September 18th, 2006 by Atomictumor
I bumped across this in my web wanderings today, which appears to be written by one of those weird assed firebrand political types, but brings up a topic that my subconscious has been mulling over recently.
Homework in elementary schools.
Apparently, according to the book reviews cited in Slate, Japanese schools are slowing down on the amount of homework assigned to the kids, while American schools (as I, and about anyone with a kid these days have learned) are assigning more and more. The thinking appears to be that nobody can find any kind of correlation between doing this homework and learning anything.
This has been a thought that I have long agreed with, in my own slack way. When MastaG was coming home with homework in the 2nd grade, it was understood that it was essentially homework for me and GAC. That we were to sit down with him, walk his protesting mind through the reams of mathematics, or the coloring busy work, or whatever, and somehow a benefit would drop in somewhere.
The benefit seems to be that ol’ MastaG shares my dislike for homework, tho I fail to see how useful that is.
We were talking at Willowbrooks recent open house with his language teacher regarding the boy, and she says she doesn’t assign homework for that same reason, that she’s seen all the studies and research, and none of it backs up the idea that a kid in elementary school gets anything but the runaround from doing homework. She also said that what a kid really needs, in these days of constant motion and stimulation, is some mental downtime, and assigning a kid an hour of homework a night actually takes away from this stuff.
So, rock on, Japan. On top of robots, and what has been generally considered to be one of the finer education systems in the civilized world, you agree with me on homework.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Evidently I totally missed the point here. Good think Jon didn’t
September 18th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Back to the subject, though: I agree that homework is at best a waste of time and at worst bad for the child. I know we have very little time with the kids during the school year after their homework is done, and the only thing I can tell they get out of it is a dislike for work and a skill for procrastination. And for what?
September 18th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
My opinion on homework:
http://katieallisongranju.blogspot.com/2006/09/case-against-homework.html
September 18th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Katie, thats dead on. Luckily, it seems that our feelings toward the nasty stuff is picking up some credence.
Its the height of ignorance to defend something simply because “thats the way it aways was”, but that appears to be teh defense for homework.
September 18th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
I’m a product of European public school system, so I’ve got a little different take on the importance and the benefits of homework. Just recently, my daughter came home with a failed social studies test, and upon inquiring about the lack of performance, I was advised that in her class, there is no homework, nobody takes notes and the teacher doesn’t let students take home the text book to study before a test. Apparently, kids are expected to grasp and memorize the information on the spot with no benefit of practice and repetition — there seems to be no provision for success by hard work (i.e. studying until you learn).
September 18th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
This is not an either-or thing. It’s not homework vs. laziness/academic mediocrity.
I don’t take my work home every night and neither should my kid.
September 18th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Stormare, sounds like you may want to inquire as to the teaching methods of this social studies class, because it sounds like the teacher is interested in either some kinda weird sociological experiment, or failing you daughter. I wonder if there couldn’t be more to it than that.
September 18th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Yeah… Stormare that doesn’t sound quiet right. Who did you inquire of? Maybe it’s true, but I’d check with the teacher or the principle. Doesn’t make sense and really sounds like a bad excuse. Why wouldn’t they allow taking the book home? Budget problems? What grade is she in? Its really the responsiblity of the student once they reach a level of schooling like highschool to determine if they should be taking notes.
September 18th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
She’s in the 4th grade, but the test included some pretty heavy trivia that I wouldn’t expect a 10-year-old to remember without notes or re-reading the book before the test. This is an elementary school in North Knox County. I sent a note to the teacher and I’ll know more tonight. My daughter firmly shares Jonathan Hickman’s sentiment about homework, so I wouldn’t put it past her to have exercised some artistic license in her account.
September 18th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
While at work, I hear anecdotal references to the heavy amounts of homework students take home. These are parent’s comments, as well. I’ve also witnessed the crazy after school schedules that elementary age kids are subjected to. I wonder if the two aren’t somehow related? There seems to be this notion that the more you do of something the better you’ll get at it.
I think homework ought be approached in an age appropriate manner. I don’t think homework should be done away w/ altogether, just approached w/ moderation.
September 18th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I agree with you, Bos, about the moderation.
If kids never have homework, they’ll find it very hard to be able to priorize projects, studying and homework in high school and college.
So far, MastaG hasn’t brought home ridiculous amounts of homework at one time. I’ve ocassionally been concerned about the difficulty of his homework, though. And that he likes to wait till the last minute to tell me about the project he needs to turn in tomorrow.
September 18th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
More on the homework topic here:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12024
The money graf:
“When it succeeds, homework is, in those rare instances, the poster-child example of an educational policy that overwhelmingly advantages rich students with well-educated parents. This shouldn’t come as a shock, since homework, as its name implies, is usually done in the home. That is where differences in class, education, and family structure are starkest. As Richard Rothstein details in Class and Schools, those differences are not slight: Disadvantaged parents are less likely to help their children and, when they do, their help is likely to be less valuable. Affluent children are likely to have rooms or workspaces of their own, while many underprivileged students must carve out a nook in more crowded housing. And when they do so, they aren’t apt to have computers or reference books on hand to help.”
September 18th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Good reference, Joel.
I tend to fall in the “moderation” camp: there are certain circumstances in which homework is beneficial, particularly when reinforcing a new concept, or memorizing something that doesn’ t come naturally. Memorizing addition and subtraction facts or copying spelling words a reasonable number of times are examples of things that can be learned more quickly when practiced at home.
The flip side of that, of course, is that forcing a child to repeat and repeat a concept that they’ve already mastered is the pinnacle of drudgery, and teaches the child to hate homework, hate the subject, and hate school in general — no matter how educated or affluent the parents.
The best homework in elementary school is in small doses, but something that is reasonably challenging. Projects should not be assigned unless an e-mail or note is sent to the parents at least a week in advance, with a response required to ensure that the notice was received. I, too, have made too many trips to Wal-Mart after dark because someone needed [posterboard, markers, a t-shirt, fill in the blank] for a project due the next morning.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Well, daughter came home and brought back a folder of notes from Social Studies, which had mysteriously materialized overnight. However, the notes didn’t cover half the subject matter in the test. So my conclusion is that there are two underlying problems. First is is that _she was never taught how to study_. She has no clue about taking notes, asking questions or studying for a test. Second, and the most important thing, is that without homework, there’s no way for us to timely figure out if she’s learning what she’s supposed to be learning. I’m in agreement with Netmom. I wouldn’t want my daughter to drudge hours to an end doing homework, but if she’s struggling, I want to know about it _before_ the test.
September 19th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Parental envolvment is key to a child’s success in school. That point comes across in both Stomare (10:06a) and Joel’s comments. The article that Joel linked isn’t very hopeful regarding quick fixes, like adjusting the amounts of homework dished out.
I think there are ways to monitor a students progress in the classroom besides homework. These other means may be much better than homework, too. Parent/teacher conferences is one traditional way. My kid’s teachers send home class work on a regular basis in a simple folder. One of the pre-school teachers my son had kept a journal for each student that went home regularly in his backpack.