Excessive homework and its harmful effects

It is time for parents to start a populist uprising against homework.

Not homework, per se, but the impact homework is having on healthy,

well-adjusted kids, teens and families. Three to five hours a night

plus weekends dominated by homework is creating stressed-out kids and

frustrated parents. In the past week, a friend could not go on a

family camping trip because of homework that needed to be completed

using a computer; I witnessed a girl doing her homework while she was

sitting with her family at a Saturday matinee performance at the

Glendale Centre Theatre; and my 16-year-old daughter asked me to

bring home an espresso drink so she could stay up late to finish her

homework.

The pressures of homework are changing family dynamics. I am

writing this on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, waiting for my children

to finish homework so we can go on a family activity. One is trying

to find the Straits of Gibraltar in a school textbook that does not

even include it on the map, while the other daughter is writing

definitions and sentences for 24 literary terms. Lest you think that

these are kids who wait to the last minute, they have been going

strong on homework since Friday afternoon, only to take time to play

in a school-required volleyball tournament.

I know from conversations with other parents that this pattern of

watching homework overwhelm family life is being repeated all over

the city. I found laughable the recent report that the average

student does only 19 minutes of homework a day. The only ones that

laughed harder were my daughters.

I am not just a frustrated parent but also a lifelong educator. I

have been in education for almost 25 years as a teacher, mentor

teacher and school principal. I understand the homework issue from

the inside out. I understand that homework has a reasonable place in

the education of children. However, research is inconclusive about

the actual value of homework, especially when the homework is

considered busy work. As a school principal, I was concerned when I

heard about students giving up sports, dance or music lessons because

they had too much homework.

As an insider, let me share some of the dirty little secrets about

homework:

* Teachers are usually required to assign homework whether they

want to or not. Whenever you see a “packet” of work coming home to

complete in a week, it is usually a teacher trying to find a

manageable way to plan homework assignments.

* A lot of homework is busy work. Anytime you see your child

writing something 10 times or having to color in math problems, that

is usually busy work.

* Homework is often not graded, just counted as complete. How many

times have you seen graded homework returned with meaningful

comments? Frankly, teachers do not have the time to grade most

homework.

* Homework usually counts for a small portion of the total grade.

The very thing that is making your kids cry at home often makes

little difference in their overall grade or achievement.

* Most teachers do not know how much homework the other teachers

have assigned. Five classes a day with an hour of homework each adds

up to five hours per night.

* Students in advanced classes receive much more homework than

other students because the teachers know that they will do it.

* A lot of parents like a lot of homework because it keeps their

kids busy.

I will acknowledge that homework has benefits. Homework builds

discipline and time-management skills. Studying for tests or working

on projects is a good use of homework time. Unfortunately, many

students have to do these things after they finish their other

homework.

How much homework should we expect? The state guideline for

homework is 10 minutes per grade level, plus 10. For example, a

third-grader should have about 40 minutes of homework per night; a

sixth-grade student about 70 minutes, and so on.

As parents, we cannot sit by and watch this wave of unrealistic

expectations roll over our family lives. I know that we might not be

able to change the homework system, but I do know that we can change

how we respond to the system. Assuming that your child has good

homework habits, here are some suggestions:

* Communicate to your child’s teachers how long homework is

taking. Often, the teachers are not aware of how long their

assignments take unless someone tells them. They will often reduce

the load once they are aware of the problem.

* Decide on a reasonable amount of time your child should do

homework each night and call “time” when enough is enough. Tell the

teachers in advance that you are going to do this and ask them not to

penalize the student.

* Prioritize the assignments for your child so they will complete

the most important homework first and the least important last. When

you call “time,” the most important tasks will have been completed.

* Modify busy work. Once your child has done 10 math problems correctly, demonstrating that they know the skill, it is not

necessary for them to do 20 more. If they are required to “color”

something and it meaningless to the assignment, excuse them from

coloring.

* Never pull your child out of an activity such as music lessons,

sports or church events because of homework. It is more important

that they grow up to be well-rounded people than prove that they can

copy definitions from a dictionary.

I might be an unlikely homework rebel, but I care too much about

education to watch the love of learning squeezed out of kids because

they are forced to spend hours on tedious “learning” activities. I

know that teachers are dedicated to seeing children succeed in

school, but sometimes excessive homework is a misplaced symbol of

that dedication. This is why we, as parents, have to take charge of

the homework problem. It is important to remember that parents are in

charge of their children, not the schools.

BOB DRUMMOND

Glendale