What is the purpose of homework?
Why don’t they just have a longer school day so kids can get their homework done at school? This was asked two years ago, but we have new people so it should be ok, I think.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
51 Answers
I think one purpose (if it isn’t already but should be) is to get parents involved on what their child is learning.
To cement an awareness of the material covered in the class. The reminder helps to implant it into longer term memory.
Did / Do your kids have impossible amounts of homework? I didn’t, nor did my kids (the youngest is 26 now.)
@Dutchess_III: “Did / Do your kids have impossible amounts of homework?”
Yes. It’s absurd. My daughter spends most of her non-school hours doing homework.
I’m extremely opposed to homework, although I would have little issue with it if homework were considered optional and < 20 minutes per day.
My daughter is in 7th grade, but her homework has been ridiculous for many years. My 3rd-grade son is just starting to ramp up, and my kindergartner is fortunately not there yet.
It’s exactly what @canidmajor said, and it’s an important habit to acquire for students who one day will join the workforce. Those of us who have had to take work home from the office know that we can often get a better perspective on a project away from the multitude of distractions and pressures in a 9 to 5 environment.
Additional practice and time management.
I’ve heard some people (not on here yet) say that their kids get 2 and 3 hours worth of homework every night. I think that’s absurd. I totally agree with what @hominid said. Less than 20 min per night is more reasonable. Actually, I’d go with about 30 minutes.
Revision and consolidation.
I think traditional education is a lot about learning to submit to the demands of authority figures. Defiance and disobedience are punished. Obsequious, unquestioning submissiveness is rewarded.
Homework is a way for teachers to continue making demands on pupils long after they’re out of their immediate control.
The Finnish education system, widely regarded as the most successful and the best in the world (and has much in common with anarchist concepts of schooling)—does not assign homework.
There’s not really any evidence that homework is beneficial. It seems to me that after a long day at school (too long for the most part) children should spend their time relaxing, being with their families, or doing whatever extracurricular activities they like rather than being burdened with the drudgery and stress of school assignments.
Homework is beneficial for two particular areas of study: Mathematics and Foreign Language.
In Math, students need exposure to a variety of problems that incorporate a principal.
In Foreign Language classes, repetition through both speaking and writing is helpful. One does not learn a word through a single exposure to it.
My daughter is in high school; much of her homework now is reading and studying in preparation for the next day’s classes.
Nobody is saying that 3 hours of homework won’t increase knowledge of school subjects. The cost is too high, in my opinion. And we’re looking at it completely wrong.
Why do we think 3 or 4 hours of homework is right? Why not 5 hours? Certainly, an extra hour of study will yield greater intellectual output, right? 6 hours? 7? “Stop being a jackass, @hominid. Nobody says 7 hours is the right amount. You’re exaggerating.” Am I?
How did you come up with the number of hours you feel is appropriate? Think about this question more closely. I think it’s important. You’re likely going through a rough mental calculation based on the number of hours between the time a child arrives home and goes to sleep. You’re then factoring in a quick snack time after school, as well as soccer practice, dinner, and then time to brush teeth and read books at night in bed. Am I right?
Whatever variables you are using in that calculation likely say much about the values you feel are important in raising children. Is free play anywhere in this equation? If not, why? You are certainly aware of childhood development and the importance of such play? What about quality time with family? What about a bike ride or a walk in the woods? How much did you allot in your calculation?
Also, what else went into your calculation? How did you determine that homework was required at all? Was it a feeling that there was not enough time in a school day to complete all appropriate work? Why might this be? I know teachers, and they have a definite answer – and it has nothing to do with homework or a school day that is too short. They are not supporters of homework, but are forced to by a system that spends an absurd time on teaching crap and teaching to the test. MCAS (here in MA) drives education, and it takes away the ability for quality teachers to actually teach. They are therefore forced to offload work to the children to do off-hours (overtime).
I am not saying there are not children who would benefit from a brief nightly review. But hours of required homework only serves to strip children of their childhood and desire to learn.
Fun little anecdote. We couldn’t go for a hike or go to the Natural History Museum (as planned) this Sunday due to the amount of homework my daughter (and son) had.
Where was the “jackass” comment made? I can’t find it.
Um, @hominid , I don’t see anyone advocating hours and hours of homework. Are you referencing another thread?
Let me be clear. Sorry for the confusion.
7th graders have roughly 3–4 hours of homework per night. My point is whatever you think about this number (please, go back and read this particular point), you likely have a number that you feel is appropriate. It may be less, or it may be more. I’d be interested in your thought process (again, see the details there) in how you calculate that number.
Some people are telling me they send home work with the kids to do over the weekend. :(. The only time I felt the need to do that is if I had a particular project to finish that was handed out two weeks earlier and I didn’t start on it until Sunday, the day before it was due.
Do ALL the 7th graders have that? Or is it just their particular teacher who does that?
I don’t calculate any number. I answered the Q with the most basic definition of the purpose.
My kids also had way too much time spent on homework, I did not. Thirty years earlier than my children, our homework served the purpose, and we still had time for a good life.
I didn’t do homework and I passed because I passed the tests.
Well, we had to turn our homework in and it was graded.
@canidmajor: “I don’t calculate any number. I answered the Q with the most basic definition of the purpose.”
Ok…but homework is not some kind of hypothetical problem, right? If homework exists, which it does, it is not given with a kind of vague “do what you want” instruction. If you think a discussion of homework can be removed from the concept of time, then I just don’t know what we’re even talking about. If you don’t care to discuss what constitutes homework, but want to support it in some way, ok. ??
I am not supporting or not supporting anything here, @hominid, I was just answering the Q. But, for a little more information in the discussion, I went to my kids’ teachers early on and talked to them about the time factor. I worked out a system whereby they (the kids) did much less than assigned as long as they continued to understand the material. From time to time a teacher was a jerk about it, at which point I made a judgement call and encouraged quick and sloppy work as long as I felt comfortable with their comprehension of the material.
It was a damned bore to have to put so much effort into all that but it paid off.
My kids had excellent college careers at good schools (without any intervention from me) so obviously my methods as an advocate for their best interests did no harm.
Classroom is for learning the knowledge. Homework is for applying the knowledge.
Both are important.
But the amount of time a kids has to spend on homework should be reasonable. 2 or 3 hours after school every day is unreasonable, to me. They’ve already been in school for 7 hours! I agree with @hominid….30 minutes at the most.
I had unreasonable amounts of homework, and my teenage sister and cousins do, too. Even though they already go to a damn Free School.
I always did my homework, but I often did it crying. I was a good student, but the sheer pressure of all these exercises was too much, after a long day at school. In the Winter, I routinely got up in the dark. Then, I spent my day in a classroom. The two hours of sunlight left when I got home were spent walking the dog, which was followed by dinner, hours of homework, and far too little sleep. Repeat. Try not getting depressed on a schedule that completely forbids autonomy. Try growing up to make your own decisions.
We plan out our kids’ lives, and school is the highest priority for the majority of children. One of my students, a fourteen-year-old, just had to give up her piano lessons and her dancing. She loved both, but couldn’t manage to stay on top of schoolwork.
When they’re eighteen, we ask our kids to make their own decisions. “What are your interests? What are your strengths?” the career counsellor says, and we wonder why the kids shrug. It’s because we don’t leave them alone long enough to find out.
As an English tutor, I can attest to the detrimental effects of homework in language studies. My students routinely get writing exercises. Now…when a student tries to piece together sentences in a foreign language, the result is, for the most part, disastrous. We wouldn’t advise students to read horribly written books in the foreign language of choice, would we? Yet, we frequently set them up to immerse themselves in their own mistakes. Believe me. It does not work well.
Man, if that had happened to my kids I would have approached the teacher and the principal.
^ On what basis, if it’s the norm?
I don’t care if it’s the norm. If it entails 3 or 4 hours after school, then it’s just wrong. If it causes a kid to cry, like you did, then there is something wrong.
^ Yes. There definitely is.
I decided what home work that I wanted to. I watched cartoons when I went home. Some times I stayed on the bus and read Forgotten Realms novels all day.
^ Well, I was terrified of arriving at school without homework, and my insane moral compass prevented me from cheating in any form, too. If I did happen to arrive at school sans homework, I even owned up before class instead of hoping to not get caught.
I was like that too, @longgone. Wanted to do everything right.
@talljasperman unless you were the driver they wouldn’t have allowed you to stay on the bus.
@Dutchess_III it was a light rail transit LRT I stayed until 10 at night. I had a monthly bus pass.
Grade 10 and up. Grade 7 and up I skipped school to play video games at home and stores.
Where was your Mom? Surprised the stores let you stay. They could get in trouble for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
I was living with my dad at the time. I was 6 foot 6 inches and I had a mustache. I told the video and game store that I was a college student or on a spare. Other words I lied.
It would cost much more if school hours were extended for students to do homework there instead of at home.
The purpose of homework is personal development. It teaches a student the responsibility of managing time, setting goals and delaying gratification. The extra practice and preparation perfects the skill set at a lower cost.
Homework is also a deterrent from primitive activities which impedes the students development, like hanging out with friends, watching tv, or playing video games (unless educational).
Homework does have it’s merits, I agree. But like anything else, taken to extremes, it hurts more than it helps.
In my opinion, half hour to an hour per night is acceptable. Any more than an hour is too much, except for the occasional project or report that may be due. For elementary and middle school, I think a half hour is good. Just my opinion.
@sensin “Homework is also a deterrent from primitive activities which impedes the students development, like hanging out with friends.”
Friends impede students’ development?!
@sensin Do you have any evidence for any of that?
One of the major if unstated functions of schooling is to adapt kids to the coming lifetime of tedium and drudgery. Homework among other things is a useful lesson in learning to “work off the clock”. It can be argued that it conditions kids to work on their own, but I was suspicious from the gate about the “real” reasons we were loaded down. My sisters had a habit when we were forced to the dining room table to do our homework, of playing chain gang work song lps on the hi-fi to the great amusement of my mother. To this day, no one can match Odetta in the rendering of “Ain’t no more cane on the Brazos”
@longgone
Unless you hang out with friends for the purpose of learning something together, then yes, any other activity would impede the students development. Learning anything doesn’t qualify either. The content is equally important.
Also, think about the possibility of negative influence from the peers. By hanging out with peers, a student may end up learning and being influenced by poor ethics and morals of those peers. The result is not only an impediment of development, but a reversal heading to decay.
@Kropotkin
I do, just not with immediate access. Maybe later I will google scholar some studies for you.
@sensin Your definition of “development” seems to be an unusual one. What does the term mean to you, if you don’t mind me asking?
Within the context of this topic, it means advancing intellectually.
^ Well, that’s a very narrow definition. I don’t agree at all.
Answer this question 
