Why America’s Most Reckless Teachers Assign Kids Way Too Much Homework

Making the right education choices for kids today is harder than ever for parents, whether it’s navigating the aggressive rise of charter schools or weighing options of online learning. The role of homework in schools has been just as susceptible to variation as the modern educational landscape, from amount or type of material to the very boundaries of where it’s expected to be done. And while it’s easy to accept homework as a given, Sir Ken Robinson, an expert on educational reform, examines why it might not be as productive or positive as it should in his new book, You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education, available now from Viking. In the below excerpt from the book, Robinson questions how much homework is too much homework, and what is it really for?

The amount of homework young people are given varies a lot from school to school and from grade to grade. In some schools and grades, children have no homework at all. In others, they may have eighteen hours or more of homework every week.

READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Homework

In the United States, the accepted guideline, which is supported by both the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association, is the 10-minute rule: children should have no more than 10 minutes of homework each day for each grade reached. In first grade, children should have 10 minutes of daily homework; in second grade, 20 minutes; and so on to the twelfth grade, when on average they should have 120 minutes of homework each day, which is about 10 hours a week. It doesn’t always work out that way.

In 2013, the University of Phoenix College of Education commissioned a survey of how much homework teachers typically give their students. From kindergarten to fifth grade, it was just under 3 hours per week; from sixth to eighth grade, it was 3.2 hours; and from ninth to twelfth grade it was 3.5 hours. There are two points to note. First, these are the amounts given by individual teachers. To estimate the total time children are expected to spend on homework, you need to multiply these hours by the number of teachers they work with. High school students who work with five teachers in different curriculum areas may find themselves with 17.5 hours or more of homework a week, which is the equivalent of a part-time job. The other factor is that these are teachers’ estimates of the time that homework should take. The time that individual children spend on it will be more or less than that, according to their abilities and interests. One child may casually dash off a piece of homework in half the time that another will spend laboring through it in a cold sweat.

Do students have more homework these days than previous generations? Given all the variables, it’s difficult to say. Some studies suggest they do. In 2007, a study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that on average, high school students spent around 7 hours a week on homework. A similar study in 1994 put the average at less than 5 hours a week. Mind you, I was in high school in England in the 1960s and spent a lot more time than that – though maybe that was to do with my own ability. One way of judging this is to look at how much homework your own children are given and compare it to what you had at the same age.

There’s much debate about the value of homework. Supporters argue that it benefits children, teachers, and parents in several ways:

• Children learn to deepen their understanding of specific content; to cover content at their own pace; to become more independent learners; to develop problem-solving and time management skills; and to relate what they learn in school to outside activities.
• Teachers can see how well their students understand the lessons; evaluate students’ individual progress, strengths, and weaknesses; and cover more content in class.
• Parents can engage practically in their children’s education; see firsthand what their children are being taught in school; and understand more clearly how they’re getting on—what they find easy and what they struggle with in school.

Dr. Ashley Norris is assistant dean at the University of Phoenix College of Education. Commenting on her university’s survey, she says, “Homework helps build confidence, responsibility and problem-solving skills that can set students up for success in high school, college, and in the workplace.”

That may be so, but many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all. Families have busy lives and it can be hard for parents to find time to help with homework alongside everything else they have to cope with. Norris is convinced it’s worth the effort, especially, she says, because, in many schools, the nature of homework is changing. One influence is the growing popularity of the so-called flipped classroom.

In the stereotypical classroom, the teacher spends time in class presenting material to the students. Their homework consists of assignments based on that material. In the flipped classroom, the teacher provides the students with presentational materials – videos, slides, lecture notes – which the students review at home and then bring questions and ideas to school where they work on them collaboratively with the teacher and other students. As Norris notes, in this approach, homework extends the boundaries of the classroom and reframes how time in school can be used more productively, allowing students to “collaborate on learning, learn from each other, maybe critique [each other’s work] and share those experiences.”

Even so, many parents and educators are increasingly concerned that homework, whatever form it takes, is a bridge too far in the pressured lives of children and their families. It takes away from essential time for their children to relax and unwind after school, to play, to be young, and to be together as a family. On top of that, the benefits of homework are often asserted, but they’re not consistent and they’re certainly not guaranteed.

The above was excerpted from You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D. and Lou Aronica, published on March 13, 2018 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright by Ken Robinson, 2018.