So I was listening to the radio today and the afternoon person mentioned how a school district somewhere will be implementing a policy about homework next year: teachers not being allowed to give more homework on a daily time allotment of 10minutes times grade level--total for ALL classes.
by the way, here is a link to the news i think they were referring to. TOO MUCH HOMEWORK
It makes me curious just how many people think TOO MUCH homework is being placed on students at the middle/high school level because I have heard parents complain of this before--their students are being too overwhelmed with homework in addition to their extracurricular activities such as sports, church groups, band/music/theatre and the like. I even have heard of parents of AP students complain of this--their student is being given the chance to become well-rounded and has to give up activities in order to meet the demands of their academic workload.
I get a bit angry just typing it out. While I can see some of the points being made for restricting total workload students take home, I don 't think all the factors are necessarily being taken into accout--such as: time management skills of students--I know many a students who does not make good use of time given AT SCHOOL to study and do homework. I also know of students who will honestly say that they would get their homework done faster if they weren't multi-tasking their homework with say--texting their friends. There is also my personal opinion that while there is a benefit to being a "well-rounded" individual--there is also an element to choosing activities in order to be one's best and not sacrifice time and effort being one is overly-involved.
I also wonder if this "two hour" time allotment for a high school senior includes practice time necessary for music or after-school practice hours for sports. And how well these seniors will be prepared for going to college and the invididual workloads they'll have there. I'm also curious to just how the school district thinks it's going to measure "time needed" for homework of students and how they will divide the time up between different classes.
Anyways, I would LOVE to hear some of ya'lls ideas out there. Do you think the schools have placed too many demands on students by way of homework? Have you ever heard of "too much homework" being a problem? Please discuss!
Posted by Anna at February 20, 2009 05:18 PM | TrackBackI didn't have too much of a problem with homework when I was in high school, but then I didn't have much of a social life, either, and I wasn't heavily involved in extracurriculars.
It was a very different story for my younger brother, who started high school four years after I did. He was on the swim team and playing the trumpet, and there were few weeknights that he made it to bed before 2 or 3am. He was good about budgeting his time; he just had so much work (especially his junior year) that it took all day to get it done. He stuck with it and did very well, but he and my parents often wondered if that much work was really necessary.
I've also heard of studies suggesting that homework doesn't facilitate learning beyond a certain point, particularly for younger students. I tend to be somewhat leery of "studies," but it makes intuitive sense to me that a child who spends 7 hours at school and then goes home to 4 or 6 hours of homework might be overloading a bit, especially if we're talking about a second-grader.
As for my own unprofessional opinion, I think the two most relevant (bearing in mind that you can't control student attitudes and work ethics very well) are (1) the subject matter and (2) the students' age. The best way to learn math is to do math problems, and that means you need to have some homework. But once you know how to add fractions (or multiply by 8, or factor polynomials), solving 50 problems per night for a week seems like a waste of time. On the other hand, if you're working your way through The Scarlet Letter, I don't think you need to assign "reading comprehension" questions each night; you can discuss the reading in class, and if the kids aren't paying attention then they fail the test and it's their own darn fault.
...maybe it's a good thing I'm not a full-time teacher, eh? ;-)
Posted by: Martinez at February 21, 2009 12:35 PMI'm always intrigued that a student can spend 4-5 hours a night in sports, etc, and somehow it's the 2 hours of homework that's the problem. I'm not trying to make light of stories like Martinez's, but I do think that most students bring this on themselves with general laziness and procrastination. But I might just be an unsympathetic teacher who knows a lot of kids skip my homework.
Posted by: Barbour at February 22, 2009 12:20 PM