Homework: What Is It Good For?

Turns out, homework, like war, is good for (you guessed it) absolutely nothin'. HUH!

Until now, my experience with homework has been from the teacher's perspective. Last week, however, Keira brought home her first weekly homework packet from preschool. At first, she and I were both pretty excited about it: "Homework! How cute!" I thought. I couldn't wait to sit down with her at the kitchen table and get started. Oh, the good study habits we were about to form! The love of school and learning we were about to indulge in! My teacher-heart grew three sizes bigger just thinking about it. Of course, I was compelled to photograph the occasion for posterity:


(No one who knows Keira will be a bit surprised to note that she does homework, like everything else she can get away with, in her underwear.)

At no time during any of this kvelling did I ever stop to think...

Homework? In PRESCHOOL?!

That is, not until I decided to earn some extra units on the pay scale by taking an online course called Project Inform. It's right up my alley: all I had to do was choose a book from their list, read it on my own time, write a paper on it, and ta-da! One unit closer to Column D, without ever having to find a babysitter or fight traffic to attend a class. Having just read a colleague's Facebook status about parents thinking he assigns too much homework, and listened to a mom-friend with four kids bemoan her family's entire life being taken over by homework, I chose The Case Against Homework; and, although it wasn't on the list, I picked up The Homework Myth as well.

Good thing I grabbed both, because the first one was useless and unconvincing--basically just a collection of quotes from frustrated parents and a bunch of theorizing from the authors, with no actual research to back up most of their claims. Alfie Kohn's The Homework Myth, though, rocked my world. Even Ellie thought it was a page-turner!


Here's a not-so-quick summary of some of the key points:

1) There is no clear evidence that homework improves learning, especially in elementary grades. Zilch. Kohn takes apart all of the relevant research on this issue in great detail, which I'll spare you here (but is a fascinating read, if you're an academic or just a nerd like me).

2) There is no evidence at all that homework improves study habits or teaches responsibility. Ask any parent who takes responsibility in their household for making sure homework gets done. Is it the kid mapping out what parts of his Build A Model of Mission San Juan Capistrano Out Of Sugar Cubes project need to be done each night to get it done by next Friday...or is it the parent? Beyond that, homework often keeps kids from doing extracurricular activities that would be just as likely to teach hard work, responsibility, and self-discipline as sitting at a desk all evening. There have been no studies that show any non-academic benefits of homework, either on its own or compared to other, more enjoyable after-school activities.

3) Nearly all homework is a waste of students' and parents' time. Why? Because either it's something the student already knows how to do (which makes it useless--if I know how to solve 5 long division problems, does solving 40 of them each night make me any better at it?), or it's something the student DOESN'T know how to do (in which case they're doing it wrong 40 times just to get it done, or they're struggling over it for hours and learning to hate homework, school, learning, their teacher, their parents....), or it's complete busywork that isn't teaching anything at all (i.e. spending 5 hours building a replica of XYZ or copying definitions out of a dictionary). Ask any teacher, and they'll tell you that almost without fail, the kids who consistently do their homework are the ones who don't need the practice, anyway; and the ones who do need the practice don't do it, because they don't understand it, lack parent assistance, or just don't care. Who's it for, then?

4) Giving homework to "prepare" kids for homework in later grades is silly and unnecessary. This is what my former principal would call "The Biggie Burger." Most teachers', and even parents', defenses of homework fall into the category of "They have to do homework now so they'll be ready for it next year." As a result, we pile it on high-schoolers and call it "college prep," we give it to middle-schoolers so they'll be ready for high school, we assign it to elementary-schoolers so they'll be ready for middle school, and we (myself included) even give it to kindergarteners so they'll be ready for it in first grade. Now, apparently, preschools are assigning it to prepare children for kindergarten!

At no point do we ever stop to ask ourselves a) If homework isn't necessary or beneficial at any age, why assign it at all?, or b) Even if it is beneficial for older kids (the data on which is arguable), does it take YEARS of nightly homework when they're still at bed-wetting age, just to "get them in the habit"? Many parents spend the last week of summer vacation slowly waking the kids up a little earlier in the mornings, and maybe even doing a run-through of the weekday routine once or twice before school starts, but I doubt there are any families who already have their toddlers following an 8am-3pm learning regimen just to "get them ready" for when they start school years later! (Then again, considering how much I've heard lately about people getting tutors for their toddlers and kindergarteners, maybe there are....)

5) The often-cited "Life isn't always fun--they'd better get used to it now" reasoning is ridiculous. Kohn points out jokingly that if we're going to prepare children for everything unpleasant in life by inflicting it on them at an early age (and in high quantities, no less), maybe "we should feed kids as many cancer-causing agents as possible while they're small in order to get them ready" for all the carcinogens in the environment! Do we need to be purposely mean to kids in order to prepare them for playground bullies and road-rage incidents? Should I go wake the girls up every two hours throughout the night, just to get them ready for someday being mothers to newborns? If the only real "benefit" of homework is that it teaches kids to do what they're told, even when they hate doing it, I think doing chores pretty much covers that base. Besides that, do we really want to teach kids that reading and learning fall into the category of "Things In Life That Aren't Fun But That You Have To Do Anyway"?

Suffice it to say that I'm looking at my teaching practices, and at Keira's weekly packets, with new eyes. Although she's new to the homework game and is the type of kid who generally likes to sit at the table and write or color (for a few minutes, at least), much of what she's doing is tedious and/or practicing skills she mastered ages ago. I wonder how long it will be before our family joins the ranks of those embroiled in the nightly homework battle, and how we'll choose to handle it if and when the time comes...