Learning and Leading - February 2010

beatBLOGGERS

Even Some Grownups Want to Ban Homework

Every culture has a set of beliefs that most people insist are ironclad—even if they aren’t backed up by research and make very little sense. In the United States, if you swim right after eating a meal, you’ll probably drown. Reading in a dim room will ruin your eyes. And kids who eat heaps of sugar will become instantly hyperactive.

Author Alfie Kohn would like to add another item to the list of myths that need to be debunked: Homework makes students more successful. Kohn, who writes and speaks about human behavior, education, and parenting, is an outspoken critic of homework.

In her post “Not-Live Blogging Alfie Kohn,” Tracy Rosen
relays some of the nuggets Kohn delivered at the Quebec
Provincial Association of Teachers Convention. Kohn says
no research shows any benefit of homework for students
prior to high school. He suggests the reason we put up with
homework is because “we don’t trust children to use their
free time positively, so we make sure they have as little of it
as possible.”
Rosen’s post drew several comments, including this one
from Penny Ryder:
Bravo! Reserve our classes as sites of rich learning (and
not sites of squabbling and discipline related to home-
work done or not) and let evening time be a time to al-
low learning to set.

But there were strong opinions on both sides when the same topic appeared on Lenore Skenazy’s blog Free-Range Kids. Her post “Anti-Homework Movement Growing” references a couple from Calgary, Canada, who negotiated a contract with their children’s school to opt out of homework.

Here are some of the 101 comments: I completely support a homework opt-out clause. It allows families to tailor their free time to the educational needs of their children. As parents, we know that a teacher faced with a classroom full of children with varying needs cannot really differentiate. But we can. —J

For my children, schooling and academics is priority number one. Where we live, there is an intense college-prep drive and I think the competition is healthy. You want to go Ivy? You need the grades. You want the grades? You need to turn in the homework. It’s part and parcel of life that sometimes you just have to suck it up, deal with the ridiculous policy, and carry on. —Sarah

I would like after-school time to be unencumbered in large part because I think I can do a better job of instilling a love of learning and a grasp of more advanced concepts than homework can. As they get older they need to take a more academic approach to learning, but at a young age I’d like directed academic instruction to be limited. —Helen

There are many sixth graders in elementary schools in my area who are doing algebra. Trust me, they don’t learn that primarily from “play.” They don’t learn how to read a novel and write a one- or two-page paper from “play.” Elementary school age kids mostly learn from being taught. —Sky

While parents and teachers debate this topic on the sidelines, here’s a comment from a member of the group that pioneered the no-homework movement—students.

On the blog Pre Calc Math Reflections, Caity writes: I don’t think there are enough hours in the day to balance math homework with the homework of other classes as well as extra curricular activities, which I participate in, or a part-time job, which I also have. I myself am up until midnight often just trying to get my homework done. So yes, we do have too much homework, but how could we fix it?

Resources

Free-Range Kids, “Anti-Homework Movement Growing”: http://
freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/anti-homework-
movement-growing
Leading from the Heart, “Not-Live Blogging Alfie Kohn”: http://leading
fromtheheart.org/2009/11/20/not-live-blogging-alfie-kohn-at-qpat-
convention-2009