New study proves that giving elementary children homework does not make them smarter, it only makes them hate school.

Courtesy of Salon: 

“There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students.” 

This statement, by homework research guru Harris Cooper, of Duke University, is startling to hear, no matter which side of the homework debate you’re on. Can it be true that the hours of lost playtime, power struggles and tears are all for naught? That millions of families go through a nightly ritual that doesn’t help? Homework is such an accepted practice, it’s hard for most adults to even question its value. 

When you look at the facts, however, here’s what you find: Homework has benefits, but its benefits are age dependent. 

For elementary-aged children, research suggests that studying in class gets superior learning results, while extra schoolwork at home is just . . . extra work. Even in middle school, the relationship between homework and academic success is minimal at best. By the time kids reach high school, homework provides academic benefit, but only in moderation. More than two hours per night is the limit. After that amount, the benefits taper off. “The research is very clear,” agrees Etta Kralovec, education professor at the University of Arizona. “There’s no benefit at the elementary school level.” 

Before going further, let’s dispel the myth that these research results are due to a handful of poorly constructed studies. In fact, it’s the opposite. Cooper compiled 120 studies in 1989 and another 60 studies in 2006. This comprehensive analysis of multiple research studies found no evidence of academic benefit at the elementary level. It did, however, find a negative impact on children’s attitudes toward school.

I have sat down to help children with homework more times than I can count. 

Not just with my daughter, or my step kids, but with other people's children, and most often children with learning disabilities. 

For that reason, though I disliked homework as a child, I hate it as an adult.

Especially when it interferes in a child's ability to learn the most important lesson they need to learn, how to be a child.

Yes children need to learn, but the best way for them to learn is to allow them to run, and jump, and play.

Allowing the release of their pent up energy is the best way to get their attention in the classroom.

And yet today we see schools cutting out recess, taking time away from lunch, and doubling down on homework assignments.

That does not create well educated, well rounded adults. That creates mindless cogs in a machine.

And mindless cogs do not write symphonies, create new technologies, or move this country forward.

Yes education is broken in this country.

But do you know who broke it?

The people who keep saying they are trying to fix it.

New book claims that homework is a total waste of time. Aha! I knew it!

Courtesy of The Local: 

“I found out that teachers have been giving homework since at least 1480,” Himmelrath, an educational journalist, told The Local. 

“And there has also been research into its effects on children for the last 130 years. And in all this research I found no results which showed that it had a positive effect on them.” 

On the contrary, if his research showed any overall result, it was that children would go into school the next day unmotivated and reluctant to learn after spending the evening doing homework. 

“In the Swiss canton of Schwyz teachers didn’t give out homework at all between 1993 and 1999. Then, due to pressure from conservative parents it was then reintroduced. 

“But a comparison with a neighbouring canton showed that there was no difference between the grades in the two cantons during this period. 

"The only difference was that in Schwyz the children were much more motivated in class,” Himmelrath related.

I have been making this claim for years.

As a parent, both biological and step, I have engaged in numerous homework battles with the kids.

I have restricted privileges, set aside special time for the work, and of course sat down with them to help with a subject that I was often under qualified to teach.

It's fairly easy in the elementary grades, but once you get to high school the subjects can be pretty challenging, especially if the student claims to have no idea what the teacher is asking on the homework assignment.

And today kids sometimes have up to four hours of homework a night, and THAT is supposed to be accomplished along with any extracurricular school activities or sports they may be involved with.

It is impossible for many kids, even with very involved parents at home.

And yes that often results in kids not liking school as well as souring them on the idea of furthering their education after high school.

So I have no idea if this book is going to change any minds in the education field here in America or elsewhere, but in my opinion it certainly should.

In the world of Fox News a reduction in homework clearly shows that teachers are trying to hide something from parents.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted over the weekend that American teachers were assigning less homework because they were lazy union members and wanted to hide the curriculum from parents. 

During the Sunday edition of Fox & Friends, Carlson noted that many schools had argued that students should spend time in the evenings with their families. 

“But is this really about the kids or could it be a move by teachers unions to get teachers to do less work for, of course, the same pay?” he asked Whitney Neal, a former teacher with the Koch brothers-funded Bill of Rights Institute. 

“That’s a great suspicion,” Neal agreed. “As much as we don’t want to look at teachers that way as wanting to eliminate the amount of work they have to do, I almost think this is more of a ploy to keep parents out of the classroom, to limit the involvement parents have on what’s going on with teachers. Because if kids aren’t bringing home homework, the parents don’t really know what’s going on.” 

“That is exactly right!” Carlson exclaimed. “It’s a window for me, I think for all parents into what our kids are learning in the classroom. You can see it… So this is a way — another way to disenfranchise parents, you think?”

Wait, what?

How poorly must you think of public education to believe that reducing the amount of homework is some subversive attempt to hide class work from parents?

Does Carlson not believe that the children will show their parents completed assignments? Or bring a textbook home to study for an upcoming test? Or just talk about what they learned that day in the classroom?

Personally I have long been an advocate of less homework, which in recent years has reached levels that are almost insurmountable for young children.

I have worked with more than one teenager who has so much homework that they quite literally have no time for extra curricular activities or to spend significant time with family members during the weekdays.  

Of all of the terrible things that Fox News has introduced to this country, this vilification of teachers and undermining of our public education system may just about be the worst.

And it is dong incredible damage to the future of this nation.