I’m surprised by how many kids, sometimes little kids, have told me some version of this: “My school is great. They give us lots of homework. It’s really challenging.” I’ve been amazed by how darn enthusiastic they appear that their teachers assign them a large volume of homework.
Of course, this may be my own particular little problem because I’m so vocal about our local public schools. Perhaps parents who’ve sent their kids elsewhere in my little community, aware of my views about public ed, may coach their now private school kids about how to talk to “bad, crazy old Mr. Warnock, the guy who writes this terrible and seldom-read blog.”
Because no way a little kid walks around crowing about homework – almost carrying the weight as a badge of honor — without some parental coaxing. In seeking to justify high-priced educational expenditures, people will do almost anything in the absence of tangible outcomes (remember, make sure you adjust those test scores to account for family income) to show they’ve made the right choice. So lots of homework it is: That’s something we can measure, even if we have to do so in cubic feet or pounds!
It’s kind of like saying someone is a good coach simply because her players do more push-ups or lunges or something. “How was practice, junior?” says dad. Junior, hobbling, bleeding podiatrically, says, “Coach made us run 25 miles.” Dad, beaming: “Ah, now that’s what I like to hear.”
I love the little K-8 school my kids attend, Riverton [1]. I’m also on the school board. The school has a highly competitive academic culture. The school appears to encourage inquisitiveness. The teachers and administration are committed to helping children learn in creative, supportive ways. I am around the kids in that school a lot. I talk to them. They’re smart. For those who aren’t satisfied with this touchy-feely stuff, I must mention that our test scores tend to be among the highest in the area every year.
So you get the context: It’s a good school. Yet (is “yet” even the correct word here?), over and over again at parent-teacher and back-to-school nights, the teachers have said something like this to us parents: “I’m not going to give a lot of homework.” One of my favorite lines: “I don’t require a ton of homework. I’ve graded enough of the volcanoes you’ve made.” The children work hard for 7+ hours with skilled professional educators and get a little reinforcing material in the evenings. They get to play (!) after school and go to bed at a decent hour. It works extremely well.
In a recent Atlantic article (I’ve been stalking the Atlantic even more than normal lately), writer Karl Taro Greenfeld describes a week of doing his daughter’s homework [2]. He’s blown away by how much she does, although it seems like it’s one of those type of schools, based on his description of the school and some of its parents. He’s more stunned by how useless so much of the homework is. His daughter, of course, has figured it all out, and coaches him through with the mantra “memorization, not rationalization.”
Lots of factors are likely driving this spike in gross homework hours. Standardized testing is a culprit, no surprise. But parents who crow about a school’s value based on volume of work are to blame too. I’m happy as can be about Riverton, because I realize there is no consistent correlation between lots of homework and a good learning experience. Some difficult courses may require significant supplementary work, but you don’t automatically increase a course’s challenge/intellectual reward/value/difficulty simply by assigning another chapter in the textbook each week.
In Greenfeld’s article, some parents like the homework deluge. Maybe seeing their kids being beaten by The Homework Club helps them sleep at night when they start to contemplate their school choices. If we buy into the lots-of-homework mindset, we deserve to spend every morning fighting with exhausted, teary kids.
We are not lagging behind some countries academically (all measured by tests, by the way) because our kids don’t do enough homework. If we’re all scared about that, then our insecurities will let us to continue to beat our kids with The Homework Club. With every stroke of the maul, we’ll be salving our own educational insecurities.
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[5]Scott Warnock [6]
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