Do our children receive overwhelming homework?

Has your kid ever cried or complain about the volume of homework they get from school? Do they sometime (occasionally or often) stay up late to accomplish their assignments? Do you ever spare your time to hire a nerd or to help your kids with their homework assignments?

Are teachers assigning too much homework to kids?

Many parents and students complain about the enormous quantities of homework assigned in schools. Research, however, says that American students get an adequate amount of assignments. One Tonya Herring Noonan from New Mexico, a mother of 3, asks: how many employees take work assignments to complete at home, which requires two or more hours to complete? She says that most (if not all) work types do not carry such an amount to do at home. Furthermore, it’s not necessary or productive to begin with.

Homework studies

What is the opinion of educational researchers on this issue? According to Gill Brian, there isn’t any evidence that students are getting more homework assignments than before. These education researchers, including Gill, draw up their conclusions partly from data collected by NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progression) tests. Gill says that this does not mean that many kids do a tremendous amount. He also does not dispute the fact that some also receive too many assignments from schools.

One indisputable fact

It is a fact that kids nowadays get more homework than before. Educators and all stakeholders agree on this. Gill’s quantification for the changes is that children in second grade, first grade, and kindergarten receive more homework than their predecessors. He says the increase is an estimate of 20 minutes in a day.

Homework and its history

Gill conducted research and found that matters concerning homework have always been controversial since the twentieth century. At around this time, there was a crusade against giving children assignments. Those who protested homework argued that kids should play games or engage in childish activities that ensure their growth. In California the year 1901, the legislature signed into law abolishing homework from kindergarten to grade 8. The bill was silently repealed after 15 years but followed by protests in the 1930s.

The movement with the ideology more-is-better

A fifth-grade teacher in San Francisco by the name Garfield says she did not give her students homework when she began teaching 30 years back. Parents started having concerns about this and asked her about it. Therefore, she began giving her students a reasonable amount of homework in preparation for their high school or junior high education. Cooper says that high-achieving guardians and parents incline more towards a lot of homework for their kids. They put pressure on their kids to compete for top universities or bring out the best in them. It is often in affluent communities compared to those from the middle class or the less fortunate who don’t give much seriousness to homework.

Homework guidelines

What role can a parent assume in all this? There are a few things that the National Education Association and the National PTA formulated. One of them is “The Ten-Minute Rule” that Cooper points out. The rule states that all students should receive homework that is ten minutes multiplied by their grade. That means a fifth-grader will have 50 minutes at most for homework.

Conclusion

Homework may be a vital addition to a child’s learning progress and keep in mind that too much of something is poisonous.