I hope it didn’t feel like I was targetting you :). I’m just … generally horrified by the whole state of affairs. And particularly since all this homework is presumably sucking up valuable teacher time to mark it too.
I keep hearing of studies that adults efficiency at work goes down the longer hours they do a day, so it doesn’t at all surprise me to hear that a similar effect is at work in our kids’ schools.
First, I think measuring homework by “minutes” is insane. Kids (people, too) work at such tremendously different speeds, and the speed it takes to complete assignments vary so widely, that the measurement is useless. As a teacher, the sorts of things I assign to do at home are the ones that vary the most–the reason they don’t work well as class activities because there is such disparity that you can’t possibly keep the class together, and so the slower kids never get a chance to really dig in and practice.
Ideally, most homework should be “go home and master this skill. Here are a variety of tools you can use to do so.” Otherwise it turns into a coupon system. Kids see school as this bizarre arbtrary game where you have to turn in a certain quantity of papers with the right words on them. You get all this focus on “assignments”, as if “assignments” were the point. You get kids wanting to make up “assignments” weeks after the fact, because the piece of paper is all that matters. And between google and smartphones, getting the right words on the right paper is trivial. Teachers always think homework will “make” kids accomplish some primary task–that the paper will be evidence that this other cognitive task was finished. But students see the homework itself as the primary task, and are incredibly good at finding ways to accomplish it without touching the intended skill.
I would love, love, love to see elementary school homework designed around helping kids and parents develop a more productive attitude towards school as a whole. Spelling lists are a great example–you study in whatever way you like (but kids and parents need recommendations about effective ways) and you are done when you know the words. Math should be like this too–not “work X problems. Turn them in without knowing if you’ve learned anything, and I will grade them and tell you in a few days if you get it”.
I’m in high school, and we are working towards this. On one hand, we have a lot of homework, and we always will: we are one of the top magnet programs in the country and most of our kids will take (and pass) 10-20 AP exams by the time they graduate. We are covering basically high school + the first two years of college in 4 years. So we go fast, and a lot of this stuff they have to entirely teach to themselves, or at least practice to mastery themselves. So that’s got to be at home. But there are things that can really transform the attitude toward that homework to make it more flexible, less time consuming, and more effective. The key elements we are gradually spreading on our campus:[ul]
[li]No grades on homework. It’s assigned, it’s checked, it’s recorded, but in a recording category that’s 0%. There’s a lot of verbal back and forth about patterns here–a kid with good grades misses an assignment, it’s nothing. But regular missed assignments are noticed. [/li][li]Answers freely available. In the back of the book, posted early the next morning, whatever.[/li][li]Very short daily quizzes over the same skills, with, again, answers in class, so that they immediately know what they know.[/li][li]Targeted interventions for kids who are failing quizzes–in practice, this means we make them come before or after school and do their homework in front of us and we check it.[/li][li]For things that aren’t so skill based–like “read these chapters of a novel”, avoid the temptation to make the secondary assignment anything like “answer these questions”, because then they focus on that.[/li][li]Talk every day about the idea that mastering skills, knowledge, understanding is the point.[/li][/ul]
These have really, really helped. It’s still a process, and it doesn’t fit every type of thing in every class, but it’s better.
I don’t mind hw for my little one. There are skills that can really only be mastered by the majority of kids by practice (math, writing, reading). I don’t like that sometimes we get extra work and there really just isn’t time for it between dinner, bathing, regular hw, an afterschool activity. I think it’s VERY important for kids to have a bit of down time, too. Just play a video game, read a fun book, watch tv, play with toys. Play time is so important to social development and mental well-being.
What I wish most is that the assignments were given for a whole week. We generally get 2 pages a day of worksheets, but I’d rather get 8 pages a week with a “suggested” path. If I know we have a doctor’s appointment and a family dinner on Tuesday, we’d do an extra page on Monday and Wednesday so we could take the night off.
My son’s 1st grade teacher gives weekly homework. A couple of pages of math exercises, a few language based exercises (mostly writing specific words or crafting sentences with those words) for the week, with 10 minutes of reading every night.
I think the homework can be completed fairly easily in 30 minutes, including the reading time. For me, it’s more important that he gets some sense of responsibility, structure, and discipline in sitting down to get something done at home.
Math is one that I feel homework helps with a lot. You need practice, and I know I wouldn’t have done nearly as well in my math classes if I hadn’t done it over and over again.
Just because you can’t conceive of that much homework doesn’t mean it’s not common elsewhere. In high school I was doing 4-5 hours of homework nightly, and our school days were 8 hours long. Furthermore, I expect that many of the top high schools there (I went to high school in East Asia) had similar, if not even higher workloads. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but different cultures have differing ideas about what is a “normal” workload for children.