My kids come home with a lot of homework each night. Mainly the 10th grader (who is in all Honors classes). It seems that some teachers intentionally use homework as a tool to
supplement for what was supposed to be learned as a collective class in school as a result of poor utilization of class time.
I am not responsible for those teachers who cannot organize themselves and delegate their time effectively enough so that the bulk of the work is done in the classroom.
I do not enjoy coming home from a long day at the office and have to listen to my 10th grader gripe about all the work he has. Often he has several hours of homework. To help him I have to review the entire assignement because I can’t remember the Chemical Table or the Periodical Table, etc… I can not help him in his AP Honors Math…I’m lucky I can add and subtract!
With all this work, when does that leave him free time to socialize and unwind? He arrives home at 4-4:30, has a snack, does house chores and then settles down to do homework. Before you know it dinner time is here, back to homework and it is now 8 or 9:00. He already spent 8 hours in school.
Homework should be reduced to a 1 hour limit or abolished.
When I talk to the teachers about this they say it is “expected” that Honor students work harder then those in “general” classes.
The potential negative effects of homework as I see it are:
satiation – requiring kids to devote too much time to a subject–
which may cause them to lose interest in academic material
increased emotional fatigue
denial of access to leisure time
I am not a teacher. I do not have the ability to teach my son in a
format which he is accustomed to which means he may be receiving instruction with confusing technique.
I totally agree. Your attitude is exactly what mine was when I was in high school. I hated having to do so much homework when I had just been in school for 8 hours.
Now that I’m in university, my homework now is… useful. I could not get all I’m doing just from attending classes.
And while a nice solution sounds like having no homework in high school and homework at university, it would make the transition hell.
Sometimes the work is new and sometimes it is a review.
I often have to review a lot of material so I can help him with his work. It has been a long time since I have been in school & heck if I can remember some of this stuff.
An hour a night sounds about right to me, too. hey, my kid is 12, 2 or 3 hours of homework leaves him very little time for socializing after meals and cleanup are taken into account. Are we raising human beings here, or workbots?
In Ontario, there are specific time guidelines for homework. A grade 1 student should have about 20 minutes of homework each night. A grade 12 student should have around 2 hours or so, or more depending on projects and such.
It’s good preparation for university, or college, or whatever.
I know I learned a lot of good study skills through having homework. 1 hour of homework isn’t a LOT, all told. If the issue is with NEW material, then take it up with the teacher. Usually homework reinforces what’s been taught OR prepares for the upcoming class.
Again, the preparation homework is good preparation (!) for university life.
My 12 year old who just entered middle school (grade 7) does not get homework. She got an average of half an hour a day of homework in the previous two grades. Apparently there’s been some new thinking by the education authorities that at this stage its best to use class time for all the educational needs.
Some teachers give too much homework, some don’t give any. Some kids spend hours working at home, some don’t. Some kids need to spend several hours on homework, some don’t.
There’s no easy answer. But I do know that Honors and AP require more of students than regular classes. They’re also worth more in many ways when the students are college bound. To my mind, it comes down to how much the student and parent value the advanced classes.
I don’t know of many people who can excel on one hour of work per night. I’m thinking high school here - younger kids definitely shouldn’t be overloaded, but they should have to do something to reinforce the day’s lessons.
As long as the “Honors” classes go into more detail, I’m ok with the idea of more work. I’ve spoken with people (my husband among them) who were in or considered taking “Honors” classes in this school system. All the content of the classes consisted of, was a repitition of the non-Honors classes, with no extra lessons thrown in, but MUCH more work! What a sham!
I’m not sure where I stand on this. In DC Public schools, KINDERGARTENERS get about 30 minutes of homework several times a week. On the one hand, it seems acceptible to my son, and mostly review from the day’s work. On the other hand, if I had a child with even a slight learning disability, I this this would be a serious burden and would be very frustrating for a 5-year-old - to the point where it might severly affect his/her self-esteem in school.
I don’t entirely agree with this. If a student graduates high school and can’t learn new material on their own, then I don’t think the high school did a very good job. More important than any facts or whatever that are covered in the class, the student should learn how to think and learn on their own.
That said, I agree that too much homework is a bad thing.
When I was in HS, lo those 6 years ago, I had about a half-hour of homework per class per night. That’s about 3 hours total. If I had only an hour of homework, I would have kissed the ground. I also would have been totally unprepared for the classes the next day. YMMV, of course.
In HS, with honors and AP classes, it wasn’t at all unusual for me to have 4-5 hours a night of homework, plus more on the weekends or if a big project was about to be due. Throw in a part-time job or two, and a couple of extracurricular music groups, and I didn’t have a lot of down time. Yeah, I was tired a lot, but on the bright side I was overprepared for college and got pretty much straight As at a competitive school.
As long as the homework isn’t just repeating* ad nauseam* what was taught in class, or going well beyond the concepts that were presented in class, I don’t see a problem with it. If your kid is frequently stuck on homework to the point that he can’t do it without outside help, though, then something’s wrong. Whether that is a question of teaching techniques, or of your son being in the appropriate classes, though, I couldn’t tell you.
And yes, it IS expected that kids in Honors and AP classes will have several hours of homework and be expected to learn independently.
I agree with Ray, there is no reason that a 10th grade student in advanced classes should routinely need your help with his work. If he didn’t understand it completely from class he has a book, he can read, he can review it himself. If there is enough information in the book for you to teach it to yourself there is enough for him to do the same. Remember, he’s smart. I have a tenth grader too, he is in some advanced classes so I’m not just speaking from no experience.
If there is a big problem, like a really bad teacher, it would save your time and his frustration to ask an older student that has had the class already to tutor him. The student has had the material more recently and probably had the same teacher so can explain more in terms your child can understand.
Make sure your son is making a real effort to figure things out himself before you help him. When you do help, show him where to find the information in the book, help him figure it out for himself. Have him break things down into small steps, he might feel overwhelmed by looking at the whole problem. Have him explain it to you, showing you the steps might help clear things in his head. The best thing a person can learn from school is how to think and solve problems. Once he sees that he can learn things on his own his homework should take less time.
It’s surprising how three hours of homework sometimes turns into much less when all the whining and waiting for someone else to do it is eliminated.