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I don't feel my kids are over burdened with homework. Homework helps them perfect what they learned at school. It also gives me an opportunity to see what they are learning. Repetitive multiplication/division helps a child memorize the facts as well as complete the problems quicker. Reading is very important. I make sure my kids spend a minimum of 20 minutes before lights out to read.
My son gets one page of math on Monday that is due on Friday. He sometimes gets a reading assignment that is also due on Friday. He spends only 15 minutes a day on homework. He calculates how many questions there are and divides it by 4 days so each night he does x number or problems. He gets off the bus at 4:30. He is 9. He has one activity a week. My daughter is 11 and she has LESS homework. She has two activities a week. She gets off the bus at 4:45pm. When she DOES have homework it will take her an hour because it's usually a project. She has had only 3 projects this school year. She has weekly Caesars English tests and it usually takes her 5 minutes to study. She does it in bed before she reads. My daughter is able to complete her math homework at school. So it's rare for her to bring that home. She has an occasional history test to study for and we do that together in bed for 30 minutes or so. I quiz her until she answers all the wrong answers correctly. They are A students.
I hear about these schools over loading kids with homework but we have yet to experience this. We moved every two years and my kids have been to 4 different schools.
The things that amazes me is people continues to compare "back in the days". We live in a different world today. Learning isn't the same anymore. There are ways/method that can be taken from the past and there is the future as well. This is where one may think that they can educate their kids better than school fails. Don't get me wrong... there are some who can do home schooling and do it well but the majority of parents that can educate their kids better than an average or above average school system? I doubt that.
When I went to school, everyone just copied the nerdy kid's homework the morning before class. I couldn't be bothered with busy work after sitting in class for 7 hours. I needed to play video games. Homework is unnecessary. If you feel like you don't understand a concept, you can just go look for practice problems in the text book on your own time. Making the academically gifted kids like me suffer through busy work is horrible.
It can teach kids discipline and mental endurance, but at the end of the day, an 8 year old should be having fun playing sports, kissing girls, causing mischief etc... You only get to be a kid once.
I've homeschooled my boys their whole lives. It is pretty easy to teach one elementary school aged child all they need to know in 2 hours plus taking advantage of educational opportunities during the other hours instead of playing video games or something. It is, in my opinion, impossible to teach 20-30 of them in the same time period though, and that's what the teachers have to do.
There is a TON of wasted time during the average school day for bright kids who understand quickly. They shouldn't have to do homework because they have already learned whatever the subject is.
Less bright children don't get enough time to understand and doing homework can give them the extra practice they need IF they understand what they're doing. If they don't, then it's not going to help either.
But... we can't tailor-fit the educational system for every kid. (Which stinks in my opinion.) And since homework will hurt the bright kids less than lack of practice will hurt the less bright kids, it probably should be here to stay.
I've had the same experience as Murk. Once my homeschooled kids understand a topic, they move on. Schoolwork is done in a few hours each day, but that's not really possible in a school situation.
for elementary school, a common rule of thumb is 10 minutes per night per grade level. So first grade gets 10 minutes a day, 5th grade gets 50 minutes. That seems reasonable and appropriate to me although my son has always finished faster than that.
I think he's in for a rude awakening next year when he starts middle school though - we've been told to expect 90 to 120 minutes a day. But this is a charter school with some pretty intense standards so at least we were in a position to know this going in and we could have chosen a different school if this was their right fit for my child/our family.
I am all for academic excellence, but here is the situation.
Kids spend about 7 to 8 hours in school, and they sleep for about 8 hours which leaves them with about 8 hours to live their lives.
They come home at about 4:00 PM, and practically have about 5 hours to eat, do homework, relax a little, play, take shower, and spend a little time with family before hitting the bed.
And here is my issue,
We can teach them in 2 hours at home what the school can't teach them in 7 hours. So how effective are the schools?
If they take 7 hours from our kids, they better do a good enough job that there shouldn't be a need of any home work.
Our kids are almost having a 40 hours work week routine at school as we adults have with our jobs. Do the kids have any life? There is just SOOO MUCH of homework !! They don't even have time to play.
Homework is a lazy way for teachers to ensure their students learn. K-6 is an unproductive mess, with basic education left to the parents.
Worse still is that much of the homework given is low quality work that does not add to the child's knowledge base. the works purchased by the schools are extremely poorly written, so much so that state mandated tests have questions with no true correct answer because when parsed the wording could mean almost anything the reader wishes it to.
The answer is simple, much shorter days, or much less homework. As it stands children are losing their childhoods to homework and parents who over schedule. If it were not for the law and the socialization aspects of school I would home school my kids and let them run unfettered for most of the day.
I should add that the vested interests will block change until the entire system falls under its own weight, but I would not hold my breath the monies involved ensure the system will out last my generation.
I don't like traditional homework. I think projects with a presentation element are a much better way to learn and remember things.
That being said;For some things like math/science working out problems is the best way to.
Elementary schoolers really shouldn't have too much homework besides some free-reading.
In elementary school, I think math practice is essential but not more than ten minutes or so, and that was pretty much the rule at the elementary school my children attended. They had twenty minutes of reading and a set of math review problems each evening. Rarely did homework take more than thirty minutes, except for third grade when my youngest was stuck with the teacher from hell, but that's a story for another time. By fifth grade, I expected about an hour give or take, because there was significantly more independent writing and the intermittent project. Middle school was about the same until eighth grade, when things really ramped up. The work load was more demanding than in elementary school, but the kids had an integrated study hall, so much of it was done before they got home. High school is a category unto itself, especially junior year. The homework never stops. It's a multi-hour ordeal every night, but that's mostly by choice.
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