If you have been following my blog series on education you will know that I have reached the letter H after writing on education topics from A to G, I am now to H. I want to focus on a topic that I am passionate about in education and it also happens to start with the letter H. Homework. The dreaded word so many students dislike. What I want to bring up is this, how much is too much when it comes to homework and children?
First, let me emphatically say that I am all for homework, I think it is a necessity for students to have. Not only does it reinforce skills that the child learned in school that day or week, but it also helps teach them responsibility and consequences when the responsibility of completing the homework falls short.
However, in my opinion, there is too much homework for kids to be completing every night. When I hear that some students, as young as third grade are completing two hours of homework a night, it literally makes me see red. There is such a thing as too much, and too much homework can cause frustration, burnout from school and sometimes, too much homework can lower grades when a child just can’t get it all done.
I firmly believe that children need to go home and be just what they are: kids! School age children need to run around when they get home from school, participate in sports, hang out with their families, eat dinner, read a book for enjoyment, whatever it may be, without having homework eat into that time.
I believe that homework should take no more than 20 to 30 minutes for elementary age students, 45 minutes for middle school and not much more than an hour for high school. Granted, this is just my opinion, but I believe anymore than that for those grade levels and we have problems like I mentioned above.
I am sure many people are reading this, not believing that a teacher is writing on how there is too much homework these days. I know how hard it is to fit in every aspect of the lesson when you are teaching. I know that students often have homework in several classes from different teachers each night. I really feel that teaching teams need to sit down and discuss what homework is being sent home each night, to try to avoid bogging down students with hours and hours of homework.
Is it possible to lessen the homework load? I believe it is. Will teachers and schools try to communicate within their teaching teams and come up with a homework plan? I am not so sure about this. In a perfect teaching world, sure that would happen. However, there aren’t any perfect teaching worlds and every teacher has specific curriculum goals they must meet, which makes coordinating homework with other teachers difficult.
My question is this, with these large homework loads, when do kids have time to be what is so important: a kid?