Homework: Policy, Implications, and Alternatives

Hi, educator here.

Traditional educator wisdom regarding homework views the latter as inherently beneficial, necessary for learning, and a sort of necessary evil, as it were. This explains why homework is very popular with practically all teachers; the schools encourage it, as well as provide the resources for assigning it, teachers are taught of its necessity in college or at least believe in its necessity from having experienced it for 12 years of formal school; student complaints about homework are ignored, on count of the notion that their complaints are invalid, etc. Homework is a highly pervasive practice, most teachers assign it and more students receive it.

But is this traditional educator wisdom correct? Is homework inherently beneficial, necessary for learning, and a sort of necessary evil?

Well, the answers to all of these questions becomes a very clear and unequivocal no, and we’ll investigate why. I would like to preface this discussion on the efficacy of homework with a simple assumption that I believe we can all agree with: We, as educators and education policy makers, ought to act in ways that benefit students the most. What does benefit mean in this context? Benefit means the improvement of one’s physiological and psychological well-being and development, as well as one’s intellectual and academic development. Everything we do in our schools should be geared towards what improves the well-being of our students the most. If what we do does not help our students, it shouldn’t be done. I think we can all agree with that.

And what things actually improve of student’s well-being? Well, this is actually very easy to answer. Students need to have a learning environment where they feel safe and free, not unsafe and restricted. This is because human beings have an inherent need to exercise personal autonomy [1]. Students also need to have a learning experience that permits the building of strong personal relationships, either with their teachers or their peers; this is because human beings have an inherent need to form personal relationships [2]. And lastly, students need to have a learning experience that allows them to become good at things they are passionate about or are interested in; this is because all human beings have an inherent need to be good at something, and because all humans, at least when they’re born, have an inherent desire to learn driven by a natural curiosity [3a, 3b].

So, does homework benefit student well-being? Well, no, obviously not. Homework interferes with student autonomy massively, because homework takes up significant portions of their time. According to a survey done by the University of Phoenix College of Education, as reported by http://USNews.com, “The survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers found, among other things, that high school teachers on average assign about 3.5 hours of homework each week. For high school students who typically have five classes with different teachers, that could mean as much as 17.5 hours each week. By comparison, the survey found middle school teachers assign about 3.2 hours of homework each week and kindergarten through fifth grade teachers assign about 2.9 hours each week” [4].

In any capacity, 3.5 hours of homework per week, is 30 minutes of homework per day, at least for our high school students. 30 minutes per day, despite being a relatively short period of time, is still a period of time being spent on something student’s don’t want to do. That’s enough time to go outside and bike, or talk with friends, or draw, or watch Netflix, or research something fun, or spent time with family, or just enjoy your life. Remember what I said earlier about student well-being? Well, being able to do all of those things at their leisure would improve student well-being. Why, you may ask? Well, it’s not just because those things are enjoyable in and of themselves, but it is because of the fundamental autonomy piece that I mentioned earlier. Students being able to freely decide how to best spend their time IS exercising personal autonomy, and exercising that personal autonomy is GOOD for them, as in, it is good for their well-being. School should not come at the expense of a student’s personal life. School should ENHANCE a student’s personal life, not subtract from it. We should not ask our students to sacrifice their time for something they don’t care about when they could be actually enjoying their lives. So whether students spent 30 minutes doing homework per day, or 3 hours per day, ANY amount is unacceptable.

But what about academic benefits? Doesn’t homework help students academically? Well, this is a mixed bag. “Too much homework” at least according to researchers on the topic, can come at the direct expense of student well-being and engagement, as too much homework means less time to spent with loved ones, more stress and pressure, especially regarding grades and deadlines, as well as less time to sleep, eat, and rest [5]. As I’ve mentioned earlier, even homework in moderate amounts is still unacceptable just on the count of violating student autonomy in a way that doesn’t benefit the students. I have read research [6] stating that homework in moderate and age-appropriate amounts benefits students to some capacity or another, but there is a LOT of criticism of that research [7]. For one, some countries that perform academically well, such as Japan, Finland, South Korea, etc., have relatively low amounts of homework anyway [8]. And this is of course excluding some of the methodological errors that some researchers have identified with that contemporary homework research. The book I recommend most on this subject is Alfie Kohn’s The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing [9]. It’s a go-to read at how homework stifles creativity, interest in learning, curiosity, or just enjoyment with school itself.

Lemme ask you something. The things you are interested in or are curious about. If you were curious about how to design a computer, would you enjoy following that curiosity more if you were given a whole textbook of problems regarding computer design to complete in one night and if you did not do it, you would endure academic consequences, annoyed parents, and possibly disciplinary action? If you were interested in learning about cheesemaking, would you rather be able to freely decide when and what you learn in that regard, and the manner by which you will do so, or would you rather be assigned a 10-page essay on how to make cheese that’s due in a week, and if you don’t do it you lose 10% of your grade and might fail the class? Like, you’re not stupid, you KNOW what you would prefer in that situation.

As I believe very strongly, people don’t need to be forced to learn, people just need to be given the opportunity, the environment, the encouragement, AND the free rein to do so. You don’t need homework to get people engaged in your class, you need curiosity and student autonomy. People think critically about the things that are intrinsically interesting to them. People don’t think critically about things that are forced onto them. So it makes no sense to me, as an educator, that we would stifle our student’s curiosity in such an unnecessary and preventable way. So, to answer the second question, homework is absolutely not necessary for learning. People seem to learn how to walk, talk, play video games, follow social customs, find things online, make Minecraft worlds, memorize sports teams, and all that jazz without any sort of homework or coercion necessary. So why can’t school be the same? Why can’t our school subjects be the same? Those are trick questions, they CAN be. Homework is not a necessary evil, it’s just an evil my guy.

So, what AM I advocating for, moving forward? We teachers should aim to assign no homework, or the least amount we possibly can. We should encourage our students to follow their passions and reward their natural curiosity. We should help provide links between what students are meant to learn in class and what students actually care about. We should give students as much control as possible over their own learning. And as education policy-makers, we should prioritize the abolition of homework, center student autonomy in the construction of school policy, courseloads, and the like, and move towards the abolition of schools as we know it.

That is all. Hope you found this informative!

Further Reading:

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education — This is foundational work in school abolitionism, something I am very fond of

The Effects of Rewards and Motivations on Student Achievements — This is some amazing work, it shows the importance of intrinsic motivation and, in my opinion, provides a pretty solid case for why we should center intrinsic motivation in our education policy.