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Too Much Homework Can Be Counterproductive
Spy der Mann writes "An interesting study made by to two Penn State researchers shows that increases in homework may actually hinder educational achievement (Coral Cache) instead of improving it. The researchers analyzed a large amount of data collected by the Third International Study of Mathematics and Sciences (TIMSS) in 1994 from schools in 41 nations across the fourth, eighth and 12th grades. For some analyses, they used data from an identical study carried out in '99." From the article: "An unintended consequence may be that those children who need extra work and drill the most are the ones least likely to get it. Increasing homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within the family, thereby generating more inequality and eroding the quality of overall education."
Any kid who's gone to school lately could have told you that. And they had to go and do a study. Dumb.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
You mean grad students, don't you?
That's like the fox guarding the henhouse.
There is a great amount of discipline that can be learned from doing homework. There is almost a direct one-to-one correlation between doing homework and excelling in classes. Having the ability to trudge through what sometimes seems to be busywork leads to stronger self-control and greater self-confidence when the grade reports come out and all that work has paid off.
If you believe that school is not in the business of molding the characters of students into strong, self-confident, law-abiding citizens, then I could see how you'd rather they did nothing but play.
Not a bad study, and having gone through the system I tend to agree with it, but for other reasons.
Kids who are assigned a heavy homework load will more often than not procrastinate and put it off until late at night, at which point they will have to stay awake to finish it and won't get enough sleep. This makes the kid tired in class the next day, so (s)he won't learn as well. Studies DO show that getting a good night's sleep has a large effect on what you learn- sleep helps you lock in what you learned during the day. Think of it like flushing a RAM buffer to disk. Not a step to be skipped.
Lastly- most of the teachers I had (granted this was a while ago) who assigned heavy homework also were not particularly good at their jobs. They did not encourage or develop interesting class discussions, the lesson was a series of objectives on a paper which must be completed. BORING. Better teachers can engage students and make them want to learn, sadly the system as we have it does not attract or keep such teachers...
If you want kids to do better- get better teachers, not more work.
--IronHelix
Too much of anything can be counterproductive
Homework isn't pretty - but it teaches you how to sit down and do stuff. The real problem is that most homework is the hard stuff - makes some children think and most of them give up. I used to postpone it and do an all nighter , my sister used to finish her homework the day she got it... it sort of carries over into how you handle problems in real life too (unfortunately).
My parents just gave up on trying to make me do homework when I was around 11 or 10 years old. I think it helped me think my way around problems - by the time I was 17 I was ranked in the top 50 students in the state. Unorthodox methods (I remember being kicked out of class for asking the proof of Pythagoras Theorem) and a couple of good teachers pushed me through the indifference barrier that these kids are stuck at (translated as "why should I always be studying ?").
I spent most of my life learning stuff - but I studied around 4 or 5 years. Too bad the world doesn't realize they need problem solvers of a practical nature - not guys who know calculus by heart.Let me quote Calvin here - They only teach stuff any fool can look up in a book .
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
The there's also the issue of student motivation to actually study in the first place. Unless you have an active and ongoing interest in a particular topic, you are usually not particularly motivated to study it.
Nobody at home forced me to take an interest in computers and electronics. Nobody gave me homework
You can only thrust so much work at kids, but the REAL learning starts happening when the kids start LEARNING FOR THEMSELVES and feel comfortable coming to the teacher with all sorts of difficult questions. Rather than the current top->down method of throwing facts around, hoping they stick, and asking the students questions they have no motivation to answer for themselves.
The main problem is, at a young age kids aren't motivated to want to slug away at homework... little do they realise that sooner or later their formative years are going to be gone and the workforce will be waiting for them. In a way I guess they have to be forced, but it is not the best way to learn IMHO.
All in all, teaching is not an easy job. Teaching kids to think, rather than giving them all the answers is tricky.
READY.
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The "amount" of homework means little when its content is trivial, and does not do anything but repeat something that should be obvious based on what is learned in class. Application of knowledge to a trivial task just doesn't do anything other than insult the student, however the application of the same to something even slightly challenging, is both useful for remembering the material, and good thinking practice in general.
Of course, making homework less of a mindless chore and more an exercise in thinking means that there will be always some students, who will be unable to complete it because of their insufficient abilities and poor motivation. My response for that will be, SCREW THEM! They won't get much good from a shitty homework, either, and if they are going to drag everyone down into the horrors of rote memorization, there is always a short bus for them, and decent education for the rest. Treating everyone like a retard, accomplishes nothing positive.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I agree totally with the findings. I've got three brothers, and three sisters. Teachers never understood -- and still don't understand -- the dangers of imposing that their students put more priority towards homework than towards family, relaxation, and social obligations.
A good first step would be for teachers who were "only childs" to take classes about the dynamics of life with siblings. That can lead to better curriculums with workloads that each student can adapt within the balance of their lifestyle.
"I am a fictional character."
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I honestly hope you never get your wish of removing homework from the curriculum.
I went through high school in the US, hating homework like everyone else. Then I moved to Europe for college and discovered what a blessing homework really is. Thing is, my university here has no homework, no papers, and maybe one or two projects in the semester (total, not per class), so your ENTIRE grade is based on a 4-hour usually-verbal exam.
I get 10 weeks of classes and recitations, during which I do jack sh*t in my free time. I then get 3 weeks off to study, which I desperately need, and then 3 weeks to take 6 exams. Let me tell you, those 6 weeks are the most stressful I've ever experienced - by the 4th week I'm usually mildly depressed due to stress.
That's the blessing of homework - it spreads the work out over the year. I'm not sure how you'd feel about this system, but I'd kill for some homework right about now... (I'm in the 3rd week - serious crunch time)
Jw
Some countries banned it, and I entirely agree, there should be no homework, just schoolwork. There's absolutely no rational reason why schoolwork must be done at home; children can learn just as well in school. In such countries the kids would do all their schoolwork before leaving school, or, if you must use the word "homework", they do their "homework" at school(!), and once they're out for the day, that's it, they can be kids, as they should be, free for the day, and free to enjoy their afternoons and evenings.
I still remember from my childhood the frustration of getting "homework" from 5 different teachers, each oblivious to the demands of others, and even when made aware, just simply doesn't care!
Homework belongs back to the days when corporal punishment was okay in school. Corporal punishment, and often collective punishment of an entire class, was easily abused, with no real evidence that it actually was of any benefit or necessity overall, and so is homework, a relic of a bygone era that still persists.
You have studies saying "but assigning more homework made no difference", then just looking through this thread you just see two dozen answers saying basically "hah! I didn't do any homework back when it was less of it. They can't make me do it. The teacher was soo funny getting all upset and foaming at the mouth about it."
/. article), having the genes to be a slightly asocial genius instead of an air-head chatterbox, is proposed as a reason for abortion. (Now I have nothing against abortion, but just saying that it's put on the same undesirability level as carrying the genese for some fatal diseases.)
Well, gee, maybe it's not homework that's causing the bad results, but _lack_ of actually _doing_ that homework. Yeah, I can see how the Japanese can do better on less homework... if they actually _do_ that homework and _study_ for it. Yeah, big surprise there, than someone on 1 hour a week of maths homework does better than someone who basically did _zero_ hours a week of maths homework.
Or what's the article's thrust? Basically "but some parents are too busy to help the kid with that homework." Well, gee, maybe it's the _kid_ that should learn how to do some work and study? Yeah, I can see how 2 hours of maths homework done by the _parent_ still leaves the kid behind someone who did only 1 hour of it, but did it personally.
Or in the article itself, "homework may not be cordially received, especially by parents of small children" or "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and memorization as intrusions into family time." So basically, forget even peer pressure from other kids. The message that the child gets even from the _parent_ is basically "oh, screw the homework, it's just getting in the way of other stuff you could do in that time."
Well, gee, maybe it's not the homework that's the problem. Maybe what they describe there is a massive cultural failure. It's a culture which basically discourages any attempt at personal responsibility, study, or academic results. A culture where being called "Einstein" in high school is actually an _insult_. A culture where (as reflected in another recent
Maybe _that_ is the real failure.
And blaming homework for the lack of results of people who _didn't_ do that homework... well, seems to me just bloody stupid.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
My experience in Japan directly contradicts this study. The high school students there got far more than 1 hour of math homework per week (which is what the study lists as the average.) Like Taiwan, they did spend a great deal of time in bushibans and their homework load was often what I considered excessive. My students (I taught mostly at a junior college) seemed to have their brains completely drained of creativity; when I told them to 'make something up' they'd look at me as if I had square eyeballs. I was able to coax creative ideas out of them, but free expression never happened. As far as turning in a 'rough draft' they were clueless. They'd write something once and be done.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
When I was in school, I hated homework and didn't do it. I was able to get straight A's on my tests from the lessons in class, so I felt that I didn't need to do hours of brainless, repetitive work at home.
The teachers' flawed reasoning was that it wasn't fair to the other students that I was able to get A's on tests without doing homework, while some of the other students had to work very hard to get C's.
Honestly, though, is that my fault? Should I be held accountable for the poor performance of the other students? My responsibility was to make sure that *I* learn and prove that I learned by passing the tests, which I did. And the other students' responsibility was to make sure that they learned the material and passed the tests. If they need to do more studying to get the grades, that's what they have to do... but it's not what I had to do.
There are plenty of things in this world that you could find offensive if you were that weak minded.
You can either act like a wilted flower and take offense at things as trivial as people's sigs, or you can be a (real) man and laugh at it.
And you know what... people don't do homework because the tests in the US are so fucking easy.
For my senior HS year, I went from an East European country, a pretty good high school, to a public HS in Wheeling, WV.
The tests were so formulaic, they were all multiple choice... the teachers practically gave you the questions before hand.
The problem with the US is that kids don't fear the tests... Tests should never be multiple choice. You should never tell kids precisely what'll be on it, down to each problem. Tell em one sentence: "it's what we covered in class, kids." Have essay questions for just about everything (not for math, but social sciences/history cannot be tested with punching holes in the paper). Have oral exams, for kids to understand that you cannot just barely know the material and give a convincing on-the-fly answer. You must *gasp* study for it! You have to own the material to do that!
Back to my point - it's not that kids don't fear failure, they do. But if they know they can't fail the class as long as they take the test, the motivation for studying will be minimal.
Tough love, you know.
Now, I know it's not like this in the entire country. There are tough, good high schools. But what I went through is what the "heartland" is learning. No wonder this country isn't leading shit anymore. Except in dropping bombs on people's heads, and being violent pricks overall.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
I would say that the perceived problem with homework in primary/middle/high schools in the USA stems not from the homework itself, but from the absurd amount of time students spend in classes. Homework allows students to work on subject by themselves, and to show that they understand the material, which is something that usually cannot be effectively done in lectures. But when students are compelled to spend around thirty to fourty hours a week in classes/lectures, they are often too exhausted to then go home and do hours of homework. Since homework is usually assigned every day in many classes, teachers are usually too busy to create useful homework assignments.
By contrast, most universities I know of have students take far fewer hours of classes, and professors usually give homework which, as it is not usually given out every day, can be better thought out. In this situation students spend more time studying and doing homework than in class, and are thus, in my opinion, able to understand the material better, since they are spending significant amounts of time working by themselves, which allows them to find out which concepts they do or do not understand. These things are much more difficult to do in class.
Most universities, at least in the USA, do not allow students to take 30 or 40 hours of classes a week without special permission. Most forms of employment do not entail the employee working full time and then going home and working for 2-4 more hours. The only explanation for the difference that I can think of would be that primary/secondary/high schools in the United States are not designed to teach, but instead to provide childcare for parents working full time, and to teach only as a secondary objective.