Name: __________________________
Period: _____
Homework:
The issue:
Does homework help or hurt
students? Should teachers assign
more homework, less homework, or
no homework at all?
Directions: Use the article below to complete your
Contemporary Issue Research Notes. Highlight key facts
that represent arguments “for” and “against.”
Summary of Arguments
The issue: Does homework help or hurt students?
Should teachers assign more homework, less homework,
or no homework at all?
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Table of Contents:
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Summary of Arguments
The Turbulent History of Homework in the U.S.
Conflicting Data Complicate Homework Debate
Supporters Assert That Homework Is Necessary
Homework Harms Students, Critics Argue
What Does the Future of Homework Look Like?
GT students must read all sections of the article. On-grade level
students must read the underlined sections and may read the
additional sections.

Supporters of homework say: Homework teaches
important lessons about time management and discipline.
Dealing with homework each night can help prepare
students for the rigors of the working world. Homework is
also important because it reinforces academic concepts
learned during the school day; such reinforcement allows
students to better retain the material they have been
taught. Homework also tells students that learning can
occur outside classroom walls.
Critics of homework say: Most students receive too
much homework, which prevents their pursuit of other
interests.
Homework
assignments
are
generally
unchallenging "drill" exercises of little or no academic
value. Studies have shown barely any correlation between
a student's academic success and the amount of time he
or she spends on homework. Homework can also be
physically unhealthy by causing stress, which has been
linked to obesity, migraine headaches and depression.
Homework is a fact of life for most students in the U.S. No
matter if they attend a public or a private school, whether they
are a first grader or a high school senior, nearly every student
has at least some homework to complete every night after
coming home from school. A 2004 study showed that U.S.
students aged 6 through 17 spent an average of just under
four hours a week on homework during the 2002-03 school
year.
But is that homework helpful or harmful to those students?
Should the amount of homework a student receives each
night be heavily restricted, or should it continue to be largely
unmonitored? Critics of homework have long maintained that
the negative effects of homework might far outweigh any
positive gains. Two books published in 2006 detailed the
arguments against homework and caused a stir among the
academic community in the U.S. In response to those books,
defenders of homework emerged to state their case, arguing
that homework remains a positive tool for students.
Supporters of homework maintain that it is essential for
students to reexamine lessons and concepts that they have
learned during the school day while they are at home.
Reinforcing the material at home allows the student to better
retain those lessons, while at the same time communicating
the message that learning can take place outside school
walls, proponents insist. Additionally, homework teaches
children how to manage their time, supporters argue, and it
instills in them the discipline to perform tasks that they may
not find inherently thrilling.
Critics, meanwhile, argue that too many homework
assignments are dull, uninspired affairs that have little
academic value. Students would be better served pursuing
their own intellectual interests while at home, opponents
argue. Indeed, most children have much better things to do
than several hours of homework, critics say, including things
as simple as spending time with their friends and family,
reading for pleasure, or playing sports. Enforced homework
assignments not only do not help children learn, opponents
contend, but also largely destroy their love of learning. [See
2001 Homework]
The Turbulent History of Homework in the U.S.
Homework first became a subject of debate in the late 19th
century. At the time, homework assignments tended to be
simple memorization exercises: Students were expected to
commit to memory lists of vocabulary words and math
equations, and then recite them in front of their class the
following school day. Such assignments were geared almost
exclusively toward older students, and commonly took two to
three hours to complete; elementary-school-aged children
received little or no homework. (Most adolescents in the U.S.
finished their schooling by the age of 14 and began working,
however. Very few attended high school during that era.)
By the end of the 19th century, the so-called progressive
education movement began to gather steam. Advocates of
progressive education--including the influential psychologist
and philosopher John Dewey--argued that children were
poorly served by schools that required them simply to
memorize and recite information. As a common progressive
slogan of the time put it, students learned best by doing. The
progressives emphasized group work, problem solving and
critical thinking over memorization drills.
Starting in the early 20th century, many influential individuals
and parents' groups joined the crusade against homework.
For example, a 1900 anti-homework editorial in the magazine
Ladies Home Journal was entitled "A National Crime at the
Feet of American Parents," and described the practice of
assigning homework as "barbarous." The article argued that
homework damaged the physical health of U.S. children, as
excessive homework prevented children from spending time
outdoors, playing in the sun. Additionally, the memorization
exercises that comprised most of the era's homework
assignments were characterized as a dire threat to children's
mental health.
that homework was one of the leading causes of tuberculosis
and heart disease among U.S. youths.
Throughout the 1940s, homework gradually returned to U.S.
schools, as a full-fledged pro-homework movement gained
momentum, directly opposing the progressive education
movement's anti-homework stance. The pro-homework
contingent proved to be highly successful: By 1948, U.S. high
school students had approximately three to four hours of
homework each night.
Faced with mounting opposition by progressive educators-including increasing pressure from organizations such as the
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)--some U.S. school
districts began to limit or even ban homework assignments in
the early 20th century. In addition, some local and even some
state legislatures got into the act. In 1901, for example,
California lawmakers abolished homework in elementary and
middle schools.
Many education scholars have surmised that events such as
World War II (1939-45) and the burgeoning Cold War with
Soviet Russia strengthened the pro-homework tide in the
U.S. The 1940s and 1950s were highly patriotic times, those
scholars assert; supporters of homework argued that
American schoolchildren must be as disciplined and
intellectually sound as possible. The best way to accomplish
that goal, they argued, was by assigning large amounts of
homework each night. After Russia initiated the "Space
Race" in 1957 by launching the satellite Sputnik 1 into orbit,
homework supporters redoubled their efforts to ensure that
students in the U.S. were receiving a suitably demanding
homework load each night, so that the U.S. could remain
competitive with the Soviets for generations to come.
The progressive education movement peaked during the
1920s and 1930s. Not surprisingly, anti-homework sentiment
reached an all-time high during those decades, education
scholars assert. The now-defunct American Child Health
Association joined the campaign against homework, positing
The homework assignments of the 1950s and 1960s tended
to be the same types of memorization exercises--now
referred to as "drills"--that had been popular in the late 19th
century. A 1966 publication by the National Education
Association, a national teachers' union, argued that while
drills "should not be used excessively, [they] can serve a
worthwhile educational purpose when used wisely."
Alfie Kohn--have reinvigorated the debate over homework's
place in the U.S. educational system.
A backlash against such assignments formed in the late
1960s and grew throughout the 1970s, however. Academic
reformers once again questioned the value of such
assignments and of homework in general. But those protests
were drowned out by the 1983 publication of A Nation at
Risk, a government report issued by the National
Commission on Excellence in Education. A Nation at Risk
argued that "a rising tide of mediocrity" was sweeping across
U.S. schools. One of the ways teachers could combat that
rising tide was to assign more homework, the commission
asserted. In 1986, the U.S. Education Department released a
similar report, entitled What Works, which stated that
homework boosted students' academic prowess, helped
them build character, and allowed the U.S. to be more
competitive in the international arena.
Exactly how much homework U.S. schoolchildren receive
each night is itself the subject of some debate. Most studies
seem to indicate that high school students spend, on
average, roughly an hour on homework each night during the
school week. A 2003 meta-analysis of homework-related
studies compiled by the Brookings Institution, a centrist think
tank, supported that assessment. Indeed, the report found
that, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of high
school students who received no homework at all exceeded
the number of those who averaged two hours or more per
night.
Conflicting Data Complicate Homework Debate
Since the 1980s, homework has generally enjoyed sustained
acceptance. Most public school teachers assign at least
some homework every night, and polling data show that most
parents do not think their children are overburdened with
homework. Some teachers, parents and academics,
however, argue that U.S. schoolchildren receive entirely too
much homework, and that the overall effects of homework
may actually be harmful, rather than helpful, to students. Two
books published in 2006--The Case Against Homework, by
Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, and The Homework Myth, by
The Brookings report further contended that the U.S. was not
in the midst of a homework epidemic, as some high-profile
mainstream media outlets had suggested. A 2003 feature
article in People magazine, for example, was entitled
"Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third Grader?
Exhausted Kids (and Parents) Fight Back." But according to
the Brookings Institution's study, the average student's
homework burden has remained remarkably consistent since
the 1980s.
Other studies, however, found that most schoolchildren today
are afflicted with unhealthy daily levels of homework. In 2006,
an Associated Press-America Online survey found that
elementary school students have, on average, 78 minutes of
homework each night, while middle school students spend
close to 100 minutes doing their homework every weekday.
Most critics of homework--including Bennett and Kalish, the
authors of The Case Against Homework--maintain that such
homework burdens are far too demanding on younger
students.
Additionally, homework critics point to evidence that a
significant percentage of public school students suffer from
an unreasonable volume of homework. In their book, Bennett
and Kalish cite a 2006 study of a public high school in
Needham, Mass. The study found that of the school's 1,300
students, roughly 18%--nearly one out of five students--said
they spent at least four hours on homework each night.
Such massive homework loads do not seem to be common,
however. Perhaps the most widely cited homework surveys
have been the ones conducted by the Institute for Social
Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. One
such study, released in 2004, found that U.S. schoolchildren
aged 6 to 17 spent an average of three hours and 58 minutes
per week on homework in the 2002-03 school year,
compared with two hours and 38 minutes of weekly
homework time in 1981-82, an increase of 51%.
According to the 2004 Michigan study, the most dramatic
increase in homework between 1981-82 and 2002-03 was
experienced by children aged 6 to 8. In 1981, those children
spent just 52 minutes a week on homework; in 2003,
students in that age group averaged two hours and 33
minutes of weekly homework time.
Along with the debate over the amount of homework U.S.
students receive, there is an equally contentious debate over
the effect of homework on the minds of children. Does
homework help or hurt students from an academic
standpoint? Research conducted by Harris Cooper--a
psychology professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C.,
and one of the foremost homework experts in the U.S.--has
found that homework's effects on younger children appear to
be minimal. "There is almost no correlation between
homework and academic achievement in elementary school
and only a moderate correlation in middle school," Cooper
says.
The correlation between academic success and homework
time is stronger among high school students, according to
Cooper's research. However, Cooper says, "any [academic]
benefits start to decline after kids reach a maximum of two
hours a night." In other words, Cooper says, small nightly
homework does help high school students, but having to do
more than two hours of homework a night tends to lower their
academic performance.
Based on that research, Cooper--a self-described homework
supporter--has developed what he calls the "10-minute rule."
The rule states that the number of minutes of homework that
students should be doing each night is 10 multiplied by their
grade level. For example, a first grader should have roughly
10 minutes of homework every day; a third grader is best
served by having 30 minutes; a seventh grader should have
70 minutes; and a senior in high school should have
approximately two hours, or 120 minutes, of homework every
night. The PTA has supported the 10-minute rule, and many
teachers claim to base their homework assignments on
Cooper's concept.
Some schools, and even entire school districts, have
supported measures to reduce homework substantially. For
example, in 2006, Greenville County School District in South
Carolina began to regulate the amount of time students
spend on homework each night. In 2007, students at
Stuyvesant High School, an elite public high school in New
York City, successfully persuaded administrators to restrict
homework during vacations. And since the start of the 200708 school year, Columbus Middle School in Ohio has
reserved 25 minutes at the end of each school day for
students to get a head start on their homework assignments.
Supporters of homework say that schools should not be
trying to limit homework; they should, in fact, encourage more
of it. More homework is often the best way to improve a
student body's overall academic performance, proponents
assert. Critics, however, say that homework should be
limited, and perhaps even eliminated entirely. Is homework
beneficial or harmful to students?
Supporters Assert That Homework Is Necessary
Advocates of homework maintain that students need to
continue their education outside the classroom, and the best
way to do that is for teachers to assign them homework.
Assigning homework tells students that learning does not end
once they leave school property, proponents assert.
Intellectual development can occur anywhere and at any
time, and homework effectively communicates that fact to
developing minds, supporters say.
Homework is also important because there are many types of
assignments that cannot be easily completed during the
school day, proponents contend. Writing an essay and
conducting a science experiment, for example, are both
extremely beneficial ways for students to gain a more total
understanding of a certain subject, proponents say, but
neither assignment is easily completed during classroom
hours. Such assignments must be completed at home to be
effective, supporters argue.
Even the much-maligned "drill" exercises, particularly mathproblem worksheets, have value as homework assignments,
proponents maintain. Julian Betts, an economics professor at
the University of California at San Diego, has concluded that
if teachers doubled the amount of math homework they
assigned between grades 7 and 11, they would boost their
students' collective math comprehension by two full grade
levels. That boost would in turn increase those students'
average salaries by approximately 25% when they entered
the workforce, Betts maintains.
Supporters also say that the homework "problem" in the U.S.
is vastly exaggerated by critics of homework. Proponents
argue that the 51% increase in the average weekly
homework burden--as reported by University of Michigan
researchers in 2004--amounts to mere minutes a day of extra
homework time. For example, the average 15-to-17-year-old
student spent just 50 minutes on homework each weekday
during 2002-03, according to the University of Michigan
study. Homework proponents note that that figure represents
a daily average increase of just 17 minutes from 1981-82--
which is hardly proof that a homework epidemic is sweeping
the U.S., homework supporters say.
However, mainstream media outlets continue to report such
minimal increases in average daily homework time as though
they represented an overwhelming trend, advocates of
homework complain. As a result, many schools are
overreacting to the homework "problem" in the U.S.,
proponents say. "Some schools go so far as to discourage
their teachers from assigning more than 'manageable'
amounts of homework--which often means that students are
homework-free several times per week," writes Peter
Kirsanow on the conservative Web site National Review
Online. If anything, supporters maintain, school
administrators should encourage more homework for their
students.
Supporters of homework point to data that indicate that
students watch less television now than they did in the early
1980s. Many of those supporters surmise that the reason for
the decreased television viewership among young people is
the fact that they are occupied with something more edifying-namely, homework. The 2003 report by the Brookings
Institution states that "[w]atching television decreased by four
hours each week" between 1981 and 1997, "and some of this
freed-up time may have gone to...increased study time. That
sounds like cause for celebration, not hand wringing."
One of the most important benefits of homework, proponents
contend, is that it teaches children and young adults valuable
lessons that extend far beyond the realms of math, science
and literature. For example, having significant amounts of
homework to complete every night teaches students the
importance of time management--a skill that is crucial to
success later in life, advocates assert. Homework also
imparts discipline, proponents maintain: Students must learn
to focus their attention on work that they may not find entirely
interesting, or risk a poor grade at school the next day. Even
young children can benefit from such lessons, supporters
assert. Assigning homework to elementary school students
"is like learning to add single-digit numbers before you can
add double digits," Cooper says. "Before you can build a
house, you need to build the scaffolding."
Finally, proponents point to studies that indicate that the U.S.
is lagging behind other developed countries in terms of
academic performance. A 2004 report by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, an international
economic alliance, found that American 15-year-olds ranked
23rd out of 40 countries in science comprehension, and just
29th in math and problem solving. Proponents of homework
say that, short of extending the school day by several hours,
the best and most efficient way to help turn around the U.S.'s
academic performance is for teachers to simply assign more-and more challenging--homework each night.
Homework Harms Students, Critics Argue
Homework has a negative effect on students in several
different ways, according to opponents. For example, most
students consider homework to be little more than busy work,
critics say. Students then take a cynical approach to
homework assignments, one that precludes any actual
learning, opponents maintain. "The kids get so much
homework, they're not getting something out of it," says
Margot Steinberg, a parent whose children attend public
school in White Plains, N.Y. "They're doing it just to get it
done."
Most homework assignments are, indeed, of the busy-work
variety, critics assert. When they are not repetitive "drill"
assignments such as worksheets covered with math
problems, homework assignments tend to be of questionable
academic value, opponents claim. In their book The Case
Against Homework, Bennett and Kalish detail actual
homework assignments they have heard parents complain
about, including an assignment in which a student had to
bake a cake in the shape of a Roman aqueduct; another
asked a student to recreate a San Francisco neighborhood
out of uncooked pasta. Bennett and Kalish allege that when
some of the U.S.'s top education experts were asked to
assess "typical school assignments, they reported that most
had little or no value."
Poorly conceived assignments are just one reason that
homework is harmful to students, critics assert. Another
reason, they say, is that most students are simply
overburdened with hours of work every night. "Large amounts
of homework stifle motivation, diminish a child's love of
learning, turn reading into a chore, negatively affect the
quality of family time, diminish creativity and turn learning into
drudgery," writes David Ackerman, the principal of Oak Knoll
Elementary School in Menlo Park, Calif.
Students have so much homework each night that they have
virtually no time to pursue outside interests, critics maintain.
In a July 2006 opinion piece for USA Today, Bennett and
Kalish wrote:
Children need to play (one of the most important tasks of childhood
according to child development experts), to eat dinner with their
families (one of the biggest predictors of academic success), to talk
with family and friends, to develop their passions and to read.
These activities, not homework, will ensure that our children are
happy and competitive in a highly competitive world.
The sheer amount of homework that many students must
complete each night essentially prevents them from
participating in outside activities, critics say. And perhaps
even worse: Children today are so bogged down with
homework that they rarely have the opportunity to experience
something as simple as boredom--which opponents argue
can benefit a developing mind. "You remember boredom,
don't you?" writes Ayelet Waldman in the online magazine
Salon. "That state where the imagination is forced to take
over and create entertainment?"
Some critics of homework have argued that it is actually
unhealthy for children to do homework for several hours a
night after coming home from a long day at school. A January
2007 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics said that
stress among children--and, consequently, obesity and
depression--was on the rise and suggested that one of the
reasons for that is that children today work too hard and play
too little. "There's been no let up in the symptoms that define
stress in children, such as earlier onset of migraines, gastrointestinal problems and sleep problems," says Georgia
Witkin, the director of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Stress
Research Program in New York City. "Homework and school
are a major part of it."
Homework opponents further maintain that it is untrue that
there is a correlation between time spent on homework and
academic performance. Many of those opponents cite
Cooper's research in support of that claim, while others point
to research conducted by Gerald LeTendre and David Baker,
two education professors at Penn State University in State
College, Pa. The professors found that students in countries
in which schools typically assign little or no homework-including Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic--tend to
perform better on achievement tests than students in highhomework countries, such as Greece and Thailand.
Critics of homework say that parents must disabuse
themselves of the notion that the best, most rigorous
teachers are those who assign large amounts of homework
each night. "Kids are not vending machines," says Kohn, the
author of The Homework Myth. "You don't put in more
homework and have more learning come out the other end.
Your instincts might tell you otherwise, but the research is
overwhelmingly conclusive."
What Does the Future of Homework Look Like?
The debate over homework will probably continue indefinitely.
While it is unlikely that any state legislature will become
involved in the debate--as California famously did in the early
20th century--many education experts say there is a
possibility that more and more schools and even school
districts will enforce limits on nightly homework loads.
Additionally, those experts say, an increasing number of
teachers--who have perhaps read books such as The Case
Against Homework and The Homework Myth--seem to be
voluntarily forgoing homework. Phil Lyons, a teacher of
advanced-placement economics at Gunn High School in Palo
Alto, Calif., says that he refuses to assign homework, having
concluded that it is a "failed approach" to learning and that
"kids will actually learn more without it." Lyons notes that his
students' success rate in the advanced-placement economics
test has risen since he decided to scrap homework from his
classes.
Meanwhile, the debate continues over whether students
receive any type of academic benefit from homework.
Although Cooper's work in the field is the most widely cited, it
is subject to criticism, just as any other study. Indeed, Cooper
himself has said that there exists no definitive proof that
homework is either helpful or harmful to students, and there
may never be. "We're waiting for the absolutely perfect study
in which kids are randomly assigned to do or not do
homework for their entire academic careers, and then we'll
see for sure who did best," Cooper says. "But don't hold your
breath for that one."