It can foster lasting, lifelong skills of time management, critical thinking, and reflection. Meaningful homework provides a framework for out-of-school learning intended to deepen and enforce classroom lessons. Still, I’m not one to advocate for its demise. We took the good assignments with the bad, and often lamented during the high school years how much time was spent - to the detriment of sleep and socialization - on homework.

Others, like the numerous word searches favored by one eighth-grade science teacher, did little beyond creating 45 minutes of nightly frustration. I fondly recall a third-grade project to create a diorama of the Museum of Science’s Theater of Electricity, reimagined with a styrofoam ball, Model Magic, and paper clips turned into “electric” zigzags. Some of the more creative ones held not only their attention, but mine. He gradually assigned less and less before eliminating it entirely - and his students were not only still academically successful but more interested in what he was teaching than those who had to slog through textbooks or fill out worksheets at night.įor the last two decades, I’ve survived thousands of my children’s homework assignments. One high school teacher told me he started his career assigning lots of homework because he wasn’t very good at teaching yet. That’s why many teachers, and some whole schools, don’t give any - and their students do just fine. It’s not just a question of how much homework, or even what kind.

Moreover, shouldn’t families, rather than schools, decide what happens when kids are home? And if we also want children to develop socially, physically, artistically, and emotionally, aren’t six hours of academics a day enough? I’d describe them as urban myths except that people in the suburbs also fall for them.ĭoes homework offer parents insights into what, or how, their kids are doing in school? The point is that there are better ways to achieve that goal without burdening the kids. Having spent years combing the literature, I’ve been unable to find a shred of evidence for these claims. In desperation, homework proponents may invoke non-academic benefits, asserting that it promotes independence, builds self-discipline, or teaches good work habits.

Schools without homework