The Case Against Homework(alfiekohn.org)
alfiekohn.org
The Case Against Homework
https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-against-homework/
118 comments
Education fads come and go, and if you wait long enough you'll notice that what's old is new again. It's a great career-building tool: just identify where you are in the pendulum's path and see where it will move next. Make a prediction from that and you're a visionary, a leader. Many education administrators and theorists have made their names like this.
To be honest recurring cycles happen in tech too, and people play the same game.
To be honest recurring cycles happen in tech too, and people play the same game.
This rings true for me.
I remember about 20 years ago I would read a lot of think-pieces in Time, The Atlantic, and other such magazines about how kids were doing too little homework, and how the US is falling behind other nations in academic achievement, and how one caused the other.
Now the think pieces are all about how there is too much homework and we're suffocating children under the burden.
For what it's worth, I have an elementary school student, and I like that she has 10-15 minutes of homework most nights. It gives me a chance to keep up with what she's learning about.
I remember about 20 years ago I would read a lot of think-pieces in Time, The Atlantic, and other such magazines about how kids were doing too little homework, and how the US is falling behind other nations in academic achievement, and how one caused the other.
Now the think pieces are all about how there is too much homework and we're suffocating children under the burden.
For what it's worth, I have an elementary school student, and I like that she has 10-15 minutes of homework most nights. It gives me a chance to keep up with what she's learning about.
>> To be honest recurring cycles happen in tech too, and people play the same game.
NeoOO, maybe?
NeoOO, maybe?
Why is the applied pedagogy of teachers in classrooms even falling way behind the educational psychology and neuroscience research anyway in most of the world? It's been long known that things like active recall, spaced repetition, immediate application of knowledge, interleaved practice, and maximizing intrinsic motivation are the most effective ways to learn. There are even meta-analyses that outline each of these techniques effects and nuances. Shouldn't future policy build around what's proven to be effective and further figure out how to extend the effect sizes of such? Instead, we continue to go on education fads with vague terms and gur feeling much like some of the business management world (e.g. some people don't like "frameworks" such as Scrum when it comes to achieving objectives).
Sadly, I'm both grateful & frustrated that my brain only excels in rote memorization.
I have no critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
I didn't fully realize the repercussions until interviewing for management consulting jobs; it was humiliating. I became a CPA in my first career, which aligned much more smoothly :)
My brother-in-law earned his degree at a top Liberal Arts college and I witnessed what it means to actually be taught "how to think." He's an interesting case to me, however - a genius at that thinking style, but merely above-average in rote memorization.
I have no critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
I didn't fully realize the repercussions until interviewing for management consulting jobs; it was humiliating. I became a CPA in my first career, which aligned much more smoothly :)
My brother-in-law earned his degree at a top Liberal Arts college and I witnessed what it means to actually be taught "how to think." He's an interesting case to me, however - a genius at that thinking style, but merely above-average in rote memorization.
As a medical student learning thousands of facts about the human body, I think I have a relevant perspective on how to learn effectively.
The meta in medical school is currently to focus on active learning via flashcards and practice questions, and to minimize the amount of time spent watching lectures passively. I think this is, generally speaking, a good idea. The things I learn from practice questions stick in my head a lot better than the things I heard once in a lecture. However, where practice questions and flashcards come short is in making cohesive mental frameworks that organize several related topics in your head. I still think that good old-fashioned lectures are the best way to present those frameworks to students, because they don't lend themselves well to the rapid-fire questions I use for active learning. However, for learning more discrete details, I think sitting through a lecture is a waste of time. So it's about knowing the tools in your toolbox and when to use which one, if you ask me.
TL;DR active learning generally good, but need some passive lectures to show the big picture
The meta in medical school is currently to focus on active learning via flashcards and practice questions, and to minimize the amount of time spent watching lectures passively. I think this is, generally speaking, a good idea. The things I learn from practice questions stick in my head a lot better than the things I heard once in a lecture. However, where practice questions and flashcards come short is in making cohesive mental frameworks that organize several related topics in your head. I still think that good old-fashioned lectures are the best way to present those frameworks to students, because they don't lend themselves well to the rapid-fire questions I use for active learning. However, for learning more discrete details, I think sitting through a lecture is a waste of time. So it's about knowing the tools in your toolbox and when to use which one, if you ask me.
TL;DR active learning generally good, but need some passive lectures to show the big picture
It's generally unacceptable to demand that workers take assignments home to complete when they're exhausted. Perhaps it would be better to treat school more like work?
I have exited two careers precisely because doing work outside of working hours was considered the norm. (Not so ironically, one of them was teaching.)
Project-based learning is indeed a superior form of teaching, interspersed with the regular curriculum.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EPoZJ8cZD_4
https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanE...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EPoZJ8cZD_4
https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanE...
The brain is uniquely plastic during youth and there's so much to learn, so little time.
The problem with education IMO is the content not the methodology. Our curricula waste precious time on obscure topics because "that's what I was taught".
The problem with education IMO is the content not the methodology. Our curricula waste precious time on obscure topics because "that's what I was taught".
What that attitude ends up doing to these growing, plastic brains is that it teaches them to live a life filled with anxiety and dictated by those around them. They spend their early years running from school to extracurriculars to homework and then back to school. Always supervised by an adult, never slowing down, never doing things on their own.
Intellectual development is not the only kind that happens during childhood, they're also learning valuable life skills, and if you run their lives for them in pursuit of one kind of development you're going to ruin other kinds.
Intellectual development is not the only kind that happens during childhood, they're also learning valuable life skills, and if you run their lives for them in pursuit of one kind of development you're going to ruin other kinds.
It's easy to say schools are teaching the wrong things, but the people who say this tend to do what you've done and not list anything specific.
What would you cut from the curriculum, and what would you replace it with?
What would you cut from the curriculum, and what would you replace it with?
I don't know what kids lean today, but I wish I didn't have to lean Latin (yes, the ancient dead language) and learn about economy, money and banking instead. I wish I learned integrals before physics. I wish I learned chisese instead of french. Lots more.
Those are all sensible things to do, but at the end of the day we are talking about kids not learning the material they're taught. I'd like the material to improve too. Our government creates a very bureaucratic society and then teaches kids absolutely nothing about navigating that bureaucracy, this is an abysmal failure of education. But I think the methodology fails when it can't even demonstrate that it teaches them the subjects they're actually being taught.
I think it's a little of both. I tend to blame the methodology more myself.
Public school in the US has English literature, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, second languages, civics, history... That the material exists, whatever you think of it, and kids aren't learning that material, says something about the methodology.
I think sending a kid to what basically amounts to a prison, in an intensely competitive social environment complete with people from all walks of life, including violent people, while simultaneously handicapping anyone's ability to enforce proper conduct, with a strategy geared to basically encourage cheating, is not conducive to learning anything for a long period of time. Then, telling them their time in their life where they get to do real fruitful things like decide their conduct, who they associate with, what interests to pursue, spend time with their parents, let their minds wander, is not theirs and they have to continue the requirements of school, IMO it hampers intellectual development.
Public school in the US has English literature, physics, chemistry, biology, algebra, arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, second languages, civics, history... That the material exists, whatever you think of it, and kids aren't learning that material, says something about the methodology.
I think sending a kid to what basically amounts to a prison, in an intensely competitive social environment complete with people from all walks of life, including violent people, while simultaneously handicapping anyone's ability to enforce proper conduct, with a strategy geared to basically encourage cheating, is not conducive to learning anything for a long period of time. Then, telling them their time in their life where they get to do real fruitful things like decide their conduct, who they associate with, what interests to pursue, spend time with their parents, let their minds wander, is not theirs and they have to continue the requirements of school, IMO it hampers intellectual development.
school has gotten longer and longer, homework more and more, tutoring, extracurriculars more and more. funding has gone up and up. and yet IQs are dropping
Homework is practice, practice works. You can tell me how you've found a thousand published articles that practice doesn't work and all it would do is confirm my prior that the vast majority of research is not well done or fabricated
Practice being effective, and homework assignment being effective, are two very different things.
So you are convinced of your views and uninterested in evidence to the contrary? Then why should anyone care what you think?
> So you are convinced of your views and uninterested in evidence to the contrary
Yes I am convinced in my views. Am I uninterested in evidence to the contrary? It depends, what's the evidence?
If research comes up with a conclusion that significantly diverges from common sense I don't pay much attention to it unless it's been replicated and the experiments are well designed.
edit: removed my inflammatory comments
Yes I am convinced in my views. Am I uninterested in evidence to the contrary? It depends, what's the evidence?
If research comes up with a conclusion that significantly diverges from common sense I don't pay much attention to it unless it's been replicated and the experiments are well designed.
edit: removed my inflammatory comments
she/he is the product of the system he’s defending ;)
I think the (justified) doubt about research comes from personal experience. Everything I have ever learned in my life I have learned through deliberate mundane practice. I didn't go to school for comp sci, but I learned programming through copying countless tutorials, making edits, breaking things and learning from my mistakes. I have never learned anything any other way and I am yet to meet someone that learned any other way
> not a single study has ever supported the folk wisdom that homework teaches good work habits or develops positive character traits such as self-discipline, responsibility or independence
This I know is wrong because, again in my experience hard work is incredibly rewarding. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, whether I'm painting a house, going for a run, or focusing on programming, I feel much better about myself and act with more dignity. The most miserable people I have met have no purpose or drive.
> You can’t “reinforce” understanding the way you can reinforce a behavior
Hard disagree. First you have to mimic, only later you gain an understanding. I remember copying code over and over again, just following the same patterns and then one day it just clicks. It's happened to me in a lot of different domains.
This is a great high signal article, not because it's true, but its exactly false. Everything about it is exactly opposite of the truth. I wish we should push more homework and more arbitrary rote memorization. A lot of religious groups in the US get great benefits from studying their holy books, only to apply that focus and energy on commercial tasks with great success.
We should bring back memorization of poetry, or calligraphy. Because at least then children had some purpose in their studies. Today we purport to teach logic or reasoning that can't be referenced easily by google, but today's students are worse in these fields than people in the past. And at least long ago, children knew some poetry to boot.
> not a single study has ever supported the folk wisdom that homework teaches good work habits or develops positive character traits such as self-discipline, responsibility or independence
This I know is wrong because, again in my experience hard work is incredibly rewarding. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, whether I'm painting a house, going for a run, or focusing on programming, I feel much better about myself and act with more dignity. The most miserable people I have met have no purpose or drive.
> You can’t “reinforce” understanding the way you can reinforce a behavior
Hard disagree. First you have to mimic, only later you gain an understanding. I remember copying code over and over again, just following the same patterns and then one day it just clicks. It's happened to me in a lot of different domains.
This is a great high signal article, not because it's true, but its exactly false. Everything about it is exactly opposite of the truth. I wish we should push more homework and more arbitrary rote memorization. A lot of religious groups in the US get great benefits from studying their holy books, only to apply that focus and energy on commercial tasks with great success.
We should bring back memorization of poetry, or calligraphy. Because at least then children had some purpose in their studies. Today we purport to teach logic or reasoning that can't be referenced easily by google, but today's students are worse in these fields than people in the past. And at least long ago, children knew some poetry to boot.
I see it a little differently: Everything I've learned I found was either critically necessary to my life or was just god damn fun.
No amount of homework or practice or whatever you want to call it has helped me learn something whose value I could not discern nor find fun. Same goes with lectures.
No amount of homework or practice or whatever you want to call it has helped me learn something whose value I could not discern nor find fun. Same goes with lectures.
I am unconvinced of my views, and interested in evidence the contrary. The modern academic journal paper is not evidence, it is one step below a newspaper opinion piece. The most obvious piece of evidence, among many, of academics descent into psychopathy, is the recent firing of Harvard president Claudine Gay, who was ultimately not fired for the obvious errors in her study, but for plagiarism that amounted somewhere between a clerical error and her having it zero original thoughts. She was fired as a scapegoat, not because she had lost the faith of any of her peers, whose Faith is thereby rendered meaningless.
Any honest reading of Harvard's Academic Integrity policy will show Gay's work was in violation.
I don't deny that she was in violation, but if the firing had been genuine, it would have been concurrent with an investigation into academic fraud, at several levels.
She had to be fired, that was clearly the only option. It also should have raised the question of how she got the job in the first place.
She had to be fired, that was clearly the only option. It also should have raised the question of how she got the job in the first place.
Imagine you do the study yourself. You have your class, and you decided to stop handing out homework for a year. Nothing bad happens. Students seem to learn just as much, test scores don't budge.
Do you just say "well, but practice work!" and ignore your results?
Do you just say "well, but practice work!" and ignore your results?
You can still practice during school hours. Simple.
This is fallacious reasoning:
* A is in S
* For many B in S, P(B) is true
* Therefore P(A) is true
Step three in this chain doesn't logically follow from step two, so preemptively rejecting evidence against P(A) is irrational.
* A is in S
* For many B in S, P(B) is true
* Therefore P(A) is true
Step three in this chain doesn't logically follow from step two, so preemptively rejecting evidence against P(A) is irrational.
Cool, I'm sure there is a better way of formulating the argument that is more logically sound. I'll stick with "I know practicing works".
I don't disagree that practicing works, but I'm very open to evidence that homework is an ineffective form of practice.
My wife is a music teacher and frequently objects to the phrase "practice makes perfect" because the kind of practice that you're doing has an enormous impact on the outcomes. Practice works to solidify behaviors, but ill-conceived practice will actually end up solidifying the wrong behaviors.
I think it's likely that it turns out that homework solidifies behaviors that are objectively a net loss for the individuals and society.
My wife is a music teacher and frequently objects to the phrase "practice makes perfect" because the kind of practice that you're doing has an enormous impact on the outcomes. Practice works to solidify behaviors, but ill-conceived practice will actually end up solidifying the wrong behaviors.
I think it's likely that it turns out that homework solidifies behaviors that are objectively a net loss for the individuals and society.
I don't think it's a particularly fun thought exercise but I know people enjoy this kind of thing. I feel like I've seen so many decisions being made backed by "research" that have caused significant harm. I think if you come up with a conclusion that significantly diverges from common sense it needs to be replicated multiple times and the experiment has to be fool proof before it really deserves consideration.
I had a teacher/coach who always said "practice makes permanent."
I came here to say more or less this. Everything I learned at school, I learned through homework.
Good teachers are engaging, interesting, passionate, and you listen to them like they're good story tellers. Everything they say seems obvious and clear. Then you try to replicate what they tell you and you fail.
At home or at school, you need to get stuck on your own into the problem and try to solve it yourself, else you won't learn - is my hard-earned experience.
Perhaps you can do homework at school, so to speak. But the other truth about homework is that it takes a lot of attention from an adult. Kids young and older often get stuck, someone needs to help them, and there aren't enough teachers.
Maybe AI can help, but until then, I can't see a viable alternative.
Good teachers are engaging, interesting, passionate, and you listen to them like they're good story tellers. Everything they say seems obvious and clear. Then you try to replicate what they tell you and you fail.
At home or at school, you need to get stuck on your own into the problem and try to solve it yourself, else you won't learn - is my hard-earned experience.
Perhaps you can do homework at school, so to speak. But the other truth about homework is that it takes a lot of attention from an adult. Kids young and older often get stuck, someone needs to help them, and there aren't enough teachers.
Maybe AI can help, but until then, I can't see a viable alternative.
The premise here is that education's primary purpose is expanding knowledge. I think it's so naive of a take it could be on purpose ?
> One mother told me it permanently damaged her relationship with her son because it forced her to be an enforcer rather than a mom.
This is by design, or at least an accepted byproduct. Having parents rolled in and being on the same page as the school is part of the process. This might not be explicited, the school might not even be thinking about it a lot, but it's a no downside proposition for the school, and parents will be more willing to pay, volunteer their tine, not make waves etc. if they're acting as an extension of school at home.
When your kids doesn't do homework it's you, the parent that gets summoned.
The basic purpose of schooling is to preprare a kid for society, and what society wants is not just bright kids, but citizen pushing themselves and following the common line. When they'll be adults they'll have deadline and meaningless overtime instead of homeworks. As pointed in the article, behaviors can reinforced, and that's what homeworks do.
> One mother told me it permanently damaged her relationship with her son because it forced her to be an enforcer rather than a mom.
This is by design, or at least an accepted byproduct. Having parents rolled in and being on the same page as the school is part of the process. This might not be explicited, the school might not even be thinking about it a lot, but it's a no downside proposition for the school, and parents will be more willing to pay, volunteer their tine, not make waves etc. if they're acting as an extension of school at home.
When your kids doesn't do homework it's you, the parent that gets summoned.
The basic purpose of schooling is to preprare a kid for society, and what society wants is not just bright kids, but citizen pushing themselves and following the common line. When they'll be adults they'll have deadline and meaningless overtime instead of homeworks. As pointed in the article, behaviors can reinforced, and that's what homeworks do.
The purpose of school could be to teach children to fill in forms without complaint until they die. In fact given our work or die structure today that’s generally a pretty useful skill. Of course, not everyone has to fill in forms to survive. There are a lot of professions that form filling isn’t mandatory and is a useless skill.
In fact, the absolute best jobs are for people who lead the form fillers in one way or another, either by creating the new ways of doing things or by setting direction. An awful lot of the best leaders I know, whether thought or organizational, have a learning disability and did very poorly in early education with its emphasis on drilling the skill of form filling without question. It wasn’t until college when they were finally asked to understand and explain their understanding did they do well.
But most people aren’t that type of person, and public education at minimum is industrialized education. It is absolutely imperative we build a machine that industrialized the production of form fillers, after all - it’s not like AI won’t be filling those forms out in a few years!
In fact, the absolute best jobs are for people who lead the form fillers in one way or another, either by creating the new ways of doing things or by setting direction. An awful lot of the best leaders I know, whether thought or organizational, have a learning disability and did very poorly in early education with its emphasis on drilling the skill of form filling without question. It wasn’t until college when they were finally asked to understand and explain their understanding did they do well.
But most people aren’t that type of person, and public education at minimum is industrialized education. It is absolutely imperative we build a machine that industrialized the production of form fillers, after all - it’s not like AI won’t be filling those forms out in a few years!
You’re just testing whether or not kids have a stable home situation with parents who give a damn. Homework is classist busy work
There are much cheaper ways to teach kids to conform or obey.
If that's really the goal. You should be upset at the trillions of dollars wasted.
If that's really the goal. You should be upset at the trillions of dollars wasted.
I think it's a complex problem, even on the "let's rule them all" side of the coin. I don't want to spend my Goldwin points right away, but looking at the past it takes a decent amount of resources to real push it to something efficient.
Also parents do love their kids. It takes a lot to actually have them side with the higher entity and align their behavior, and I think the current system strikes the balance by giving the kid a fighting chance to succeed, and have parents agree to let their kids be out for most of the day and follow school's rules even after (for funsies: there's schools in Japan where kids have to wear the uniform even outside school, even on short vacations. They quite literally belong to the school during the school year.)
PS: Many teachers really want their students to succeed, and many will do what they can to not have them eaten by the system. I'd wager it could one reason for burn out for some of them.
Also parents do love their kids. It takes a lot to actually have them side with the higher entity and align their behavior, and I think the current system strikes the balance by giving the kid a fighting chance to succeed, and have parents agree to let their kids be out for most of the day and follow school's rules even after (for funsies: there's schools in Japan where kids have to wear the uniform even outside school, even on short vacations. They quite literally belong to the school during the school year.)
PS: Many teachers really want their students to succeed, and many will do what they can to not have them eaten by the system. I'd wager it could one reason for burn out for some of them.
Attendance, grades and disciplinary action all already fill that role more than enough. And school does not have a single "purpose" any more than it is a single form or history. It's not like some guy named Thomas School sat down one day and wrote a master plan.
I disagree (at least university level).
Surely too much homework is bad, or doing homework without understanding the basics is counter-productive, but I do think that practice is the only way you truly learn.
I see homework and practice as two different activities. Practice needs intentionality and dedication, and you need a short feedback loop to decide if you're doing it well or not, with repetition until you get it right.
I rarely see homework going along these line.
Interestingly, there's practice books for exams, which can help a lot if you do them under your own control.
I rarely see homework going along these line.
Interestingly, there's practice books for exams, which can help a lot if you do them under your own control.
> you need a short feedback loop to decide if you're doing it well or not
This is crucial. Without a short feedback loop you're not practicing, you're just doing take home quizzes.
The best teachers that I had would assign only odd-numbered problems as homework so you could check your work in the back of the book. In classes where they didn't do that, I usually "cheated" by plugging the problem into Wolfram Alpha or similar, because I knew that learning what I did wrong after we'd already moved on to the next unit would be pointless.
This is crucial. Without a short feedback loop you're not practicing, you're just doing take home quizzes.
The best teachers that I had would assign only odd-numbered problems as homework so you could check your work in the back of the book. In classes where they didn't do that, I usually "cheated" by plugging the problem into Wolfram Alpha or similar, because I knew that learning what I did wrong after we'd already moved on to the next unit would be pointless.
For feedback loops, I found study groups to be very very useful in university. Reflecting on high school it seems weird they weren’t used more often.
After trying a problem on your own, taking your results and collaborating with peers is a one of the best ways to learn. Sometimes you have to assume the role of teacher and share your idea, which requires you to really understand it.
After trying a problem on your own, taking your results and collaborating with peers is a one of the best ways to learn. Sometimes you have to assume the role of teacher and share your idea, which requires you to really understand it.
Some middle and high schools do that. When we looked into it they were very expensive...
I guess that’s good to hear.
I know the fact that you meet essentially every kind of person in school is a good thing, but I never fit the mould of learning the way school taught, so providing more diverse ways of learning I think could be a big boon to education.
I know the fact that you meet essentially every kind of person in school is a good thing, but I never fit the mould of learning the way school taught, so providing more diverse ways of learning I think could be a big boon to education.
I can't imagine progressing through math or science with no homework. Those problems form some of the core "ah-ha" moments for me
I agree with you both. It would be one thing if the article stated that time at school would be for doing homework, but it wasn’t said. I do think that there is a lot of ineffective homework and lessons.
Also, in the article they stated:
> Still others believe—incorrectly—that more time spent on a task produces better results, or that because practice is required to be a good athlete or musician, it’s also at the heart of intellectual growth. It isn’t. You can’t “reinforce” understanding the way you can reinforce a behavior. In my experience, people with the least sophisticated understanding of how children learn, or the least amount of concern about children’s attitudes toward learning, tend to be the most enthusiastic supporters of homework.
Also, in the article they stated:
> Still others believe—incorrectly—that more time spent on a task produces better results, or that because practice is required to be a good athlete or musician, it’s also at the heart of intellectual growth. It isn’t. You can’t “reinforce” understanding the way you can reinforce a behavior. In my experience, people with the least sophisticated understanding of how children learn, or the least amount of concern about children’s attitudes toward learning, tend to be the most enthusiastic supporters of homework.
Not knowing how to do the homework but it still being due tomorrow was a bitter experience growing up.
I’m all for practice, but study hall or dedicated study group time were much better for me.
I’m all for practice, but study hall or dedicated study group time were much better for me.
At university it's basically essential. At any other school level I don't think it is at all.
That depends on how smart you are. If you are relatively smart for the level you are at then you are fine without homework, otherwise you need it. Lots of people can learn well without homework in middle school, fewer can in high school and very few can at college.
So homework is important at all stages of education, just for different people. For you that happened at college. For someone else it might have been very important in middle school to understand percent, without that work they would have been much worse off in life.
So homework is important at all stages of education, just for different people. For you that happened at college. For someone else it might have been very important in middle school to understand percent, without that work they would have been much worse off in life.
Everything you learn will be forgotten. You keep with you ideas to look up and refresh on later.
A lecture won’t make you proficient. Doing (homework) makes you proficient.
Is lecture all you need to remember which ideas to look up in future? I think you’ll develop a better understanding of whether you need an idea if you understood it in the first place. For this reason we need to develop proficiency through practice.
And then you need proficiency to achieve success in grading. Grading is feedback that lets you know where you stand relative to other students. And that’s what we use for admissions.
Nobody is becoming proficient from lectures. Students must be proficient.
You either need homework, or teachers can stop wasting everyone’s time yapping and just be there to answer questions for half the class duration.
A lecture won’t make you proficient. Doing (homework) makes you proficient.
Is lecture all you need to remember which ideas to look up in future? I think you’ll develop a better understanding of whether you need an idea if you understood it in the first place. For this reason we need to develop proficiency through practice.
And then you need proficiency to achieve success in grading. Grading is feedback that lets you know where you stand relative to other students. And that’s what we use for admissions.
Nobody is becoming proficient from lectures. Students must be proficient.
You either need homework, or teachers can stop wasting everyone’s time yapping and just be there to answer questions for half the class duration.
You're conflating "selfwork" and homework. Doing the work yourself is indeed critical. It's the bit where you take it home when you're exhausted that is perplexing. Why can't we provide the time and space to do the self work at school?
It sounds extremely limiting to have reading and writing confined to sitting at a desk for a certain hour everyday in crowded room.
It really doesn't. What youre indirectly describing is the typical workday of most people.
It's not career limiting to keep your work during.. work. and it isn't education limiting to keep the schoolwork at school.
It's not career limiting to keep your work during.. work. and it isn't education limiting to keep the schoolwork at school.
Children are not workers, school is not a workday. And essay writing is not something that should be confided to such a stressful and limiting environment.
Strawman alert. There is a word which you haven't heard before: schoolwork
I mean I do agree with doing at school and that’s exactly what I suggested.
Some good points. I always saw homework as practicing what was taught. The maths teaxher explains how to do fraction addition say and the hour of the class is taken up with explaining and some examples. Then homework is just using the fact that solving problems in silence seems like a waste of being in a classroom with a teacher
If it’s just busywork then sure, it has no point besides drilling in some sense of “you will have to organise your time and do this or else”
If it’s just busywork then sure, it has no point besides drilling in some sense of “you will have to organise your time and do this or else”
Children don’t go to school for eight hours to learn. They go to school for eight hours to learn and to have some place to be while parents work.
Both students and teachers have tasks that can happen in quiet together time and students can benefit by having both the structure and the presence of the knowledgeable teacher. Two things not all students can rely on parents to provide.
Both students and teachers have tasks that can happen in quiet together time and students can benefit by having both the structure and the presence of the knowledgeable teacher. Two things not all students can rely on parents to provide.
The problem with homework is the total lack of coordination between teachers. They’ll all pile on on one day and wonder why students half-assed everything. Even if they do coordinate, it only takes one teacher overassigning to ruin it for everyone.
Our trig and calc teacher (taught both, had her two years) gave 45-90 minutes of homework every goddamn night, unless we'd had a test.
She was a major part of why I just gave up on doing a whole lot of my homework in high school. That's a lot of time period, let alone for just one class, and others would assign work, too. Screw that, I'd already spent a workday of time in school.
College was such a relief. So much more free time even if I did 100% of what professors asked of me. So's work life as an adult. High school is batshit crazy.
She was a major part of why I just gave up on doing a whole lot of my homework in high school. That's a lot of time period, let alone for just one class, and others would assign work, too. Screw that, I'd already spent a workday of time in school.
College was such a relief. So much more free time even if I did 100% of what professors asked of me. So's work life as an adult. High school is batshit crazy.
Both trigonometry and calculus are classes that I think should be dropped in high school. I think it would be much better to teach probability and statistics (without calculus) and personal finance. A lot of the math curriculum in high school doesn’t make sense for someone not planning to major in math.
I’m already dreading the arguments with teachers over this when our girls go to secondary school. But I certainly will argue with them over it if coordination is poor and quantity is excessive.
My kids attend a school that gives a very large amount of homework, constantly tests and expects large amounts of memorization - the school is well known for this Asian type model. They are currently in middle school and the amount of time their homework and studying takes is detrimental to everything else in their life. They definitely are leaning how to study, how to do well on tests and how to be more disciplined and organized - I can see you that happening in real time, but whether this level of stress at this age is setting them up for success later is very hard to know, I'm not surprised there is little evidence for it and I think it VERY much depends on the kid. One of my kids thrives on the repetitious math every night, it helps them learn the concepts, the other kid learns nothing from it, and just suffers through it bored by the repetition.
I think there is some conflation going on. Independent problem solving is critical to learning many skills; especially math and science ones. I think a more useful system may be this, at least for middle school and higher:
- Assign students top-quality lectures to watch and problem sets. Think Khan, MitX etc or similar. (But could be specially formulated)
- In class (Which would be shorter), the teacher[s] go over where the student struggled, had questions etc, and give personal attention where needed based on the previous day's lectures and problem sets.
The conflation here is active learning with respecting people's time and attention-span. Active learning critical, but the article's concerns about the latter are valid.
- Assign students top-quality lectures to watch and problem sets. Think Khan, MitX etc or similar. (But could be specially formulated)
- In class (Which would be shorter), the teacher[s] go over where the student struggled, had questions etc, and give personal attention where needed based on the previous day's lectures and problem sets.
The conflation here is active learning with respecting people's time and attention-span. Active learning critical, but the article's concerns about the latter are valid.
When I was near the end of high school they introduced essentially this structure in an effort to be more digital. I felt it was inferior to just a regular classes by a lot.
I feel being physically present with the teacher imparts things better, it’s easier to pay attention, plus also you can’t ask a video lecture questions. For the online class like this, the in-classroom teacher was pretty checked out too, so if you had questions they weren’t all that helpful.
If you ever got behind it was actually harder to catch up.
Now that wasn’t using Khan Academy where there are different learning paths and you can focus on areas you’re weak and breeze through your strengths, so I don’t konw how that compares.
I feel being physically present with the teacher imparts things better, it’s easier to pay attention, plus also you can’t ask a video lecture questions. For the online class like this, the in-classroom teacher was pretty checked out too, so if you had questions they weren’t all that helpful.
If you ever got behind it was actually harder to catch up.
Now that wasn’t using Khan Academy where there are different learning paths and you can focus on areas you’re weak and breeze through your strengths, so I don’t konw how that compares.
While keeping kids busy and curious about things is important, I'm fine with less "unpaid overtime" if the Finnish model was followed closely.
I think it's a good idea™ to give them hard work to solve in-class and with a good dose of semi-structured study groups to work on hard problems with pencil and paper and/or whiteboards. What I have a problem with is spoon-feeding, rote memorization of formulas, low standards. The exercise and gradual transmutation of fluid intelligence into crystalized needs to be through rigorous and challenging work, or there is untold loss of developed potential and a backsliding of academic achievement.
I think it's a good idea™ to give them hard work to solve in-class and with a good dose of semi-structured study groups to work on hard problems with pencil and paper and/or whiteboards. What I have a problem with is spoon-feeding, rote memorization of formulas, low standards. The exercise and gradual transmutation of fluid intelligence into crystalized needs to be through rigorous and challenging work, or there is untold loss of developed potential and a backsliding of academic achievement.
> Still others believe—incorrectly—that more time spent on a task produces better results, or that because practice is required to be a good athlete or musician, it’s also at the heart of intellectual growth. It isn’t. You can’t “reinforce” understanding the way you can reinforce a behavior.
Really? The claim here is that if I do not fully understand a passage or a lecture on first pass, a second or third exposure to the same ideas do NOT contribute to any better understanding whatsoever?
This is stated as a universal and scientific fact.
All my life experience says otherwise. Can't take this article seriously past this.
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> In my experience, people with the least sophisticated understanding of how children learn, or the least amount of concern about children’s attitudes toward learning, tend to be the most enthusiastic supporters of homework.
There has to be some term to describe this style of writing.
"If you don't agree with what I am saying, you are too ignorant of the subject and your opinion is not worth much."
Really? The claim here is that if I do not fully understand a passage or a lecture on first pass, a second or third exposure to the same ideas do NOT contribute to any better understanding whatsoever?
This is stated as a universal and scientific fact.
All my life experience says otherwise. Can't take this article seriously past this.
---
> In my experience, people with the least sophisticated understanding of how children learn, or the least amount of concern about children’s attitudes toward learning, tend to be the most enthusiastic supporters of homework.
There has to be some term to describe this style of writing.
"If you don't agree with what I am saying, you are too ignorant of the subject and your opinion is not worth much."
Your anecdote, especially with it's reference to lectures, makes it sound like you're talking more about higher education. The author is clearly talking about K-12, and mostly pre-high school.
As an educational researcher, I think the author's conclusions are quite likely. A sixth grader isn't going back over their lecture notes and gaining more understanding.
As an educational researcher, I think the author's conclusions are quite likely. A sixth grader isn't going back over their lecture notes and gaining more understanding.
Watching a Khan Academy video a second time ... is unlikely to help understanding a concept better?
> Still others believe—incorrectly—that more time spent on a task produces better results
Even more foundational skills like reading, writing, speaking, and school math (addition, division, algebra) are unlikely to get better with practice?
> Still others believe—incorrectly—that more time spent on a task produces better results
Even more foundational skills like reading, writing, speaking, and school math (addition, division, algebra) are unlikely to get better with practice?
Growing up I always managed to avoid doing my homework. Also I always passed with the minimum grade required. My parents and everyone around me kept saying that I would become a failure.
Well, today I'm a Machine Learning Engineer at a FAANG company and I have no regrets not wasting my youth on some stupid assignments that everyone forgot about as soon as it was graded.
Well, today I'm a Machine Learning Engineer at a FAANG company and I have no regrets not wasting my youth on some stupid assignments that everyone forgot about as soon as it was graded.
I think what anecdotes like this miss is that you were
not the average student.
Strategies optimized for the students who would be motivated enough to pursue top 1% engineering jobs are not useful for the average student. In fact, they’d probably be harmful.
It’s a similar story on the other end of the spectrum: Learning strategies optimized for the lowest common denominator students aren’t good for the average student, and certainly aren’t good for highly motivated learners.
It’s a difficult problem and I don’t have any answers. However, given that your career trajectory is firmly in outlier territory, I don’t think it’s reasonable to project your grade school academic experience on to the general student population.
Strategies optimized for the students who would be motivated enough to pursue top 1% engineering jobs are not useful for the average student. In fact, they’d probably be harmful.
It’s a similar story on the other end of the spectrum: Learning strategies optimized for the lowest common denominator students aren’t good for the average student, and certainly aren’t good for highly motivated learners.
It’s a difficult problem and I don’t have any answers. However, given that your career trajectory is firmly in outlier territory, I don’t think it’s reasonable to project your grade school academic experience on to the general student population.
The average student doesn't learn. They toil away, fruitlessly, get their diploma, and then spend a lifetime doing labor with no academic component. Lately we've been forcing them to go to college, pointlessly, to get their foot in the door. Often saddled with criminal levels of debt.
Even now, even in the US, only 30% of children grow up to be college students. So when we're talking about the average, the median, what I'm saying is in fact typical.
They learn to read. Which they would have done anyway. They learn what arithmetic means, sort of. Might pick up history and geography if they're natively interested in it. At no point is the two hours of homework they're forced into every night of any benefit to learning these things.
Even now, even in the US, only 30% of children grow up to be college students. So when we're talking about the average, the median, what I'm saying is in fact typical.
They learn to read. Which they would have done anyway. They learn what arithmetic means, sort of. Might pick up history and geography if they're natively interested in it. At no point is the two hours of homework they're forced into every night of any benefit to learning these things.
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> Well, today I'm a Machine Learning Engineer at a FAANG company
I'm an SRE for a high ML product you've heard of and this explains so much.
I'm an SRE for a high ML product you've heard of and this explains so much.
I'm glad it worked out for you, but this is also survivorship bias.
With or without a degree?
He said he passed his classes, getting a degree is a very low bar.
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Class time vs homework?
For me, in 10th grade plane geometry, I did REALLY well -- loved the subject, hated the teacher (with some reason). Sooo, I learned the subject 90+% from "homework"! For each lesson, glanced at the text and then started on the exercises. Started with the hardest ones and worked until they became too easy. Then solved all the harder supplementary exercises in the back of the book!
Net, on the state achievement test, came in second in the class of ~30.
One day, great fun: One of the exercises in the back of the book was harder than usual, and I started on it on Friday and didn't get it until Sunday evening. In class on Monday, the teacher had the class work on an easy exercise but with the same figure as the hard one. So, for the only time, I spoke up in class:
"There's another exercise in the back with the same figure."
The teacher took the bait and had the class start on the harder one. ~20 minutes later no one had any progress, and the teacher was exhorting the class
"Class! Think of the given, class!"
Not wanting to disrupt the class, I said:
"Why don't we ..."
and the teacher interrupted and shouted:
"You knew how to do it all the time."
Yup, wouldn't have said anything otherwise!
In advanced courses, most of the learning was from study outside of class.
For the Ph.D. qualifying exams, led the class in 4 of the 5 exams, and nearly all the background learning was what I did out of class.
E.g., although took a lot of math courses, none covered Stokes theorem and had to do that on my own, from Buck, Apostol, Fleming, etc.
Beyond such courses and for Ph.D. research, challenging problems outside of school, ... there are few if any classes. For a lot of the learning for computing, there are no classes.
But for the claims of the OP here, sure, maybe only 4 days a week of school and shorter days in school, especially if the kids can make good use of the extra time out of class.
For me, in 10th grade plane geometry, I did REALLY well -- loved the subject, hated the teacher (with some reason). Sooo, I learned the subject 90+% from "homework"! For each lesson, glanced at the text and then started on the exercises. Started with the hardest ones and worked until they became too easy. Then solved all the harder supplementary exercises in the back of the book!
Net, on the state achievement test, came in second in the class of ~30.
One day, great fun: One of the exercises in the back of the book was harder than usual, and I started on it on Friday and didn't get it until Sunday evening. In class on Monday, the teacher had the class work on an easy exercise but with the same figure as the hard one. So, for the only time, I spoke up in class:
"There's another exercise in the back with the same figure."
The teacher took the bait and had the class start on the harder one. ~20 minutes later no one had any progress, and the teacher was exhorting the class
"Class! Think of the given, class!"
Not wanting to disrupt the class, I said:
"Why don't we ..."
and the teacher interrupted and shouted:
"You knew how to do it all the time."
Yup, wouldn't have said anything otherwise!
In advanced courses, most of the learning was from study outside of class.
For the Ph.D. qualifying exams, led the class in 4 of the 5 exams, and nearly all the background learning was what I did out of class.
E.g., although took a lot of math courses, none covered Stokes theorem and had to do that on my own, from Buck, Apostol, Fleming, etc.
Beyond such courses and for Ph.D. research, challenging problems outside of school, ... there are few if any classes. For a lot of the learning for computing, there are no classes.
But for the claims of the OP here, sure, maybe only 4 days a week of school and shorter days in school, especially if the kids can make good use of the extra time out of class.
Frankly, I never understood the anti-homework crowd. In university, I enjoyed homework - I am too stupid to do exercises quickly/during class, and homework lets me think about things for a lot longer. Doing homework has correlated very heavily for me with actually remembering things later on.
In high school and before homework took minimal amounts of my time. I am for assigning more homework to teenagers generally, since they do not do worthwhile things in their free time, as long as the homework is reasonably complex.
In high school and before homework took minimal amounts of my time. I am for assigning more homework to teenagers generally, since they do not do worthwhile things in their free time, as long as the homework is reasonably complex.
On the contrary, I've found teenagers are the people who do the most worthwhile stuff in their free time. They have enough spontaneity to enjoy themselves, and can be incredibly dedicated and creative when they find something that interests them. At the very least they're likely to hang out socially and make friends, whereas most post-college adults seem to just watch TV or scroll social media.
No one is stopping you doing homework, forced homework is a different matter.
> I am for assigning more homework to teenagers generally, since they do not do worthwhile things in their free time
Do you mean like socializing, hobbies, sports and just being a kid?
It's great that you enjoy homework, but why do you feel the need to inflict your preference on everyone else?
> I am for assigning more homework to teenagers generally, since they do not do worthwhile things in their free time
Do you mean like socializing, hobbies, sports and just being a kid?
It's great that you enjoy homework, but why do you feel the need to inflict your preference on everyone else?
I think you should be assigned some take-home tasks at your job, since you seem to be spending your time on frivolous things like writing HN comments.
If you go to university, if you don't do work in your own time then you'll fail. The upside of homework is that it reinforces what you have learned during the day.
Dunno about others but the one skill I truly honed in high school was how to optimize doing the least amount of work possible to achieve the minimum necessary grades.
I refused to do homework as a child and in high school a lot of times. I did much better in college when I only had to worry about tests and papers once a week.
The only redeeming thing about it is that parents can get a reliable window into what kids are learning and an opportunity to make up for poor instruction.
Author claim " you can’t reinforce understanding.".
But I can think of 2 counterexample:
-A student that does't understand statistics or calculus then do a bunch of exercise at home and suddenly understand the concept.
-Or a student spend 1 hours memorizing all the geography location or date for an history class.
-Or a student spend 1 hours memorizing all the geography location or date for an history class.
I think homework tests diligence as much as anything.
To that end it should be short and easy.
To that end it should be short and easy.
I don't follow the logic? Surely long and difficult makes for a more trying test of diligence than short and easy.
Signed in just to say. Everyone's insane for wasting their time on homework. I had these thoughts as a 6 year old and refused to ever do homework. Passed school by only classwork and tests. It's all joke, conditioning people for a future work culture that at its core about puritan work ethic BS. Byyyye.
My trig teacher in high school wouldn’t pass anyone who hadn’t done ALL the homework. It was insane. I had aced every test, had an overall grade of a B or C and could no longer get any points for turning in any assignments but he still required them to be done or he wouldn’t pass me. I even overheard him talking with one of my other math teachers and he admitted that I (and another student) obviously knew my stuff but he couldn’t justify passing us. My other math teacher said some nice things about me and gently suggested that that was bananas, but he didn’t change his mind.
I did the entire corpus of coursework over the course of a single weekend and turned them all in on one of the last days of class.
I did the entire corpus of coursework over the course of a single weekend and turned them all in on one of the last days of class.
+1 I never did mine either. French aside it was an absolute waste of time. Playing around with silly computers did me vastly more good. I did have to do some work outside of class at A-level, but much of that is because they’d kick you out if you didn’t.
POSIWID: The inherent goal of public school isn't to maximize the intellectual development of children. It is to condition them for industrial work. They must be taught to expect and endure endless tasks that are trivial, unproductive, and unfulfilling. They should not question what benefit a task has to their own interest. They should not question what benefit a task has to the interest of society at large. They should simply stop questioning the way of things, and complete their homework on time, or else!
And somehow it will be better if the kids spend more time on TikTok and Instagram? Please explain.
It’s essentially the same situation as a company that “wants” you to work overlong.
If they can’t educate you in the time alotted, that’s their problem to solve.
If the company’s work can’t get done with humane conditions for the resources available, that’s their problem to solve.
We keep tolerating this because we are, collectively, idiots. We buy into it and argue in favor of it for the same reason.
It’s a real shame.
If they can’t educate you in the time alotted, that’s their problem to solve.
If the company’s work can’t get done with humane conditions for the resources available, that’s their problem to solve.
We keep tolerating this because we are, collectively, idiots. We buy into it and argue in favor of it for the same reason.
It’s a real shame.
> If they can’t educate you in the time alotted, that’s their problem to solve.
Is it really "their" (who is they?) problem when the child gets to 3rd grade and they can't read? It's really the child's problem, they just don't know it yet.
Is it really "their" (who is they?) problem when the child gets to 3rd grade and they can't read? It's really the child's problem, they just don't know it yet.
He's right. Homework is useless for most people because most people are going to grow up to be unskilled or low skilled workers.
richrichie(3)
It’s interesting to see how pessimistic they’ve become about the push for engagement and downplaying of lecturing. I sense a growing backlash and a sense that maybe the old ways weren’t as bad as everyone assumed at the time. A common topic at gatherings is how they’re frustrated that some times rote learning and challenging homework are the only way to really get into subjects, but their school district is making it hard to do that without risk of impacting their evaluations. Then at the end of the school year they’re confused about how teachers are nailing their marks and following the best practices but students aren’t doing well.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t an isolated viewpoint. Browse /r/teachers on Reddit and you’ll find no shortage of similar complaints and teachers who are tired of administrators pushing unrealistic idealistic ideas like Bloom’s hierarchy on teachers who are being asked to get students to learn a lot of material without being pushed to, well, learn it.