Rethinking
Homework
By Alfie Kohn
After spending
most of the day in school, children are typically given additional assignments
to be completed at home. This is a rather curious fact when you stop to
think about it, but not as curious as the fact that few people ever stop to
think about it.
It becomes even
more curious, for that matter, in light of three other facts:
1. The
negative effects of homework are well known. They include children’s frustration and exhaustion,
lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest in
learning. Many parents lament the impact of homework on their
relationship with their children; they may also resent having to play the role
of enforcer and worry that they will be criticized either for not being
involved enough with the homework or for becoming too involved.
2. The
positive effects of homework are largely mythical. In preparation for a book on the topic, I’ve
spent a lot of time sifting through the research. The results are nothing
short of stunning. For starters, there is absolutely no evidence of any
academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school.
For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between
whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure
of achievement. At the high school level, the correlation is weak and
tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are
applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that
homework builds character or teaches good study habits.
3. More
homework is being piled on children despite the absence of its value. Over the last quarter-century the
burden has increased most for the youngest children, for whom the evidence of
positive effects isn’t just dubious; it’s nonexistent.
It’s not as
though most teachers decide now and then that a certain lesson really ought to
continue after school is over because meaningful learning is so likely to
result from such an assignment that it warrants the intrusion on family time.
Homework in most schools isn’t limited to those occasions when it
seems appropriate and important. Rather, the point of departure seems to
be: “We’ve decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every
night (or several times a week). Later on we’ll figure out what to make
them do.”
I’ve heard from
countless people across the country about the frustration they feel over
homework. Parents who watch a torrent of busywork spill out of their
children’s backpacks wish they could help teachers understand how the cons
overwhelmingly outweigh the pros. And teachers who have long harbored
doubts about the value of homework feel pressured by those parents who
mistakenly believe that a lack of afterschool assignments reflects an
insufficient commitment to academic achievement. Such parents seem to
reason that as long as their kids have lots of stuff to do every night, never
mind what it is, then learning must be taking place.
What parents and teachers
need is support from administrators who are willing to challenge the
conventional wisdom. They need principals who question the slogans that
pass for arguments: that homework creates a link between school and
family (as if there weren’t more constructive ways to make that connection!),
or that it “reinforces” what students were taught in class (a word that denotes
the repetition of rote behaviors, not the development of understanding), or
that it teaches children self-discipline and responsibility (a claim for which
absolutely no evidence exists).
Above all,
principals need to help their faculties see that the most important criterion
for judging decisions about homework (or other policies, for that matter) is
the impact they’re likely to have on students’ attitudes about
what they’re doing. “Most of what homework is doing is driving kids away from
learning,” says education professor Harvey Daniels. Let’s face it:
Most children dread homework, or at best see it as something to be gotten
through. Thus, even if it did provide other benefits, they would have to
be weighed against its likely effect on kids’ love of learning.
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