Homework: The Great Debate

Quiz time!

Answer the following question:

Homework is…

a) Essential for reinforcement of learned concepts

b) Detrimental to a child’s life balance and family relationships

c) Optional for enrichment or remediation

Was it easy for you to choose an answer? The Great Homework Debate is not a simple one, which is probably why it continues to rage on. In the spirit of successful testing strategies, let’s take a look at all of our options before deciding on the best one. 

a) Homework is essential for reinforcement of learned concepts

This is what I would label the “traditional” school viewpoint. If you were born before the year 2000 and educated in public schools, more than likely the majority of your K-12 teachers believed in the value of nightly homework, and did not hesitate to implement it. In general, parents in this generation didn’t question that their kids were assigned homework, and usually enforced it at home to the best of their abilities. 

This was my experience as a student. My parents valued education, so I was raised with the expectation that as a child, school was my job. Doing well at it was to be my priority; my privileges and participation in any kind of extracurricular activity were directly dependent upon my effort in school. So when I began teaching, I naturally defaulted to the way that I was taught (with a little college theory sprinkled in).

As a new teacher, I gave homework nightly. I walked up and down aisles with a clipboard to check it daily, and gave zeroes that stuck, only allowing for late work in the most exceptional of circumstances.

The school where my career began had an unofficial laissez-faire approach: teachers pretty much had total autonomy over classroom, curriculum, and grading practices. About 8 years in, a parent came along who challenged this for the first time. His son was a tall boy with dark, curly hair in my freshman class. He was a bit immature, tried to sleep in class often, would occasionally participate in discussion…and never, ever did homework. Not surprisingly, he was failing the class because of all those homework zeroes. His father requested a meeting and I found myself in the principal’s office one afternoon to discuss it. 

Dad’s basic argument: My son is incredibly smart. In fact, he’s so smart that he’s headed to Yale. But you are messing up his GPA by giving him all these zeroes for homework and dragging down his grade. Homework is useless and doesn’t show what he knows. I support him not doing the homework. As long as he passes the tests, that’s what matters. You should erase all these zeroes and let him have the 100 average he deserves.

My basic argument: Your son is capable of the work (capable yes, Yale genius…questionable). Therefore he should be able to easily do the homework. It isn’t fair to just wipe out his zeroes when there are other kids in the class with the same situation whose parents aren’t raising a stink. And my no late work policy is preparing high schoolers for “the real world” where bills and jobs have real deadlines that must be followed, or else there are real consequences.

To his credit, the principal backed me up in front of the dad–-but after they left, he and I remained in his office for about an hour philosophically debating the value and concept of homework. I really give him credit for not talking down to me as my boss; instead we had a respectful conversation as equals. 

The principal’s argument: What is it that you hope to accomplish or show with your current homework system? What is the purpose of the assignments you are giving? If you are not grading every one (I wasn’t), what is the purpose of checking them off the list? Are your grades based on measuring what the students know, or on measuring their level of compliance with your directives? Which one is a more accurate reflection of the student’s subject mastery? Regarding the “real world,” yes, as adults we have deadlines. But aren’t we also given grace a lot of times when we miss a payment, or are late for work? 

I couldn’t deny that these were some really good questions and valid points. He didn’t force me to change or do anything, but our discussion did genuinely provoke me to think more about this topic, and eventually (years later), change my mind about it.

b) Homework is detrimental to a child’s life balance and family relationships

This one hits home with me both as a teacher and as a parent. 

As a teacher, I remember very clearly one mother who emailed me in the beginning of January a few years back. I had assigned a small amount of homework to my honors students to be completed over Christmas break, which should have taken a maximum of about 2 hours over the course of the 10 days we were off from school.

The mother emailed me to let me know that she thought I was a heartless and terrible human being; how could I possibly ask her child to do this assignment over the holiday break, when what he should be doing is spending time with his family and loved ones, creating memories? Didn’t I realize that because of my assignment, he spent untold hours squirreled away alone in his room working his little fingers to the bone, while his family made merry downstairs, missing him? My obvious audacity and lack of compassion for the importance of family relationships was clear evidence to her of my sheer cold-blooded nature.

I’ll admit, while I knew that she was WAY off base in this accusation, the fact that this is how she perceived me still hurt. 

Fast forward to about 10 years later, when I was now the mother of two elementary schoolers. My twins were in third grade, which is when they started to receive a notable amount of homework for the first time. As a teacher, of course I wanted them to be good students and prioritize their “jobs” as I had at their age. But as a tired working mom with a newborn, I was also concerned about spending enough time with my older two kids after school.

By the time my girls got home from school, we only had about 3 hours of family time on weekdays, which had to include dinner and prepping for bed. Honestly, for a large chunk of it to be taken up by homework…well, I wasn’t too excited by that. As a parent, I do think that our biggest priority should be making strong bonds and connections with our kids. We need to have time to invest in them and teach them the values that will guide them into shining some light into a dark world as adults. I do think that priceless memories made together are more important than math homework.

c) Homework is optional for enrichment or remediation

While I don’t think that most teachers use homework exclusively for this purpose, I do think it’s a great idea. Ideally, we are supposed to teach every day for all levels, giving every learner the personalized experience they need: remediation and re-teaching for the lowest, purposeful and engaging activities for the middle, and rigorous enrichment for the highest levels. (Reminds me of the “magician” option on the Tightrope Teaching homepage…)

I do think this is a worthwhile goal! I also know that on most days, I do not hit this mark on every single point.

My current school mixes all classes so that every roster has half honors students and half non-honors. Therefore, we must always build in differentiation. We often do extra assignments for the honors students, break into groups that allow us to give individual attention to the students who need it most, and build in self-paced work. Devising two separate homework assignments (one for remediation, one for enrichment) on the same topics or lessons seems like a good use of time, especially in this type of environment.

If you are already doing this, nice job! If not, let’s test it out!

d) Homework is…all of the above

Ok, so this would probably be my personal answer.

Remember the story I told in section a) about the meeting with the principal? Over the course of a few years, my philosophies on homework and grading in general evolved, and now I don’t give homework on most days.

At the beginning of the year, I talk to my students and acknowledge the fact that I have a busy life outside of school, and I know that many of them do, too. Time is a precious commodity for me, and I’m not interested in wasting my own OR theirs (that’s a sign of respect). Therefore, I promise them that I will never give them busy work or homework for homework’s sake. On the rare occasion that I do assign homework, it’s overflow of the day’s classwork and either a) is so brief that it will literally take them 60 seconds or less to finish it up; or b) simply cannot wait until tomorrow because of pacing and end-of-quarter deadlines that must be met.

I also allow for late work in all circumstances, without penalty, up until the final hard deadline for report cards. My teaching philosophy on this topic has evolved to this: if the work I am assigning is truly valuable information that I want them to learn, what is most important to me: that they complete it by my arbitrary deadline, or that they learn it at all, albeit a little later than the other students?

What I realized is that when you implement a fixed-zero policy, you remove the motivation to learn. If the ship is sunk and there’s nothing a student can do about it, they are forced to shrug and move on with the gap in learning. But if you allow them to do it late, at least they do it, hopefully filling in that gap and learning the content or skill. At the very least, they’ll learn not to give up too soon, which is a great life lesson for anyone.

So my answer is d) all of the above, because I do think that homework is necessary in certain contexts (and I think this is most true for younger students who are developing those base skills in elementary). I also think that homework can cut in on family relationships if it becomes excessive. And I am intrigued by the idea of using homework primarily as a remediation and/or enrichment tool.

The key to homework, just like everything else in life, is balance.