Homework: Does the gain merit the pain?

A couple in Canada took the issue of homework to the extreme when they went all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that there’s no evidence for the benefits of homework.  Interestingly, they won the case and their two children were exempted from school assigned homework.

The issue has lingered for a while.  How much of it is enough? How much of it is too much?  Should the homework be limited to some classes, because what’s the point of giving my 3-year old child homework if it’s the mother that ends up doing it for her? And the most important question of all: does it really help?  

Parents agonize about these questions and experts have too.  Among experts however, opinion is divided.  On one side are those who don’t put too much stock on the utility of homework and who nudge us to follow suit.

Then there are those researchers who have done extensive work on the subject and reported some significant insights. Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology at Duke University in the United States belongs to this group.

It’s surprising however to count the number of authors who have made little of homework. Although a 2006 study (by Cooper and colleagues) found a positive correlation between homework and high performance at school, other experts have also argued that homework can lead to negative attitudes about school, sleep disruption and stress. These books, “The End of Homework,” “The Homework Myth,” and “The Case Against Homework” appear to have an axe to grind against homework.  And when you throw in the film “Race to Nowhere,” you realize that those against homework   appear not to be in the minority.

Time.com reported about “The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas [which] went viral, earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.”

 Gerald K LeTendre and colleagues however have studied and shared some insights about the global trend on how much homework is assigned to students.  Interestingly, they found too much homework was common among low income countries: “If we step back from the heated debates about homework and look at how homework is used around the world,”  LeTendre  wrote for the Independent, “we find the highest homework loads are associated with countries that have lower incomes and higher social inequality.”

Using databases such as   Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), LeTendre found that in countries such as “Algeria, Kuwait and Morocco, more than one in five fourth graders reported high levels of homework. In Japan, less than 3% of students indicated they did more than four hours of homework on a normal school night.”

Interestingly, same data from TIMSS dismissed some stereotypes about some countries such as the Asian countries known for hardwork.  It would be expected that their students would be subjected to a good deal of homework, but LeTendre found that  “in East Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan – countries that had the top rankings on TIMSS average math achievement – reported rates of heavy homework that were below the international mean.”

But how much homework should the students do?  In America, there’s a guide on which the PTA and the National Education Association (NEA) are in agreement.  The guide is called “Helping Your Child Get the Most Out of Homework.” It states that, “Most educators agree that for children in grades K-2, homework is more effective when it does not exceed 10-20 minutes each day; older children, in grades 3-6, can handle 30-60 minutes a day; in junior and senior high, the amount of homework will vary by subject….”

This means that for every class, homework should be 10 minutes a day.  For instance if your child is in nursery one, the homework shouldn’t exceed 10 minutes.  If she is in nursery two, it shouldn’t exceed 20 minutes and so forth. We here in Nigeria may use this as a guide in directing how much homework we should assign instead of winging it.

Because this is a source of frustration for our parents.  Hajiya Amina Alhassan, the editor of Tambari and a mother, expressed her frustration on the magnitude of   work  her children bring home: “Here in Nigeria we don’t have a guide on how much homework we should give. Every teacher who comes into a class gives homework or a project.  The children also go to Islamiyya and come home with more work.  They end up having no time for rest.  Sometimes I just tell them to put it aside and go to bed.”

But the question of the advantage or lack of any benefits of homework still remains.  So Cooper and his colleagues checked out the evidence: “The homework question is best answered by comparing students who are assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students’ scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare,” Cooper stated in a blog for the Duke University.

But there are less authoritative studies which found positive correlations between homework and achievement; however this studies didn’t control for variables of students’ differences.  Many such studies usually are generated from national samples. 

“In 35 such studies,” Cooper wrote, “about 77 percent find the link between homework and achievement is positive. Most interesting, though, is these results suggest little or no relationship between homework and achievement for elementary school students.”

In conclusion, assign homework for students according to the age and the subject. In math for example, studies have reported positive correlation between homework and math achievement. However, for elementary school students, there is no strong evidence that homework helps them; so teachers shouldn’t swamp them with too much projects and homework.