
The long history of parents complaining about their kids’ homework - smacktoward
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/10/parents-complaining-about-homework-history.html
======
analog31
Describing it as parents "complaining" about homework trivializes our role as
the ultimate arbiters of our kids' best interests.

Evidence is sparse that _anything_ works in education, once you control for
social and personal characteristics of the parents.

~~~
dorchadas
This is, perhaps, the worst thing about teacher training programs. I'm a
teacher myself, high school math and science, and the classes I'm taking for
my masters are absolute bullcrap. Just lots of busy-work with ideas that have
been tested once, on a small group with demographics extremely different from
my school, and taken as gospel.

Not to mention that the classes are all geared towards elementary school
teachers and so are of absolutely no help at all to me. Then couple that with
elementary school teachers being generalists and often _hating_ math, yet
they're the ones we rely on to give these kids a good grounding in the
foundational stuff they'll need later on! No wonder most kids are incompetent
at it and can barely add/subtract/multiply/divide without a calculator.

Really, I think education should be an apprenticeship program, rather than an
educational one. Make it be like several years of student teaching, which
would get more results than anything else from new teachers. They can see how
experienced teachers work and really discuss it with them over the course of a
few years, not just pay to get told useless stuff and observe a semester.

~~~
analog31
Now you've experienced what school is like for bright kids. ;-)

For better or worse, the pay scale in most districts in the US guarantee a
salary bump for having a higher degree. As a result, there are degree programs
tailored to this need, that are practically degree mills. Why didn't you study
math, or science?

~~~
dorchadas
I dunno if it's as applicable, honestly. I was one of those bright kids that
never had to study in high school (or college, really), but I always felt like
there was at least some purpose to what I was learning, whether it was
math/science concepts or how to write better, etc. And it always at least felt
on solid grounding; education training is just a load of bullcrap that
supports what the teacher wants to hear and busywork. Hell, I even have one
masters class that has exit slips! In a _masters_ level course!

As for why I didn't study math or science -- I did. My actual undergraduate
degree is in physics; just due to various issues I ended up teaching (which I
admit I enjoy, even if I'm starting to get burnt out). Dunno if I'll stay
another year, at least where I'm currently at.

------
travisp
The biggest piece of data that speaks to me against hours of homework being
generally necessary for learning and academic success is homeschooling (at
least secular homeschooling). Many homeschooled children, especially pre-
middle school, have academic periods that last for a maximum of a couple of
hours. Yet, these children are able to integrate academically back into
traditional schools and excel.

I'm one of these kids: I was homeschooled for several grades due to my family
traveling, completed my lessons in just a couple of hours per day (sometimes
doing two lessons in one day so I could take the next day off). I successfully
transitioned to a regular high school (with plenty of homework), did great,
and went to one of the top and most difficult universities in the country
where I also did quite well. Even though I had hours of homework in high
school, I didn't seem to suffer from not having spent 10 hours a day in middle
school doing school plus homework. I wasn't "unprepared" or otherwise unable
to handle the suddenly significantly higher workload.

Of course, this isn't very scientific and this also doesn't prove that
homework isn't necessary in a traditional school, but it does suggest that
something is very wrong in traditional early education if hours of daily
homework are necessary on top of 8 hours of lessons to achieve similar
results.

~~~
shantly
Very small class sizes make a huge difference. Homeschooling (usually)
involves a very small effective class size. Lessons can be very carefully
tailored, the teacher can change the course of a lesson entirely on a dime if
the kid or small set of kids need them to, the pace is better tuned for each
student, and so on.

AFAIK most prestigious private schools have much smaller class sizes than
public schools, and that's not for no reason. 18-25 kids in a class means you
can only give each kid maybe two minutes of individual attention an hour, and
maybe less. Practically every single thing is harder for the teacher (except
getting kids to participate in discussion, but that's likely a
socialization/norms thing—I doubt kids used to small classes clam up the way
kids used to 20+ kid classrooms do when they happen to be in a small class for
some reason) and worse for the kids.

~~~
travisp
Homeschooling is a small effective class size, but my parents were by no means
wonderful teachers (even though they are wonderful people). For homeschooling
during 6th and 7th grades, I mostly used the purchased curriculum books myself
without significant involvement from them. On a typical day, I probably
received less instruction from my parents than a student in a regular
classroom (sometimes no instruction).

It seems crazy to me that I was able to complete an entire days worth of
lessons this way in the amount of time most 6th and 7th graders spend on
homework alone.

Regardless, suppose studies were to show that adding hours of homework was
necessary for students to be successful academically (and as far as I know
they don't show this). Rather than deciding to destroy our children's free and
unstructured time with homework, why don't we figure out how to change school
so that this homework isn't necessary? It's clearly _possible_ to generate
well-educated and competitive children with significantly fewer hours of
education per day. The homework is just a bandaid for something that isn't
working (and probably not even as effective as a bandaid).

~~~
shantly
If you're self-pacing then you don't have to waste time covering material
you've already mastered or banging your head against material you're not ready
for yet because you're missing fundamentals. If you're much ahead of or behind
average then that can be _a ton_ of time—most of your day, even—lost to waste
there. Not productively repeating material to attain mastery, I mean, but
stuff like taking four weeks to cover a math concept or technique that you
could easily have completely understood and internalized in the first week,
then moved on to using it in more complex work, if it'd all been presented to
you that quickly.

Probably 10% of the school day's moving around or preparing to move around or
settling down from having moved around, or recess or otherwise not-learning
(not to shit on recess—I wish they'd give kids more time for it in lower
grades). Another 10-15% is stuff you might not consider part of your "school
day" if you're homeschooling (PE, music, library visits, "specials") or
nonsense you don't have to worry about (assemblies). So there's maybe a
quarter of the day accounted for with _no_ allowances for faster and/or
better-tuned pacing or more personalized instruction—poof, 90ish minutes of
your day back, 180ish days a year, for 13 years, like magic. Self-pacing you
fit it all that remains in 2 or 2.5 hrs, don't need more than minimal breaks
so there's minimal padding to that time, and the rest of the day's yours.

Public school's _alarmingly_ wasteful of children's time, but saves parents a
ton of time, collectively, in exchange.

------
vegetablepotpie
When I was in college I would zone out in lecture and wait till I got home to
do the homework because I was being graded on homework and exams, not how well
I paid attention in class. Now I zone out in meetings because I don’t think
they’re important and pine for the moment when I can go back to my desk and do
my individual work. Homework trained me to behave disconnected, I don’t known
if it has stuck with me because I’ve been able to get away with it or because
paying attention in meetings is unnecessary.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
I have to give the "flipped classroom" model some credit: doing the "homework"
IN "lecture", collaboratively and interactively, and having free time at home
sure feels better than the conventional model.

The conventional one always seemed absurd to me: I have to go to school and
then _continue_ being in school, mentally, AFTER school? Disassociation aside,
it seems like that's training you for a 16-hour workday. How oppressive.

Maybe the flipped model can only support a lower cognitive ceiling though;
I've never seen it applied to, say, calculus courses. Maybe hard enough
material _does_ require constant, oppressive grinding. D: (Not that young kids
should be doing that though.)

~~~
vector_spaces
I had an incredible calc 1 and 3 teacher who would start the class with a
problem that we'd work on for 20ish minutes. usually it was something just out
of reach with where we were topically, or something that required us to use
like basic geometry (which many of us were rusty on), and then we'd talk about
it, ask questions, and he'd segue into a lecture where he'd connect the dots
with what we were studying. I vaguely remember one was essentially to prove
herons rule which we only had the tools to do from vanilla geometry, then he
showed how it could be done with calculus.

Lectures were almost Socratic. We were only graded based on exams and
participation, which I think he kind of arbitrarily awarded based on how
engaged he thought you were.

Brilliant guy, loved his classes. He'd studied under a couple members of the
Bourbaki group and headed the math department at one of the top math schools
in Latin America.

Anyway, I had a great experience with this approach and I really think it's
the best way to teach math.

~~~
nsriv
I currently teach high school math and have been trying a similar approach,
and received push back from every experienced educator I've encountered, but
have been receiving great reviews from students (especially ones that have low
math confidence). This post was really encouraging to me, thanks for sharing!

~~~
grawprog
The best math teacher I ever had throughout all my schooling structured
lessons that way. There'd be an introduction to a new topic, with problems
we'd get a chance to work through alone then aftwards we'd all go through them
together. That was pretty much the extent of the lecture part. Then we'd get
an exercise to work on for the last half of the class that covered what we
learned. The teacher was always extremely patient and would help everyone who
needed it. Sometimes explaining the same thing over and over to different
people without ever becoming frustrated. There was optional(but highly
encouraged) homework if we wanted more practice. The teacher would be
available for an additional tutoring session to work on the optional homework
if people wanted it. We weren't graded on it. All our marks came from exams.

That class was really the first time a lot of concepts actually started to
make sense for me and I went from being a pretty below average math student to
having some of the highest marks in the class.

------
daxfohl
I don't know, I'm in a very international neighborhood and kids of immigrants
are all spending extra time doing extra homework, and they have a near
monopoly on the top scorers. So it obviously pays off. I don't know whether
the argument against homework then is that it doesn't pay off in the long run
(losing interest -- which my workplace is also very international and I see no
indication of lost interest in learning), or that _assigned_ homework doesn't
help but maybe private after-school classes do, or what, but I don't see any
way you can make an argument that "just school" is enough if you want your
kids to keep up.

~~~
throwahomework
Part of my job is hiring out for high performing teams. What I've noticed from
100s of candidates is that the high achieving kids of immigrants do well in
university as well as school. However when faced with real world challenges,
the more well rounded candidates (of which a large portion are the immigrants
kids for sure) definitely produce the highest value in their work (orthogonal
problem solving and communication). Hard to be well rounded when you're just
doing a narrow set of training exercises after school. After school is for
life

~~~
rb808
One problem with that is a well rounded candidates who dont get the best
scores wont get entry into the best universities so will always be
disadvantaged.

~~~
ims
There are hundreds if not thousands of schools where a well rounded student
can get a great education. Some parents and high schoolers fret about
attending the top ten or so name brand universities far in excess of any
plausible difference in educational or life outcomes.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Yeah, I was about to say that too. I went to a no-name state school in the
south. Now the young guys from cmu and other top schools work for me, I'm an
engineering director. Certainly cmu is training top grads, but ... so are most
state schools too. Certainly I was lucky and worked hard, but other than a
star by your name if you went to a posh school, once you have a few years of
experience it's not that valuable to be from cmu. What you do with yourself is
far more important.

------
mikhailfranco
Homework (and education in general) is a classic arms race, which produces an
enormous waste of time and resources. Teachers hate it too.

Humans are not meant to be happy, but to survive. Only the paranoid do. We
have to fight back when others are prepared to destroy their lives to compete.
There will be no respite until the demographics change, and there is an
educational economy of abundant opportunity, not scarcity and existential
threat. Ironically, the emancipation and education of women is the only way to
achieve this outcome.

When I was young (11-18) I did an insane amount of studying and other
activities: private school, 6-day school week, Sat am lessons, 1hr each-way
commute, 2-3hr homework per night, Tue pm military cadets, Mon&Thur sports
training, Wed&Sat pm school sports matches, Sun county/region sport; school
holidays included homework assignments, exam revision, military camps,
expeditions, then pre-season sports camps; summer holidays would include part-
time jobs, some retail and delivery gigs, but mostly farming and harvesting.

If you live in some parts of Asia, there are no school-age children to be seen
on the streets, or in the shopping malls - they are all busy doing something
all the time. There are education-malls filled with small outlets providing
tutoring and lessons for every subject, from English, to math and piano.

I was recently looking at some business analysis for a traffic management
project, including patterns of congestion. One comment was _"... the school
buses start to build-up at 04:30-05:00 ..."_.

Luckily, kids are very resilient.

~~~
blub
I don't see how "the emancipation and education of women" will work towards
"abundant opportunity, not scarcity and existential threat".

If anything, the entry of women on the job market decades ago increased the
supply side of the equation and competition. And whereas before one working
adult could provide for a family, now it takes both of the adults working to
provide for the same family.

~~~
mikhailfranco
I agree with your comment about women entering the workforce (note that I said
_ironically_ ). It's another good example of an arms race. The equilibrium
with just men working was unstable. As soon as some women start to work, the
cost of property in particular starts to rise, then other women are forced to
work to afford a mortgage.

(Property is often the constrained resource in the system, which means it
captures most of the value from any beneficial change in the economy - e.g.
_SV startups are ways for geeks to work hard transferring money from VCs to
landlords_ ).

However, liberation of women from the home is a goal in itself, and part of
the long run solution. When women are emancipated, legally and socially, with
access to contraception and education, in a society with a base level of
utilities and appliances in the home (or village), and just enough of a
welfare system to ensure that children are not seen as a pension policy, then
progress can be made towards the sunlit uplands.

------
mncharity
Feelings about homework might have non-obvious broader impacts.

Science education content is wretched. Current reform efforts like Common Core
and NGSS barely scratch the surface. But still there's a lot of community
opposition. Years ago, I had a long conversation with an anti-Core activist,
exploring their perspective. It seemed their root cause was their child had
found some Core-ish class too hard, and notably here, its homework. And thus a
movement gained an activist, trying to prevent other children from suffering
similarly. With science education reform as collateral damage.

Which isn't to say that current homework isn't as wretched as the underlying
content and pedagogy.

------
curiouscats
The Truth About Homework Needless Assignments Persist Because of Widespread
Misconceptions About Learning By Alfie Kohn
[https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/truth-
homework/](https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/truth-homework/)

Research-Based Guidelines for Homework
[https://effectiveforall.blogspot.com/2019/06/4-research-
base...](https://effectiveforall.blogspot.com/2019/06/4-research-based-
guidelines-for-homework.html)

------
bsder
While parents whining about homework isn't new, what _is_ new is research
beginning to pile up that homework doesn't help below a certain age.

I am, quite rightly I think, skeptical about most educational "research"
(remember "new math"\--aka set theory?). However, educational research has
gotten much better. And there are starting to be consensus answers that
conventional psychological research seems to bear out that educational systems
simply ignore.

What worked to create human inputs to an assembly line may be quite suboptimal
for creating humans capable of functioning in a knowledge-based economy.

~~~
sjg007
I do think homework helps but it should be once a week (maybe it is) and it
should be something assigned on say Monday and due the next Monday so you have
the weekend if you need it. You should also have opportunities in school to
actually do the homework.. maybe homeroom was supposed to be where this was
done? I also had kids in homeroom who had no interest in doing homework so it
was more of a social hour. Or a zero period which doesn't necessarily have to
be in the morning. Or there should be opportunities to do the homework in
class. Homework should be more like work.. project based..

------
duxup
I complained.

My kids would come home with multiple worksheets to do every night starting in
1st grade. Potentially a good hour or more of work depending on the child.

My understanding is the type of work they send home has not shown to be
beneficial based on my wife's graduate work in early childhood education.

Fortunately the school district saw it that way too and such homework was no
longer counted as far as grading goes in the early grades.

------
oh_sigh
I just didn't do my homework and teachers didn't care because my grades were
excellent and I was active in class.

~~~
saagarjha
How did you manage to keep your grades excellent without doing your homework?!

~~~
toast0
I had several teachers in high school and college who would do things like
homework could give you about a 10% boost in your grade (eg, from a C to a B),
or you could just take your test scores. One class I vividly remember after
every quiz/test the teacher would say something like "OK people, I'd like to
tell you that you need to do your homework, so you can do well on the quizes,
but [toast0] got the best score in the class, and didn't turn in any homework,
so I can't; the rest of you, should do your homework though." That was high
school chem; I did read the assigned texts, but I didn't bother to do most of
the homework, because it was very repetitive, and I was doing just fine as-is;
I can't remember if I would turn in the couple of problems I did do, or not
even bother to write them down.

------
yummypaint
There needs to be distinction between different types of homework. Most people
probably envision worksheets, problem sets, and book summaries. These sorts of
"busy work" are rightfully derided by activists and commenters in this thread.

However, my experience has been that more open-ended project-based learning is
quite different. Things like science fair projects, making videos, and
independently implementing math from class on programmable calculators engage
students differently. Most students don't connect with every project, but it's
a good way to feel out people's passions and harness them. When the student
has agency in setting a concrete goal and deciding the specifics of how they
spend their time, the material they are learning becomes a valued tool that
saves them time and effort, rather than something being shoved down their
throat.

I used to despise everything related to math because the curriculum kept it
segregated from other disciplines, thus hiding it's utility. It wasn't until I
was playing around with 3D modeling software for an art project that I really
understood how useful trigonometry is. There is something psychological at
play that makes it easier to learn something when it isn't the main focus of
the activity, but a supporting element needed to achieve a self-defined goal.

~~~
daxfohl
Everybody is different. I never cared for rote but never cared for project
oriented learning either. For me the preferable thing would be to skip all the
busy work problems and go straight for the challenge problems. But most of my
teachers graded such that challenge problems only counted if you did well
enough on the busy work as well.

------
jp57
As a parent from an educated family, whose own parents surely never complained
about my or my siblings' homework, I was surprised to see how much other
parents complain about homework.

It is a hard subject even to discuss because it is always approached as if
homework requirements are, and should be, the same for students of all ages,
even though nobody really expects it to be so. Nobody (in the USA anyway)
expects children attending pre-school programs to get homework. At the same
time, it's preposterous to think that university students would learn
everything inside the classroom. So, sometime between pre-school and
university, students should probably start getting homework. One possibility
would be to start with a little and gradually increase the amount of outside
work required. Then, however, you open the door to questions of how much and
how soon, and everyone will have a different opinion.

One of the problems is that many people seem to conceive of education of
children like filling a vessel: the students sit passively while the teacher
fills their minds with knowledge through their eyes and ears. In fact, the
most important things kids learn in school are skills, and the process is not
unlike learning to play a sport or a musical instrument. As with all skill
learning, practice is _required_. The important basic skills (e.g. "reading,
writing, and arithmetic") especially need practice, and so do meta-skills like
"how do I track and prioritize tasks that may not be due for days or weeks?"
Also, work like reading, writing papers, and solving math problems can be done
without the teacher present, so it's not a particularly good use of limited
resources to ask the students to do that work when the teacher is present.

I find it ironic that many of the parents I know who complain about their
students' homework load would blink not an eye at sending their kids to
football, soccer, swimming, gymnastics, cheerleading, or whatever sports
practice for hours every week, knowing that the kids have to practice "if
they're gonna be any good."

------
boomboomsubban
I wonder if the fifteen year cycle is impacted by students of the past
generation rejecting what they faced moving on to positions of influence.

~~~
smacktoward
You've just proposed something very much like the Strauss-Howe generational
theory:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory)

~~~
boomboomsubban
The only real similarity is that both involve cycles. I'm guessing that both
parents and educators routinely hated school as children, so pushed strongly
in the other direction as adults. The timing is similar to the fifteen year
period described.

------
whenchamenia
Homework is crap. Let learning stay at school. Families are busy, have things
to do. The complaints are obvious.

