these activities. But when we get home, have dinner, bath, homework…it’s very late.

Just some more irony for you. Do you work? You seemed to have found time to post on line and listen to the radio. Does that make you a bad worker. Just something to think about.

david

Ms. Bempechat’s closing comment about taking a stand against homework as a stance of pity was a low shot that betrayed her own sense of superiority and undercut her “authority” in the subject.

As a parent and a former middle school teacher I have to say that homework is the equivalent of adding a layer of middle management to help improve a badly functioning business. What is little discussesed is that often teachers are forced to give homework not only because it is mandated by state or local school boards, but also because curriculum development has ballooned to include content teaching within homework. Basically, forcing 90 minutes worth of content into every 45 minute class period. Rather than admit that they cannot possibly cover all that is required within a set school day, they issue proclamations that homework is necessary and required, and the kids feel the stress of realizing that they are on their own half the time.

I have an older daughter in fairly rigorous academic high school and at a recent PTO meeting the administration admitted, yes, they know that homework adds stress, and that kids deserve to have time to devote to extra-currcular activities, and that often kids are up until midnight trying to stay on top of things. They also admitted that kids return after graduation saying that high school was harder than anything they experienced when they went to colleges, including Ivy League schools. They didn’t present this as a matter of pride that homework made high school more difficult than college, they expressed regret, and yet they felt duty-bound to provide what PARENTS expected from them, i.e. that kids be given homework and kept busy not to make them better students but in the mistaken belief that there is a correlation between homework and test scores.

I think homework is a waste of valuable time and resources on all fronts.
Dennis Howard

I feel like withdrawing my donation to WBUR after the” homework” segment. I must confess I did scream at my car radio while stopped at a light. In a huge conceptual way I guess the conversation might have some merit but I’m not sure. There is no way to standardize the way a kid’s brain works consequently there is no way to establish a value on homework that works across an entire public school system. Fifty years ago there was little homework your guest Alfie Kohn said. I was in school then. Obviously the wrong one. Dennis

wenhen

You wanted to withdraw your donation because WBUR did a story you didn’t agree with? Really? Do you only want the station to report on stories that you agree with? How boring sorry.

Jen

My twin sister and I were miserable during high school because of the amount of homework assigned. We had approximately 6-7 hours of work to do each night, which we weren’t able to start until 7 or 8 after sports practice, dinner, etc. This amount was mandated in our school handbook, AT LEAST one hour of homework per night for each “major” class, with 6 major classes the typical number for a student. This meant we averaged 4-6 hours of sleep per night on week nights. As a result, we spent most of the week in a zombie state, frequently falling asleep during class. Every morning was a battle as our parents tried to drag us out of bed, and we physically fought with them to try and catch a few more minutes of sleep, swearing, punching, kicking, anything we could think of.

Despite the fact that my sister and I have gone on to be successful–we both graduated in the top 10% of our high school class, achieved great SAT scores, attended top tier colleges, and now have good jobs–we both believe that our high school experience was ruined by homework. The amount of work that we had in college never came close to the homework we had in high school, despite our high school teachers’ assertion that they were “preparing us” for the challenges of college. While I think there are some benefits of homework, we have to ask the question of what is reasonable. I don’t believe that 14-hour work days are a good thing for our children.
Teacher Chris in Cambridge

As a person who teachers 5th and 6th grader I believe that it is necessary for students to spend some time everyday – beyond the time spent in school – in order to meet the curriculum goals which have been set for us. Students may spend six hours in the school building but this does not but specialists, lunch & recess, homeroom, dismissal, and transition eat up almost 2.5 hours of that time every day and assemblies, performances, fire drills, eye exams, field trips, bus drills etc. take even more each week. Realistically we are lucky to have 3.5 hours a day for instruction in the academic subject minus whatever time we squeeze out for class meetings, special activities, social services projects, etc. to build community and address the social and emotional needs of our students.

I would be interested to read the studies that have indicated that homework does not improve performance. I think it is generally accepted that children (and all people) need time to practice new skills. Given the extensive (and not always unreasonable) demands of the frameworks, I don’t see how it would be possible for students in grades 5 and up to become proficient in all subjects without spending time practicing them outside of class.

Jen

When I went to school(elementary and HS) we had15minutes to eat. In grades 4-8, recess lasted 15-20minutes if we finished our chores. There was one 10mintue bathroom break when every student in class was expected to use the lavatory in the tiny time frame. Too bad if your class was assigned to morning lav visit and you had to pee an hour after lunch!
My 6year old son has similarly limited lunch and recess. Fortunately he can go to the bathroom more than one time a day. His After School Program gives very little time for play and only an hour for homework. Since he has to do homework after I pick him up at 5:45pm he may as well play more.
As for homework, his is not burdensome, but not always helpful either. Because he is tired by the end of the day I don’t think he gets much from the exercises.

Teacher Chris is Cambridge

I don’t agree that homework is necessarily “killing interest and excitement.” I teach fifth and sixth graders (looping) and regularly have students begin a first draft in class and then finish it at home. Often they come in very excited to share what they have written and get feedback from their peers. When I assign a chapter in a book we are reading in class often children come back having read way ahead of what was assigned. Often my math homework has required problems and extra “optional” ones which many of the students do- and do proudly. I can’t say that every student loves every assignment, but most of my students display plenty of interest and excitement in the class and the amount of homework that is often done “above and beyond” indicates to me that Mr. Cohn is wrong about this – at least when the homework is interesting and/or fun and/or meaningful to them.

Kristina S.

I think the lesson here is to identify quality homework assignments. It seems like you are finding assignments that continue to engage students outside of the classroom.
wenhen

You are lucky to have such great students. It’s Kohn.

Elizabeth

I have two main thoughts on this topic. First, I’m an engineer and I cannot imagine how I would have learned all the mathematical principles that I have without homework. It makes a lot of sense when the teacher is presenting it, walking you through it, but without doing it on my own through homework I wouldn’t have understood the mechanics and ultimately how to apply it. Perhaps that is just my learning style.

Alfie Kohn repeatedly came back to the point that learning is motivated through internal curiosity and the desire to learn and understand. In my opinion, the desire to learn is not common. Maybe it is because the current system doesn’t reward that type of behavior and therefore those characteristics aren’t as evident as they could be. But, does Alfie Kohn believe that every child has an intrinsic desire to learn, a natural curiosity about how things work? And on top of that about every subject? Even if a child does possess the desire to learn, it may only be towards a particular subject or interest. Does that mean that it is ok to not learn about the other subjects that don’t necessarily interest them?

Jeffhudson55

Elizabeth,
I can’t speak for Mr. Kohn, but I would argue that yes, every child has an intrinsic desire to learn; it is a capacity that can’t (despite school’s best efforts) be turned off. To support that claim I would point to volumes kids have learned quite naturally before they ever set foot in a school – language!! for example.

Bob

Cheating ruins the whole system, since homework cannot be monitered students merely learn to cheat well. Getting an A for cheating and getting an A for hard work are the same, so why try, everyone begins to cheat.
Susan

I, as a career educator and parent of two teenagers, am thrilled that this issue is finally coming to the fore. We are allowing standardized testing, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top steal the childhoods of an entire generation. Children are savvy, worldly, intelligent and naturally curious. Homework is destroying the qualities that would otherwise prepare them for success. I could not agree more with Alfie Kohn and can only hope that parents go to their school committees and demand that this issue is taken seriously. No elementary or middle school student should be doing anything other than reading, a few math problems and climbing trees. Where does the obesity epidemic come from?
Bob

I am a college student, expected to do 2 to 4 hours of studying per class, but I don’t. I am learning the concepts well and think homework would make me hate the subjects that I love listening to the professors about.
Lynn

Many of us that teach elementary school do not like giving homework, but the administration and most parents want homework sent home.

Here are the comments and questions I receive, year after year, from parents about homework:

- there’s too much homework
- there’s not enough homework
- the homework is too hard
- the homework is too easy
- I don’t understand the way you want this done (even though the child brought examples from
     class work home with the homework and every afternoon this week)
- we couldn’t do it because we were busy
- can you send another sheet home? we lost it – again
- why did you write “late” on my child’s homework?
- why won’t you send homework for my child to do on our Disney vacation?
- sorry we couldn’t do the homework over vacation; we were all too tired at night
- can you send home extra work so the tutor I pay can work with my child?
- why did you write a “check minus” on my child’s paper just because he didn’t write his name?
- I want my child to do bonus work – can you send a packet of work home?
- I want worksheets sent for homework; I don’t want to play a math game or read with my child
- my child says she/he “never did this” in class
- why do you correct homework?
- why don’t you correct all the homework?
- can you put my child’s homework in her backpack for her; she keeps forgetting to bring it home
- etc. . . . .

Here’s what I think homework should be:

How about sharing a book together and discussing it with your child EVERY EVENING after dinner and on weekends.   You can both read aloud, or you can read a challenging book of interest to your child that they may not be ready to read on their own but they’re interested or excited about it. Cuddle up on the couch and have several library books to choose from.  Take a picture walk, or read the table of contents. Ask your child to make some predictions about what will be in the book just from reading the title, the synopsis on the back, and looking at the pictures.   As you read together, ask them to make predictions about what will happen next; ask them what their favorite part or character is and why; ask them if they would’ve made the same choices as the character in their book and why, and whether or not that would change the outcome; ask them to make a connection to another book by the same author, or another book on the same topic, or something that they’ve experienced; etc. Share your thoughts and ideas, too!   This should be a relaxing and enjoyable discussion experience, not a game of 20 questions that all have a yes or no answer.    Follow-up with a plan: let’s rent the movie version and see which we like better and talk about why; let’s get another book by this author/on this topic; let’s go online together and see if we can find out more about this topic; let’s try that water experiment and see if our results are the same or different; let’s start a book group with a couple of your friends and their parents – we could meet once a month; let’s go outside and see if we can find an anthill like the one in the book; let’s pick a fictional book about a topic or time period and then get some non-fiction books about the same topic or time period; etc.

If you want to do “math” at home, find some authentic things to do with your child. Maybe you measure something – wood, cloth, the floor – together, so you can order materials and rebuild or replace or sew something.  Discuss the tools you’ll use and why a tape measure works well with a large surface/area, and a ruler is easier for other jobs. Cook together and use liquid and solid measurement tools and talk about what kind of measuring tools are the most helpful to use with different materials, i.e., liquids or solids.   Count coins, then add and subtract different amounts; teach them how to make change and how to determine whether they have enough cash to purchase something; empty your pockets/coin purse each night and ask your child to tell you the value of the coins – how much money do I have today?  what can I buy with that? how much more do I need to buy ____?     Estimate and see how close you come – about how many m&m’s are in the narrow cup? how many in the wide bowl? are there more in the bowl? why do you think that? let’s count some and then we’ll stop half way and see if we want to change our prediction and talk about why.   Have fun skip counting: 2,4,6,8, – can you skip count by 20? 20,40,60,80   200? 200,400,600 etc. -   can you go higher? 2,000 .. . . how are counting by those numbers the same/different? what do you need to know?  what do you notice about all the numbers you land on? can you start on 3 and count by 2 -   3, 5, 7, 9, 11, what do you notice about those numbers? what number comes next?   let’s try 3′s – 3,6,9,12, .. . . .    I need to make/buy cupcakes for your Valentine party, can you help me figure out how many we’ll need to make? 6 kids plus you, and we want 2 cupcakes for each person – how many do we need to make altogether? what if they come in boxes of 6? how many boxes will we need? will we have any left over?

It’s endless!!!!    Really, doesn’t this sound much more interesting and fun than struggling over a boring math worksheet or drilling spelling words with a tired child??

a teacher

target

What is the point of you listing parents’ comments here? None of that is relevant to the topic, especially where you state that they comment to you: “I don’t understand the way you want this done (even though the child brought examples from class work home with the homework and every afternoon this week)” It seems as though you simply want to complain about your students’ parents.

Teach825

Let’s pay close attention here. The “education scholars” that published the paper are actually both economics professors. This hardly qualifies them as education scholars. The paper is also full of conjecture (I learned that word doing my HOMEWORK) rather than fact. Let’s also realize that this conversation globalizes an idea that was only aimed at elementary school students who had homework overloads, and while we’re at it realize that one can spin any ONE study to say anything that they want. This was not a randomized controlled study (I learned that idea doing HOMEWORK in college) and its results are highly subjective.

This is what happens when we spout off our own misgivings about the educational system without actually having read the paper in question with an inkling about proper scientific study.

wenhen

Do you have children? I have four kids in grade 1,2 4,7. I am also a high school biology teacher.
I give homework because that is what our district asks/tells us to do. Of coarse I try to assign
active reading and other “valuable” homework.
When kids have a teacher that is “hard” it is because he/she gives so much homework. But are they leaning?
Are they problem solving?
My younger kids are assigned what looks/feels like busy work. I honestly feel badly for the older kids. They take 5-7 subjects and often receive homework in all subjects. Yes, we all had to suck it up in college (yes in college, not high school) but we didn’t take 5-7 classes in one day.
Try to take your own class some. Have someone video tape your class, or sit in on other teachers for the day. You’ll be sadly surprised at how boring and difficult it is to sit in a class for 55 minutes.

target

“of course” not “of coarse” ………. how ’bout some spelling homework wenhen?

grammir hippy

hey target, wenhen also typo’d “learning” as “leaning”

howdya miss that one?

didn’cha do your homework? or was it usless forya?

go back to the herd now like a good lamb

Kristina S.

We also have to consider the benefit that homework shows/trains students how to schedule their own time to learn the material. This is a necessary habit for many professions. We don’t want kids to grow up resenting the time required outside of directly paid hours to developed professionally (reading article and books, marketing, attending conferences, some research, publishing, making presentations are common in my profession to be done on my personal time).

http://profiles.google.com/tcnoble Tim Noble

In that case, maybe homework should be limited to mathematics problem sets and reading. I feel that I always learned quite a bit by reading textbooks in college, especially in biology (which happens to largely focus on accumulation of knowledge). I think that this article may play down the importance of assigned readings. There is also the problem of developing written literacy in a way which will allow students to effectively communicate. These activities may not be cost effective in terms of “raising test scores”, but surely the practice of written communication will benefit.

pajji

Alfie Kohn… No homework… more time to text friends and play video games! This guy has a personal problem with kids finding discipline to research, create and study for tests at home.

david

i like how the immediate assumption about kids is that they cannot be trusted to discipline themselves unless they have homework. here’s a surprise for everyone (and especially those without teens in the house): they text friends, goof off on facebook, and play video games even when they have homework to do! unless a parent is at home from the moment they get out of school, standing over them and monitoring their every second, kids are following the time-honored tradition of getting around doing their homework.

if you do not or cannot trust kids to “behave” without homework perhaps we should instead see a movement toward a (much) longer school day.

kids aren’t born hating school, we TEACH them to hate school and as a result all education. talk to kids about what they would do with extra time and you will be surprised by how few of them say they wish they had more time for the internet.

camillenapierbernstein

Why not explore what KIND of homework is assigned? Certainly the value varies. I do not have enough time in the school day (as h.s. English teacher) for students to complete reading AND receive direct instruction AND practice skills with a partner AND practice skills independently AND discuss texts AND ask questions….

I promise my students they won’t receive busywork, and the homework is almost always used the next day in class, not just “gone over.” For example, recently:
Day 1: My students learn how to paraphrase through direct instruction in class
- They practice it with a partner using a short article on procrastination they read the night before
- We use a document camera to analyze together several of their attempts
HW: They apply the lessons by practicing the skill using a chapter from their book they read a week before

Day 2: The next day we learn direct quotation skills
- They use these paraphrases from HW to incorporate quotations
HW: independent practice on quotation…

Camille

Songer48

Perhaps the KIND of homework would matter. But notice that Kohn is not suggesting a ban on all homework. He argues that when students are engaged in learning that is meaningful to them, they will want to know more. Yet, one of the biggest sins we commit in schools is that we bore students to distraction. This is not a new phenomenon. Homework is, perhaps, a symptom of a larger problem that allows schooling to be something students have to get through rather than the opportunity to learn. If school were more interesting, the concept of homework would disappear. Teachers wouldn’t need to assign it because students would be engaged in real learning. Can this happen? Of course. But when much of schooling focuses on preparation for a standardized test, it will never foster a love of learning in the very place where that is supposed to happen. School.

Anonymous

Any significant volume of homework, especially prior to high school DOES interfere immensely with “the work of home”. If you don’t have a child in school TODAY, then you are not really in a position to chime in. It’s different now, trust me. And I mean both the modern demands of homework and the mechanics of running a family. Not every family is the Cleavers. Not everyone parent/caregiver works from 9 to 5 and can sit by the fireplace in their study and guide their child through school work that’s sent home. Not to mention that households are expected to have a computer and printer at home, try filling that IT need for multiple kids.

By “work of the home”, there are many things that I think my kids aren’t doing enough of, because of the little time left in the day. Thanks to homework, if something has to go undone in favor of 1-2hrs worth of homework, it’s usually things such as:
• getting together with friends (to do something other than homework)
• doing chores around the house
• reading a book of their own choosing
• playing a game as a family
• taking your kids to the grocery market / shopping – seriously, I learned a ton doing this growing up
• working on a home improvement project
• yard work, etc.

These types of out-of-school activities also teach personal responsibility and encourage learning, but are severely encroached upon when homework piles up. Especially for early grade kids.

The closing remark by Ms. Bempechat is typical, deplorable and myopically ‘academic’. Saying I want less homework for my children because I feel ‘sorry’ for them…that’s all you’ve got, really? For one, I disagree, and secondly that is exactly the kind of jerky, weightless, and authoritarian excuse that makes parents and kids so cynical about the value of homework.

Perhaps parents and caretakers need an #OccupySchool movement. Enter the classroom and ask your kid to do a chore during class. This sharing of time seems logical if you are pro-homework. I’m sure that teachers could find creative ways to allow for the “work of home” to be done during school hours. I just think that the teachers would be reluctant to allow it, because they would feel ‘sorry’ for kids who have to do chores. Pity, indeed…

target

weird

Songer48

As an academic, I am embarrassed for the developmental psychologist.�
She apparently never did her homework on the difference between
correlation and causation. And, I find her argument that we have to
prepare children for boring tasks by assigning them homework at best
alarming. I sat with a 14 year old last night as he did his
mind-numbingly boring geography homework. This could not have been
preparation for anything other than trivial pursuit. It certainly was
not anything that resembled quality family time. Nor was it anything
that resembled critical thinking that would benefit future academic
training or knowledge.
Ninthgrader

Last
year in eighth grade, I went to an alternative school where we never had
homework. I learned everything I would have learned without the back
splintering weight of textbooks. Also I had much more time to learn extra
curricular activities including teaching myself the drums, practicing guitar,
doing chores, spending time with friends and family without the weight of pointless
paper packets.

I’m
now in ninth grade and just tomorrow I have to study for two tests and prepare for
three essays. If they give us homework we can already do, what is the
point? If they give us homework
that is challenging, we need the teacher.�
So. I am not smiling, and I am certainly not learning anything. To add insult to injury, it is almost 9:30,
past my bed time.
http://twitter.com/joe_bower Joe Bower

I contacted Alfie Kohn and asked him to respond to the concluding words of Bempechat. If you’re interested, here it is.

http://www.joebower.org/2011/10/homeworks-misinformation-campaign.html

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UNDERWRITING

Why Have Kids?

Cursed By Students, Homework Finds Skepticism Among Researchers