Lesson 1: The Homework Dilemma
The Dilemma
The dilemma of how much homework to assign and why has been with us for a long while. Traditionally homework has been considered part of the school experience. If you look at the history of homework, you can see that it has fallen in and out of favor with the public over the past decade. Often in response to the position of United States schools in the world, homework has been seen as a panacea for our ailing schools or a crimp on the social lives and life-styles of our children. Homework has been seen as a way to accelerate learning or an endless drudgery for children, depending on which homework view was in vogue. Homework had a resurgence in the early 1990's, but in recent years there has again been a growing cry to "do something about homework" from everyone involved in the school community.
Over my years of teaching, I have had reactions to homework that have run the gamut. Within the same class, with students having the same homework assignments, I've had parents complain that their children were spending too much time on homework each night, and parents asking for more homework because they felt their child needed additional practice or an extra challenge. I've had principals who required Christmas vacation homework, and colleagues who almost never assigned homework! I even had a parent of an LD student insist on more and more homework as a way to "fix" his child - something I always thought was akin to more exercise alone fixing a broken arm.
Finding a middle ground for parents, students, and for myself was hard. Homework was certainly always on my mind!
Imagine my surprise when I came across a news article from the school district in my old hometown. Imagine my greater surprise when I read the headline School Stresses Light Homework Load. Lighten the homework load - what could that mean? Was it going to help me with my dilemma? I read on.
According to Jeffrey Gold of the Associated Press, the Piscataway (NJ) School District had recently adopted new, lighter homework standards for all students. The school board had set a policy limiting the amount of homework in grades 1-3 to no more than 30 minutes per day. High schoolers are limited to not more than 2 hours per night. Weekend homework in all grades is discouraged. The new rules were made at the request of parents, who are frustrated with the large amounts of homework students had been receiving.
But, what is the value of homework? As a teacher, I routinely assigned homework for many reasons which we'll go into in the following sections. Suffice to say that I have always been a proponent of homework and feel that it does have value. The dilemma facing educators today is to accomplish both goals - providing the necessary homework and not overburdening children and families in the process.
I agree that there should be limits on the amount of homework teachers assign. And without a doubt, homework assignments should always be meaningful and not just be "homework for homework's sake". I can see benefits in a policy such as the one adopted in Piscataway. If homework is a controversy in your school district, perhaps "lightening the load" is a way to go!
