Is homework really so terrible?

As school gets increasingly difficult and courses become more complex, your child needs to be persistent. Homework will foster these strengths of character


My daughter recently announced, with dramatic emphasis, that she is now a second semester high school senior. This is an important milestone. The college applications have all been written. The last grades that count for much have been recorded.

Time to party.

Except that it is not her style. She said she was going to start taking it easy, but she is still doing a lot of homework. What should I do about her? Like most parents, I am proud of my children when they meet their academic responsibilities. But I also worry when it seems too much. We want our children to have balanced lives. We often see our children's teachers as insensitive taskmasters who steal time from family life.

I was fascinated by a recent report about all this on CBS Sunday Morning. I decided to check on some of the facts and experts the programme cited in hopes that it would help me make up my own mind.

The university's Panel Study of Income Dynamics, directed by economist Frank Stafford of the Institute for Social Research, has been gathering data for decades on how people use their time. They surveyed a representative sample of 3,586 children aged 12 and under in 1997, and compared the results to a similar 1981 study. As CBS reported, homework time increased 59.5 per cent.

But it is like raising my bowling score. A nearly 60 per cent improvement sounds big until you learn that my previous average was a 53. The average child in 1981 spent just one hour 24 minutes a week on homework. By 1997 that had increased to 3 hours 14 minutes. That means this allegedly overburdened child is averaging less than a half hour of homework each school night.

Hmm. I found books written by two experts on the CBS show. One was Etta Kralovec, co-author with John Buell of the 2000 book, The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning and Janine Bempechat, author of the 2000 book Getting Our Kids Back on Track: Educating Children for the Future.

I was disappointed by the Kralovec-Buell book, although that may be my fault. The author and I seem to be on different planes of existence. Their proof that homework is an important cause of suicide among school children is a news clipping from the Harare Herald referring to the case of an 11-year-old in Hong Kong who left a note saying he jumped out of a 34-storey building because he didn't finish his lessons. They argue that homework is bad, in part, because it gives middle class children an unfair advantage over less financially fortunate classmates. They suggest that the problem can only be solved by a social and cultural revolution in the United States, as well as the rest of the world.

Bempechat has a more practical approach. She gets quickly to what research says about homework: it has no effect on achievement in early grades and not much effect in the higher elementary grades, but does raise achievement in middle school and high school.

Middle schoolers do better if they study at home five to 10 hours a week, but more than that doesn't add anything. The greatest benefits from homework occur for high schoolers who study five to 10 hours a week, and students who do more than that experience additional gains.

So should we forget about homework in the first and second grades? Bempechat says no, for an intriguing reason. Children need to develop habits of work, she says, and it is likely to be easier if they start early with appropriately small obligations.

"The fifteen-minute assignment of first grade gradually stretches into the three-week assignment of fifth grade,'' she says. "The years in between will be the training ground for our children's development into (relatively) organised and mature learners. Early experiences with homework may not contribute to children's academic development, but they certainly promote their motivational development. ...As school gets increasingly difficult and courses become more complex, your children need to be persistent when the going gets tough. Homework, as much as you and they may hate it, will foster these strengths of character.''

Kralovec and Buell will argue, perhaps, that Bempechat has given in to the capitalist worship of productivity and ignores the importance of spiritual growth. That may make sense on their planet, but the need to develop habits of consistency and persistence appeals to me. The research I have done about college admissions over the past three years convinces me that success in life, as opposed to success in the application game, is the direct result of those character traits Bempechat is talking about, and they develop long before anyone ever takes a SAT.

There is a firm approach to homework, used by the KIPP schools to keep low-income children on track, that might work in more affluent schools for different reasons. San Francisco-based KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) has 15 schools around the country that have significantly raised the academic achievement of fifth-through eighth-graders in communities where such high test scores are rare. The KIPP schools enshrine homework by giving each of their teachers a cell phone and insisting that students call their teachers at any time if they have any problem completing the assignment that night. If a child appears the next day with an assignment incomplete, the parents are called to the school to talk about it.

This builds Bempechat's motivational habits, which regular public schools in KIPP neighbourhoods often neglect. But consider the impact such a policy might have in affluent communities where the anti-homework movement has taken root. An open invitation—indeed, a requirement - that the teacher be called about any inexplicable instructions or incomprehensible problems is likely to be accepted by middle class parents with a vengeance. After a few evenings handling such calls, the teachers are likely to think more carefully about their assignments before they hand them out, and that will be good for everybody.

Of course, even good habits can be overdone. But when I think about cautioning my daughter about working too hard, I remind myself that that was the way I behaved in high school. Like most people reflecting on courses and teachers that challenged them when they were teenagers, I have no regrets about those late nights.

Unless there are clear signs of emotional illness, or a daily schedule that is nothing but books and papers, students like my daughter Katie are better off making their own decisions. They have acquired the character traits that Bempechat extols. They are determined to handle their responsibilities.

They may find their homework boring or frustrating, but when they start earning a living they are going to have jobs with some of that, and it is best to develop coping skills early. Schools that demand a half-hour a day of academic work at home, less than a fifth of the time these same children spend watching television, do not seem to me to be overdoing it.

© Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service