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As long as there has been homework, kids have been complaining about it. And so have their parents. More than three years after Time magazine’s cover proclaimed, “The Homework Ate My Family,” parents like Jill Brewer of Porter Corners are still watching in dismay as math drills and spelling lists chip away at her family’s free time. “There’s just so much work,” says Brewer, mother of second and fifth-graders at Greenfield Elementary School and a 13-year-old at Maple Avenue Middle School. “They don’t have time to play. They do it, have supper, and go to bed.” And it’s not just the sheer volume of work children are asked to do -- as much as an hour and a half a night for Brewer’s kids – that bother parents, it’s assignments they don’t feel are helping their kids do better at school. Many times “I don’t see the whole point of it,” Brewer says. For many, the homework treadmill begins as early as kindergarten and just keeps going. Brewer still remembers a diorama – one of those three-dimensional scenes-in-a-box – which daughter Brianna had to do at home in second grade. The results were predictable. “They’re not interested in doing it,” admits Brewer. “They do a little bit. Basically, it’s the parents that have to do it for them.” While Brianna is now pretty independent when it comes to doing her own homework, her brothers Jamie, 10, and Aron, 8, still need a lot of help, whether it’s using the computer for research or just keeping on top of the load, which can be. And for Brewer, a nurse at a Saratoga Springs medical office who often doesn’t get home until 6:30 or 7 pm, that’s a lot for the school to ask of families. “Why can’t they do it in class?” she wants to know. “These pages and pages are ridiculous.” Brewer’s stress over homework is far from unique. “Seventy percent of the families that come to see me for parenting issues have homework issues,” says Clifton Park psychologist Randy Cale. “Constant bickering and battles and struggles to get kids to do homework” tops the list, Cale says, followed by children who ask for too much help from parents or who turn out work their parents and teachers feel is “poor and inadequate.” For parenting experts like Cale, dealing with homework is a matter of getting kids to do it with a minimum of fuss. The value of doing the homework, he believes, is beyond question -- unless you “didn’t want them to learn a lot.” “As schools become more competitive, as we put more pressure on students, homework increases,” he says. “As a society, we can’t have it both ways.” But in fact, the data backs up what parents like Brewer have come to believe: that homework, especially in the early grades, has no visible effect on how well children do in school. “No research has ever found a benefit for elementary students,” says Alfie Kohn, author of “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.” As Kohn’s book points out, even studies by homework proponent Harris Cooper, who popularized the well-known “10 minutes per grade level” rule, found only a weak link between homework and academic performance, and then only in high school. Cooper’s time limit “is very pleasingly moderate,” Kohn continues, “but research doesn’t support it – or that anyone needs homework on a regular basis.” Other experts make claims for non-academic pay-offs, such as self-discipline, responsibility, and creating a bond between school and home. (Cale adds that homework is a valuable way to teach parents how to get their kids to fulfill their responsibilities.) To that, Kohn responds, there’s simply “not enough research.” The fundamental question, Kohn believes, is who should decide what kids should be doing outside of school. “How much time should kids have to spend on academic assignments?” he asks. “What other activities matter? Do we want them to grow artistically, emotionally?” Yet despite the lack of evidence in its favor, many schools have policies making homework an automatic regimen. In Niskayuna, the Middle School Homework Guidelines advises parents to be sure that students aren’t spending “significantly more or less” than one to two hours a night, depending on grade. Whatever its true merits or drawbacks, the bottom line may be that teachers believe in it and schools support it. “There’s research and results based on standardized testing, and then there’s anecdotal evidence,” explains Felice Karlitz, education director of the Saratoga Independent School. “As educators, the anecdotal is more meaningful.” “Homework is a reality,” agrees Hudson Falls Intermediate School Principal Robert Cook, whose school serves fourth and fifth graders. “There’s so much that schools need to accomplish in a short day, that it is inevitable.” Kohn insists he isn’t for abolishing homework altogether. He’d just like to see the “default” reset, so that “no homework” is the norm instead of the exception, and that assignments be well-thought-out instead of automatic. That’s what Cook and Karlitz both say their schools strive for. “We believe it should be meaningful,” Karlitz says. “We don’t believe it should be given every night, with the exception of math.” “We leave it up to the professional judgment of the teacher, based on what’s going on in the classroom,” Cook says, adding “We always tell our parents and our kids that homework should not be burdensome.” While Cook’s school has a system in place that lets parents communicate their homework concerns with teachers, Kohn says in many cases parents who complain are told that they are at fault, leading many families to suffer in silence. (Children’s complaints are so expected they’re given no weight at all, he adds.) “I guess we’ve never addressed it because I didn’t think it would change anything,” Brewer says. But Kohn urges parents to keep trying – even if that means setting their own limits and leaving some homework undone, a move Cale calls “dangerous.” “The consequences down the road are severe,” Cale warns. “The message is, ‘Your educational instructors do not know what’s best for you.’ That message is not one that is going to serve them.” Nevertheless, Kohn says “Parents should do what they feel is necessary to protect their children.” © 2007 Kathy Ceceri
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Copyright © 2009 Kathy Ceceri
