why students shouldn't have homework on the weekends

The Caravan

Students shouldn’t have homework on weekends.

Jonathan Kuptel '22 , Staff Writer | November 7, 2021

Jonathan Kuptel

MC senior Imari Price works on a assignment for 21st-Century Media class.

Teachers and students have different opinions about homework. Saying it is not fair is the usual argument, but being fair is not the issue. It is about students being prepared. Daily homework assignments can be difficult, and weekends homework assignments are worse. Students operate best when they are well-rested and ready to go. A weekend with no homework would help them to be fresh and ready on Monday morning. Weekend assignments tend to be longer and more difficult. 

The students have a difficult day with classes, practices, and going to school. By Friday, (test day) they are near exhaustion. Most tests are given on Fridays. Homework on Monday-Thursday is time-consuming. Some weekends will include assignments in more than 1 class. Those who go to Mount Carmel are near the end of their rope by 2:40 PM on Friday. I have had other discussions with the senior class and we all feel pretty tired at the end of the day at 2:40 PM. A free weekend helps to get prepared for the next grind to start. No homework weekends assures better sleep cycles and a body that has recovered and refreshed. Weekends include chores around the house and family commitments. This plus weekends assignments lead to a lack of sleep. This means Monday will have a positive attitude. No homework on weekends also means more family time. This is a bonus. 

Alfie Kohn in his book The Homework Myth: Why Are Kids Get Too Much Of A Bad Thing says, “There is no evidence to demonstrate that homework benefits students.” The homework on weekends starts in elementary school and continues throughout high school. 

Mr. Kohn states that homework on weekends starts in elementary school and continues throughout high school. This supports the argument that weekend homework starts in elementary school and now students at Mount Carmel High School have to deal with weekend assignments. The weekend assignments take too much time and are a waste of students’ time. 

Nancy Kalish , author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children And What We Can Do About It, says “simply busy work” makes learning “a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience.” 

Receiving weekend homework that is not discussed in class and counts only as “busy work” is counterproductive. Students finish the assignments because they are required to be done. When the homework is not reviewed on Monday, it leads to frustration. Busy homework that serves no purpose is never a good idea. 

Gerald LeTender of Penn State’s Education Policy Studies Department points out the “shotgun approach to homework when students receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed is not very effective.” Some teachers discuss the homework assignments and that validates the assignment. Some teachers however just check homework assignments for completion. LeTender goes on to say, “If there’s no feedback and no monitoring, the homework is probably not effective.” Researchers from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia had similar findings in their study “ When Is Homework Worth The Time?” Researchers reported no substantive difference in the grades of students who had homework completion. Adam Maltese, a researcher , noted , “Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be. Even one teacher who assigns busy shotgun homework is enough to be a bad idea. 

Students come to know when homework is the “shotgun approach.” They find this kind of assignment dull. Students have no respect for assignments like this. Quality assignments are appreciated by students. 

Etta Kralovec and John Buell in their book How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, And Limits Learning assert that homework contributes to a corporate style, competitive U.S. culture that overvalued work to the detriment of personal and familial well being. They go on to call for an end to homework, but to extend the school day. 

Cooper, Robinson, and Patalc, in 2006 warned that homework could become counter productive. Homework is counterproductive when it is a (shotgun) assignment. To reiterate, not all homework is bad. Bad homework which is not reviewed in class just plain “busy work” is not positive and could be counterproductive. 

Sara Croll, Literacy Coach and Author, believes too much homework causes stress for students. Diana Stelin, teacher, artist, and mother says, “I’m absolutely in favor of this ban. Homework is homework, it doesn’t matter what class it comes from. What it does is create negative associations in students of all ages, takes away their innate desire to learn, and makes the subject a dreaded chore.” 

When students come to dread their homework, they do not do a great job on these assignments. Making students do a lot of homework isn’t beneficial because they get drowsy when they work at it for hours and hours at a time. It is hard for the brain to function properly when it is tired and boring. 

Pat Wayman, Teacher and CEO of HowtoLearn.com says, “Many kids are working as many hours as their overscheduled parents and it is taking a toll.” “Their brains and their bodies need time to be curious, have fun, be creative and just be a kid.” 

No homework on weekends is not just a wish, but it is supported by all of these educators and authors. They all champion limiting homework are totally opposed to homework assignments. Educators and students agree that no homework on weekends is a good idea. Meaningful homework, a longer school day, and discussion of homework are what these educators and authors encourage. 

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Should More Schools Adopt a “No Homework on Weekends” Policy?

“No homework tonight!” From time to time, some teachers surprise their students with that announcement at the closing bell of class. In some schools, though, that’s becoming the norm rather than the exception—at least on specially designated weekends.

A Seasonal Gift for Some

Fall is the season to give thanks and be merry. It’s also the countdown to college admissions due dates. And it’s a great time to land a seasonal job and make some extra money at the end of the year. In states such as Maryland , several schools have designated homework-free weekend periods this fall. It allows over-stressed kids to catch up with other responsibilities—or simply take a breather. The main reason for the break, though, is that college priority and early admissions deadlines for many top colleges in the region occur in the fall.

Schools in Princeton, New Jersey, began implementing one homework-free weekend each semester in 2015, in part to give students more time to pursue interests and passions outside of school. Other New Jersey schools limit the number of minutes students should spend on homework each night. In Hinsdale, Illinois , one high school began offering seniors one homework-free weekend in October “to give harried seniors a little break to prepare for their futures . . . and make sure they have enough time to work on their college applications.” Similarly, schools across the country offer a no-homework weekend at year’s end.

Not Without Downsides

Unfortunately, homework-free weekends sometimes create an unwelcome side effect: extra-homework weekdays. Teachers are still tasked with finishing their lesson plans, and homework is often an important part of that. For students who are working on projects with pending due dates, not working on those projects for an entire weekend may not be feasible. And there’s always the risk that students who are afforded extra time to catch up on college admissions and pursue positive endeavors may simply waste the free time bestowed upon them.

Is homework helpful or harmful?

Some teachers and school districts have taken a blanket approach and banned homework entirely. The value of homework as a whole has been a topic of much debate. In one study , researchers at University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education concluded that math and science homework didn’t lead students to achieve better grades , but it did lead to better standardized test results.

A Stanford researcher concluded that excess homework increases kids’ stress and sleep deprivation. She emphasized that homework shouldn’t be assigned simply as a routine practice; it should have a concrete purpose and benefit. Homework, especially thoughtful homework, is valuable, and eliminating it entirely may be counterproductive to the goal of attending school in the first place: mastering the subject matter.

What do you think?

It’s a safe assumption that most students would strongly favor a homework-free-weekends policy. We’re curious how parents feel about the idea. How would you feel if your child’s school implemented a “no homework on the weekends” policy? Would you worry that your children might fall behind peers in other schools without a similar policy? Or do you think it would encourage your children to engage in more valuable extracurricular activities, get jobs, spend more time completing their college admissions packets, or simply catch up on much-needed sleep? We’d love to know what you think.

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Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework

H ow long is your child’s workweek? Thirty hours? Forty? Would it surprise you to learn that some elementary school kids have workweeks comparable to adults’ schedules? For most children, mandatory homework assignments push their workweek far beyond the school day and deep into what any other laborers would consider overtime. Even without sports or music or other school-sponsored extracurriculars, the daily homework slog keeps many students on the clock as long as lawyers, teachers, medical residents, truck drivers and other overworked adults. Is it any wonder that,deprived of the labor protections that we provide adults, our kids are suffering an epidemic of disengagement, anxiety and depression ?

With my youngest child just months away from finishing high school, I’m remembering all the needless misery and missed opportunities all three of my kids suffered because of their endless assignments. When my daughters were in middle school, I would urge them into bed before midnight and then find them clandestinely studying under the covers with a flashlight. We cut back on their activities but still found ourselves stuck in a system on overdrive, returning home from hectic days at 6 p.m. only to face hours more of homework. Now, even as a senior with a moderate course load, my son, Zak, has spent many weekends studying, finding little time for the exercise and fresh air essential to his well-being. Week after week, and without any extracurriculars, Zak logs a lot more than the 40 hours adults traditionally work each week — and with no recognition from his “bosses” that it’s too much. I can’t count the number of shared evenings, weekend outings and dinners that our family has missed and will never get back.

How much after-school time should our schools really own?

In the midst of the madness last fall, Zak said to me, “I feel like I’m working towards my death. The constant demands on my time since 5th grade are just going to continue through graduation, into college, and then into my job. It’s like I’m on an endless treadmill with no time for living.”

My spirit crumbled along with his.

Like Zak, many people are now questioning the point of putting so much demand on children and teens that they become thinly stretched and overworked. Studies have long shown that there is no academic benefit to high school homework that consumes more than a modest number of hours each week. In a study of high schoolers conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), researchers concluded that “after around four hours of homework per week, the additional time invested in homework has a negligible impact on performance.”

In elementary school, where we often assign overtime even to the youngest children, studies have shown there’s no academic benefit to any amount of homework at all.

Our unquestioned acceptance of homework also flies in the face of all we know about human health, brain function and learning. Brain scientists know that rest and exercise are essential to good health and real learning . Even top adult professionals in specialized fields take care to limit their work to concentrated periods of focus. A landmark study of how humans develop expertise found that elite musicians, scientists and athletes do their most productive work only about four hours per day .

Yet we continue to overwork our children, depriving them of the chance to cultivate health and learn deeply, burdening them with an imbalance of sedentary, academic tasks. American high school students , in fact, do more homework each week than their peers in the average country in the OECD, a 2014 report found.

It’s time for an uprising.

Already, small rebellions are starting. High schools in Ridgewood, N.J. , and Fairfax County, Va., among others, have banned homework over school breaks. The entire second grade at Taylor Elementary School in Arlington, Va., abolished homework this academic year. Burton Valley Elementary School in Lafayette, Calif., has eliminated homework in grades K through 4. Henry West Laboratory School , a public K-8 school in Coral Gables, Fla., eliminated mandatory, graded homework for optional assignments. One Lexington, Mass., elementary school is piloting a homework-free year, replacing it with reading for pleasure.

More from TIME

Across the Atlantic, students in Spain launched a national strike against excessive assignments in November. And a second-grade teacher in Texas, made headlines this fall when she quit sending home extra work , instead urging families to “spend your evenings doing things that are proven to correlate with student success. Eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside and get your child to bed early.”

It is time that we call loudly for a clear and simple change: a workweek limit for children, counting time on the clock before and after the final bell. Why should schools extend their authority far beyond the boundaries of campus, dictating activities in our homes in the hours that belong to families? An all-out ban on after-school assignments would be optimal. Short of that, we can at least sensibly agree on a cap limiting kids to a 40-hour workweek — and fewer hours for younger children.

Resistance even to this reasonable limit will be rife. Mike Miller, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., found this out firsthand when he spearheaded a homework committee to rethink the usual approach. He had read the education research and found a forgotten policy on the county books limiting homework to two hours a night, total, including all classes. “I thought it would be a slam dunk” to put the two-hour cap firmly in place, Miller said.

But immediately, people started balking. “There was a lot of fear in the community,” Miller said. “It’s like jumping off a high dive with your kids’ future. If we reduce homework to two hours or less, is my kid really going to be okay?” In the end, the committee only agreed to a homework ban over school breaks.

Miller’s response is a great model for us all. He decided to limit assignments in his own class to 20 minutes a night (the most allowed for a student with six classes to hit the two-hour max). His students didn’t suddenly fail. Their test scores remained stable. And they started using their more breathable schedule to do more creative, thoughtful work.

That’s the way we will get to a sane work schedule for kids: by simultaneously pursuing changes big and small. Even as we collaboratively press for policy changes at the district or individual school level, all teachers can act now, as individuals, to ease the strain on overworked kids.

As parents and students, we can also organize to make homework the exception rather than the rule. We can insist that every family, teacher and student be allowed to opt out of assignments without penalty to make room for important activities, and we can seek changes that shift practice exercises and assignments into the actual school day.

We’ll know our work is done only when Zak and every other child can clock out, eat dinner, sleep well and stay healthy — the very things needed to engage and learn deeply. That’s the basic standard the law applies to working adults. Let’s do the same for our kids.

Vicki Abeles is the author of the bestseller Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheduled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation, and director and producer of the documentaries “ Race to Nowhere ” and “ Beyond Measure. ”

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The Pros and Cons of Homework

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

Photo by  energepic.com  from  Pexels

Why should students have homework.

• Homework Encourages Practice Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .
• Homework Gets Parents Involved Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.
• Homework Teaches Time Management Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.
• Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.
• Homework Allows For More Learning Time Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.
• Homework Reduces Screen Time Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

• Homework Encourages A Sedentary Lifestyle Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework. While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom. Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.
• Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .
• Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.
• Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success. The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements. It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity. Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.
• Homework Assignments Are Overdone The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however. On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

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Should Homework Be Banned On Weekends?

AHS Student, Megan Peterson stressed about the amount of homework she has on the weekend.

Marleh Lehmann , Reporter October 22, 2017

Homework, homework and more homework.  For it or against it on the weekends, it is here to stay.  Especially if we want to stay one of the top schools in the state.

According to U.S. News, Arrowhead High School is ranked number eight for education in the state of Wisconsin.

AHS senior Alec Meister said, “The amount of homework that I get assigned on the weekend is insane. I do not know why each weekend I feel like all I am doing is homework.”

Meister says he spends an average of five hours a weekend doing some sort of homework and studying. He said he feels as if it is another school day.  

Cathy Sirianni, an AHS study hall supervisor says, “I am against having homework over the weekend because most kids will wait until Sunday night to start. They will usually rush and not do their best work because they are mad that it was assigned to them.”

“Going to school five days a week for seven hour a day is so much to handle. On top of that is a commitment to sports and then coming home to do homework. That is why I always look forward to the weekend. But at the same time I feel like the weekend is useless when you think about all of the work you have to do and the preparation you have to do for Monday,” said Meister.

Meister says overall he isn’t happy with the amount of homework we get over the weekend.

Senior AHS student Alex Yost, on the other hand, says he has a different perspective.

“I do not have a problem with the amount of homework that we get on the weekends. Most kids over exaggerate the amount that we get. If you sit down and concentrate you can get it done in no time. Most kids are very distracted with their phone so that is why it takes so much time to get their work done,” Yost said.

Yost says that Arrowhead is such a great school because of the amount of work that we get every night and weekend for homework.

Yost  says, “Arrowhead is not only known for sports, but also for their success in academics. We are definitely one of the higher ranked schools in the state and that is why it is so challenging. It pushes us to be better students and be more prepared for college and the future.”

Yost says he is proud to attend Arrowhead High School.

“They are pushing us to be as successful as we can be and I love that about Arrowhead,” Yost said.

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Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in.

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas about workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework. 

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says, he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy workloads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold , says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace , says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression. 

And for all the distress homework  can cause, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says, homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night. 

"Most students, especially at these high achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends, from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no-homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely but to be more mindful of the type of work students take home, suggests Kang, who was a high school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial 

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the past two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic , making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized. ... Sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking up assignments can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

More: Some teachers let their students sleep in class. Here's what mental health experts say.

More: Some parents are slipping young kids in for the COVID-19 vaccine, but doctors discourage the move as 'risky'

• Should Students Have Homework on Weekends? Know Why and Why Not

Students Have Homework on Weekends?

Should students have homework on weekends, reasons for no homework.

• Takes up family time:
• Takes up leisure time:
• Kids need to be kids:

How much is too much homework?

Homework is helpful sometimes, recommendations and conclusions.

Homework is a part of a student’s life even though many of them think of it as a form of cruel punishment especially when assigned during weekends or holidays. Teachers tend to assign homework to the students mainly to keep them busy during the holiday span instead not being reasonable. This, on the other hand, makes the students hate homework which seems to be pointless to them most of the time. This brings us to a controversy discussing whether should students have homework on weekends .

Whether on weekends or weekdays, homework seems to overstress students. After spending most of the hours of the day in school they cannot possibly take time and complete the assignments . Not having homework can relieve the stress from the students and they can enjoy more time with their family which can be inspirational, educational, and even fun. They can even concentrate on other extracurricular activities, their hobbies, and sports.

The answer is no from many of us . Studies say, students who are bound with their academic works and homework most of the time of the day, actually have a poor concentration in school as well as poor academic grades. They seem to go through depression and acquire many health problems both physically and mentally. This clearly gives us the answer should students have homework on weekends or not.

I personally feel that students should not be assigned with homework on holidays, here is why. Students on an average spend about 7-8 hours of the day in school and for five days a week; this is just enough for a child to take the load of academic works. Most of the kids seem to have packed schedules of their extracurricular activities and the homework on weekends tends to clash with it.

Moreover, if the kids get to be kids and take the time to play around, they can be stress-free and that can actually increase their academic performances in school. Should students have homework on weekends?  No, they need to have a break once in a while mainly on the weekends from homework so that they can enjoy the time with their families as well as play their favorite sports.

There are a number of reasons on whether should students have homework on weekends or not. Here are a few:

Takes up family time :

Weekends are specially meant for having a quality family time for all of us. As for students, they also need to relax after a busy scheduled weekdays and homework on theweekend means the elimination of family time. This leaves the parents with no choice but to force their child to complete the homework while others are enjoying a leisure weekend. This not only stresses the kids but also makes them depressed and not wanted.

Takes up leisure time :

It is called weekend for a reason, like an end to a busy week and the time for doing leisure activities for fun and to enjoy. Homework on weekends obviously and generally stresses the students and is the prime cause for their rude behavior. It does not really allow them to be in peace of mind and enjoy their childhood as the parents are always onto them to make them finish it.

Kids need to be kids :

Weekends are the time where they can enjoy their favorite sports or improve their mind or skills performing other activities and also fulfilling their hobbies. Homework can have a negative influence on their learning experiences which often leads them to hate academic works.

Studies say that more than 2 hours of homework at a time is too much. After spending a good amount of time in the school, students needs time to gain some energy and prepare for their assignments. With a bunch of homework, students may actually expand their time with academic works which may lead them to eliminate some sleeping time. This actually leads them to depression and poor physical health in no time.

Thinking about should students have homework on weekends or not made us more aware of the fact that too much homework is actually damaging the kid’s interest in learning and reducing their curiosity level. Thus, it is good to assign students with homework which involves only reading and preparing their lessons.

Homework has helped me practice the lesson taught in the class apart from the fact that it also kept me busy in my room while others were enjoying their weekends. Homework on weekends actually helps the teachers cover more material on the ongoing lesson which is not possible in the given time of a particular period. This actually creates a debate on should students have homework on weekends or not.

As the idiom says all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, every student actually need a little break enjoying their time as playing their favorite sports can relieve their stress and also keeps them active. Playing sports keep children away from obesity; however a bulk of homework on weekends could risk them for more health problems.

A kid also needs to be on their own in order to improve their mind in other extracurricular activities. They should also take their mind off of everything else so that they can enjoy their childhood playing their favorite games. Moreover, rest of mind and body is of utmost importance for a growing child.

Though experts recommend a little homework can be good but homework which involves most of the time of the students can affect them in many ways. Whereas should students have homework on weekends or not is still in a debate. They recommend homework related to reading and exploring during weekends so that they can learn more observing from the world which is both interesting and fun.

Benefits of Doing Your Homework

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Are You Down With or Done With Homework?

• Posted January 17, 2012
• By Lory Hough

The debate over how much schoolwork students should be doing at home has flared again, with one side saying it's too much, the other side saying in our competitive world, it's just not enough.

It was a move that doesn't happen very often in American public schools: The principal got rid of homework.

This past September, Stephanie Brant, principal of Gaithersburg Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md., decided that instead of teachers sending kids home with math worksheets and spelling flash cards, students would instead go home and read. Every day for 30 minutes, more if they had time or the inclination, with parents or on their own.

"I knew this would be a big shift for my community," she says. But she also strongly believed it was a necessary one. Twenty-first-century learners, especially those in elementary school, need to think critically and understand their own learning — not spend night after night doing rote homework drills.

Brant's move may not be common, but she isn't alone in her questioning. The value of doing schoolwork at home has gone in and out of fashion in the United States among educators, policymakers, the media, and, more recently, parents. As far back as the late 1800s, with the rise of the Progressive Era, doctors such as Joseph Mayer Rice began pushing for a limit on what he called "mechanical homework," saying it caused childhood nervous conditions and eyestrain. Around that time, the then-influential Ladies Home Journal began publishing a series of anti-homework articles, stating that five hours of brain work a day was "the most we should ask of our children," and that homework was an intrusion on family life. In response, states like California passed laws abolishing homework for students under a certain age.

But, as is often the case with education, the tide eventually turned. After the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, a space race emerged, and, writes Brian Gill in the journal Theory Into Practice, "The homework problem was reconceived as part of a national crisis; the U.S. was losing the Cold War because Russian children were smarter." Many earlier laws limiting homework were abolished, and the longterm trend toward less homework came to an end.

The debate re-emerged a decade later when parents of the late '60s and '70s argued that children should be free to play and explore — similar anti-homework wellness arguments echoed nearly a century earlier. By the early-1980s, however, the pendulum swung again with the publication of A Nation at Risk , which blamed poor education for a "rising tide of mediocrity." Students needed to work harder, the report said, and one way to do this was more homework.

For the most part, this pro-homework sentiment is still going strong today, in part because of mandatory testing and continued economic concerns about the nation's competitiveness. Many believe that today's students are falling behind their peers in places like Korea and Finland and are paying more attention to Angry Birds than to ancient Babylonia.

But there are also a growing number of Stephanie Brants out there, educators and parents who believe that students are stressed and missing out on valuable family time. Students, they say, particularly younger students who have seen a rise in the amount of take-home work and already put in a six- to nine-hour "work" day, need less, not more homework.

Who is right? Are students not working hard enough or is homework not working for them? Here's where the story gets a little tricky: It depends on whom you ask and what research you're looking at. As Cathy Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework , points out, "Homework has generated enough research so that a study can be found to support almost any position, as long as conflicting studies are ignored." Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth and a strong believer in eliminating all homework, writes that, "The fact that there isn't anything close to unanimity among experts belies the widespread assumption that homework helps." At best, he says, homework shows only an association, not a causal relationship, with academic achievement. In other words, it's hard to tease out how homework is really affecting test scores and grades. Did one teacher give better homework than another? Was one teacher more effective in the classroom? Do certain students test better or just try harder?

"It is difficult to separate where the effect of classroom teaching ends," Vatterott writes, "and the effect of homework begins."

Putting research aside, however, much of the current debate over homework is focused less on how homework affects academic achievement and more on time. Parents in particular have been saying that the amount of time children spend in school, especially with afterschool programs, combined with the amount of homework given — as early as kindergarten — is leaving students with little time to run around, eat dinner with their families, or even get enough sleep.

Certainly, for some parents, homework is a way to stay connected to their children's learning. But for others, homework creates a tug-of-war between parents and children, says Liz Goodenough, M.A.T.'71, creator of a documentary called Where Do the Children Play?

"Ideally homework should be about taking something home, spending a few curious and interesting moments in which children might engage with parents, and then getting that project back to school — an organizational triumph," she says. "A nag-free activity could engage family time: Ask a parent about his or her own childhood. Interview siblings."

Instead, as the authors of The Case Against Homework write, "Homework overload is turning many of us into the types of parents we never wanted to be: nags, bribers, and taskmasters."

Leslie Butchko saw it happen a few years ago when her son started sixth grade in the Santa Monica-Malibu (Calif.) United School District. She remembers him getting two to four hours of homework a night, plus weekend and vacation projects. He was overwhelmed and struggled to finish assignments, especially on nights when he also had an extracurricular activity.

"Ultimately, we felt compelled to have Bobby quit karate — he's a black belt — to allow more time for homework," she says. And then, with all of their attention focused on Bobby's homework, she and her husband started sending their youngest to his room so that Bobby could focus. "One day, my younger son gave us 15-minute coupons as a present for us to use to send him to play in the back room. … It was then that we realized there had to be something wrong with the amount of homework we were facing."

Butchko joined forces with another mother who was having similar struggles and ultimately helped get the homework policy in her district changed, limiting homework on weekends and holidays, setting time guidelines for daily homework, and broadening the definition of homework to include projects and studying for tests. As she told the school board at one meeting when the policy was first being discussed, "In closing, I just want to say that I had more free time at Harvard Law School than my son has in middle school, and that is not in the best interests of our children."

One barrier that Butchko had to overcome initially was convincing many teachers and parents that more homework doesn't necessarily equal rigor.

"Most of the parents that were against the homework policy felt that students need a large quantity of homework to prepare them for the rigorous AP classes in high school and to get them into Harvard," she says.

Stephanie Conklin, Ed.M.'06, sees this at Another Course to College, the Boston pilot school where she teaches math. "When a student is not completing [his or her] homework, parents usually are frustrated by this and agree with me that homework is an important part of their child's learning," she says.

As Timothy Jarman, Ed.M.'10, a ninth-grade English teacher at Eugene Ashley High School in Wilmington, N.C., says, "Parents think it is strange when their children are not assigned a substantial amount of homework."

That's because, writes Vatterott, in her chapter, "The Cult(ure) of Homework," the concept of homework "has become so engrained in U.S. culture that the word homework is part of the common vernacular."

These days, nightly homework is a given in American schools, writes Kohn.

"Homework isn't limited to those occasions when it seems appropriate and important. Most teachers and administrators aren't saying, 'It may be useful to do this particular project at home,'" he writes. "Rather, the point of departure seems to be, 'We've decided ahead of time that children will have to do something every night (or several times a week). … This commitment to the idea of homework in the abstract is accepted by the overwhelming majority of schools — public and private, elementary and secondary."

Brant had to confront this when she cut homework at Gaithersburg Elementary.

"A lot of my parents have this idea that homework is part of life. This is what I had to do when I was young," she says, and so, too, will our kids. "So I had to shift their thinking." She did this slowly, first by asking her teachers last year to really think about what they were sending home. And this year, in addition to forming a parent advisory group around the issue, she also holds events to answer questions.

Still, not everyone is convinced that homework as a given is a bad thing. "Any pursuit of excellence, be it in sports, the arts, or academics, requires hard work. That our culture finds it okay for kids to spend hours a day in a sport but not equal time on academics is part of the problem," wrote one pro-homework parent on the blog for the documentary Race to Nowhere , which looks at the stress American students are under. "Homework has always been an issue for parents and children. It is now and it was 20 years ago. I think when people decide to have children that it is their responsibility to educate them," wrote another.

And part of educating them, some believe, is helping them develop skills they will eventually need in adulthood. "Homework can help students develop study skills that will be of value even after they leave school," reads a publication on the U.S. Department of Education website called Homework Tips for Parents. "It can teach them that learning takes place anywhere, not just in the classroom. … It can foster positive character traits such as independence and responsibility. Homework can teach children how to manage time."

Annie Brown, Ed.M.'01, feels this is particularly critical at less affluent schools like the ones she has worked at in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and Los Angeles as a literacy coach.

"It feels important that my students do homework because they will ultimately be competing for college placement and jobs with students who have done homework and have developed a work ethic," she says. "Also it will get them ready for independently taking responsibility for their learning, which will need to happen for them to go to college."

The problem with this thinking, writes Vatterott, is that homework becomes a way to practice being a worker.

"Which begs the question," she writes. "Is our job as educators to produce learners or workers?"

Slate magazine editor Emily Bazelon, in a piece about homework, says this makes no sense for younger kids.

"Why should we think that practicing homework in first grade will make you better at doing it in middle school?" she writes. "Doesn't the opposite seem equally plausible: that it's counterproductive to ask children to sit down and work at night before they're developmentally ready because you'll just make them tired and cross?"

Kohn writes in the American School Board Journal that this "premature exposure" to practices like homework (and sit-and-listen lessons and tests) "are clearly a bad match for younger children and of questionable value at any age." He calls it BGUTI: Better Get Used to It. "The logic here is that we have to prepare you for the bad things that are going to be done to you later … by doing them to you now."

According to a recent University of Michigan study, daily homework for six- to eight-year-olds increased on average from about 8 minutes in 1981 to 22 minutes in 2003. A review of research by Duke University Professor Harris Cooper found that for elementary school students, "the average correlation between time spent on homework and achievement … hovered around zero."

So should homework be eliminated? Of course not, say many Ed School graduates who are teaching. Not only would students not have time for essays and long projects, but also teachers would not be able to get all students to grade level or to cover critical material, says Brett Pangburn, Ed.M.'06, a sixth-grade English teacher at Excel Academy Charter School in Boston. Still, he says, homework has to be relevant.

"Kids need to practice the skills being taught in class, especially where, like the kids I teach at Excel, they are behind and need to catch up," he says. "Our results at Excel have demonstrated that kids can catch up and view themselves as in control of their academic futures, but this requires hard work, and homework is a part of it."

Ed School Professor Howard Gardner basically agrees.

"America and Americans lurch between too little homework in many of our schools to an excess of homework in our most competitive environments — Li'l Abner vs. Tiger Mother," he says. "Neither approach makes sense. Homework should build on what happens in class, consolidating skills and helping students to answer new questions."

So how can schools come to a happy medium, a way that allows teachers to cover everything they need while not overwhelming students? Conklin says she often gives online math assignments that act as labs and students have two or three days to complete them, including some in-class time. Students at Pangburn's school have a 50-minute silent period during regular school hours where homework can be started, and where teachers pull individual or small groups of students aside for tutoring, often on that night's homework. Afterschool homework clubs can help.

Some schools and districts have adapted time limits rather than nix homework completely, with the 10-minute per grade rule being the standard — 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 30 minutes for third-graders, and so on. (This remedy, however, is often met with mixed results since not all students work at the same pace.) Other schools offer an extended day that allows teachers to cover more material in school, in turn requiring fewer take-home assignments. And for others, like Stephanie Brant's elementary school in Maryland, more reading with a few targeted project assignments has been the answer.

"The routine of reading is so much more important than the routine of homework," she says. "Let's have kids reflect. You can still have the routine and you can still have your workspace, but now it's for reading. I often say to parents, if we can put a man on the moon, we can put a man or woman on Mars and that person is now a second-grader. We don't know what skills that person will need. At the end of the day, we have to feel confident that we're giving them something they can use on Mars."

Read a January 2014 update.

Homework Policy Still Going Strong

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Student Opinion

Should We Get Rid of Homework?

Some educators are pushing to get rid of homework. Would that be a good thing?

By Jeremy Engle and Michael Gonchar

Do you like doing homework? Do you think it has benefited you educationally?

Has homework ever helped you practice a difficult skill — in math, for example — until you mastered it? Has it helped you learn new concepts in history or science? Has it helped to teach you life skills, such as independence and responsibility? Or, have you had a more negative experience with homework? Does it stress you out, numb your brain from busywork or actually make you fall behind in your classes?

Should we get rid of homework?

In “ The Movement to End Homework Is Wrong, ” published in July, the Times Opinion writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that homework may be imperfect, but it still serves an important purpose in school. The essay begins:

Do students really need to do their homework? As a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?” I certainly am not the only person wondering about the value of homework. Recently, the sociologist Jessica McCrory Calarco and the mathematics education scholars Ilana Horn and Grace Chen published a paper, “ You Need to Be More Responsible: The Myth of Meritocracy and Teachers’ Accounts of Homework Inequalities .” They argued that while there’s some evidence that homework might help students learn, it also exacerbates inequalities and reinforces what they call the “meritocratic” narrative that says kids who do well in school do so because of “individual competence, effort and responsibility.” The authors believe this meritocratic narrative is a myth and that homework — math homework in particular — further entrenches the myth in the minds of teachers and their students. Calarco, Horn and Chen write, “Research has highlighted inequalities in students’ homework production and linked those inequalities to differences in students’ home lives and in the support students’ families can provide.”

Mr. Kang argues:

But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things. Homework, in many cases, is the only ritualized thing they have to do every day. Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it. Most teachers know that type of progress is very difficult to achieve inside the classroom, regardless of a student’s background, which is why, I imagine, Calarco, Horn and Chen found that most teachers weren’t thinking in a structural inequalities frame. Holistic ideas of education, in which learning is emphasized and students can explore concepts and ideas, are largely for the types of kids who don’t need to worry about class mobility. A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment, but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at. That takes homework and the acknowledgment that sometimes a student can get a question wrong and, with proper instruction, eventually get it right.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should we get rid of homework? Why, or why not?

Is homework an outdated, ineffective or counterproductive tool for learning? Do you agree with the authors of the paper that homework is harmful and worsens inequalities that exist between students’ home circumstances?

Or do you agree with Mr. Kang that homework still has real educational value?

When you get home after school, how much homework will you do? Do you think the amount is appropriate, too much or too little? Is homework, including the projects and writing assignments you do at home, an important part of your learning experience? Or, in your opinion, is it not a good use of time? Explain.

In these letters to the editor , one reader makes a distinction between elementary school and high school:

Homework’s value is unclear for younger students. But by high school and college, homework is absolutely essential for any student who wishes to excel. There simply isn’t time to digest Dostoyevsky if you only ever read him in class.

What do you think? How much does grade level matter when discussing the value of homework?

Is there a way to make homework more effective?

If you were a teacher, would you assign homework? What kind of assignments would you give and why?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column . Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

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Homework should be reserved for weekdays only

During the school year, weekends are the only time students can have free time to spend with their family and friends, unlike weekdays when students are piled on with loads of homework given by teachers. Students should not have homework on the weekends because it interferes with other obligations such as the time you can spend relaxing with family, resting, and studying the knowledge previously learned that week.

On a typical school night, a high school student spends around two hours, at a minimum each night on homework, according to a survey from directhit.com.  During weekdays students miss out on sleep, socializing, and crucial family time. If a person spends all their time doing homework Monday through Thursday, there should be a break on the weekend for time to catch up on things missed during the week.

During the week, children and family do not spend quality time together because of six hour school day, which is followed up by extracurricular activities and homework.  Parents too long forward to weekend, since they have jobs during the week that demands much of their own time.

Although some believe that homework creates bonding time between parents and students, since parents can aid in their child’s school work, many other parents believe that homework is stressful on kids, and when it comes to the weekend, that time should go towards strengthening the family connection, not doing homework.

Many students are involved in extracurricular activities, sports or even work hours on school nights. This causes students to get home from school late. Kids don’t usually start homework right away; they take care of other priorities first, pushing their homework further into the night.

“After I get home from volleyball, I go right into the shower and eat dinner with my family. By the time everything’s settled, I can’t usually start my hours of homework till 8:30 p.m,” said Danielle Montgomery.

Many other students are put into this situation also cutting down on crucial needed sleep during the week to do well in school the next day. By having this same routine every weekday, when the weekend finally arrives, a student is run down on energy and missing out on a lot of sleep. Knowing that they are free of homework on

those days brings a huge relief and allows them to finally rest and regain energy.

Being assigned loads of homework during a time that you could rest, does not allow you to do so.

Some people may say that with better time management, the student can get his or her homework done in the time needed to still allow a decent night’s sleep. If extra time is needed on an assignment, they can squeeze it in at lunch or even in another class that allows some free time.  When kids try to figure out how to get everything done, but fail, they get discouraged and their work ethic is affected. They have no choice but to stay up late into the evening making sure everything is done for the next day.

Another important argument is that students have other obligations such as church, Sunday school, or sporting events that if they have homework on the weekends, it would prevent them from attending any of them.

Some say this is a lesson that has to be learned, and gives good practice for

Future events, since an adult may be called into work, or have to finish something for a job on the weekends even though he or she has off. Having homework on the weekends as a teen helps you learn responsibility of when to choose work over other plans in the real world. Although it would be good practice for a kid, now isn’t the time to learn because they should enjoy their childhood while they still have it.

The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Comments (34)

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Hayden • May 31, 2023 at 12:17 pm

jo troto • May 10, 2023 at 3:49 pm

I think homework should not be on weekends because it is boring.

Emilee • Apr 17, 2023 at 4:35 pm

Thankyou for this and the funny thing is that i am ussing this for an argumentative essay that i sm working on on the weekend

Anonymous • Oct 4, 2022 at 12:01 pm

Thank you so much! This information helped me with a project we are doing at school. – Anonymous

Anonymous • Apr 5, 2022 at 1:01 pm

Thank you so much! This information helped me with a project we are doing at school. – Anonymous

STIFFY SPIDER-MAN • Mar 22, 2022 at 2:14 pm

Homework on the weekends is just not right bros

Bryant Holmes • Feb 7, 2022 at 12:45 pm

This is an amazing place to get information for the presentation I’m organizing, and all of your claims seem to be supported by a fair amount of good evidence and surveys. One of the main troubles I have with weekend homework is that by the time I’ve gotten home and taken a shower, I can barely even stand up, causing me to have to push back my homework back. I then take the Saturday to relax and rest for the next week of school, which the weekend is meant for, pushing the work back even further to Sunday. Thank you for helping me organize my presentation!

Alan • Jan 9, 2022 at 9:15 am

Great story! I could inspire from this book. I remember the first time when I wrote my essay, writers from https://pro-papers.com/do-my-homework-for-me told me that I could become a writer. To continue the work I had begun, such a book was not enough for me.

zaeem • Jan 6, 2022 at 3:04 pm

this is all good . I think your facts are true and trusted

foop • Dec 9, 2021 at 9:49 am

Bro thanks i needed this for a class

ewwdk • Oct 23, 2021 at 9:19 pm

lol I do 4 hours of homework every single day including weekends. I also have club meetings every week so by the time I am done with everything its already 2:00AM. My teachers are just slacking off and they teach us nothing in class. All they do is assign loads of homework expecting us to have our ten assignments turned in by Monday.

Adam Ball • Jul 26, 2021 at 11:24 am

Students should do homework Monday through Thursday not Monday through Friday. Homework didn’t belong in My Friday Routine. So my parents pulled me Out of Griffin in November 2004. Monday Through Friday Homework is too Stressful. It’s more Homework than anyone can Handle.

Vincezo Licavoli • May 26, 2021 at 4:38 pm

Parents cannot make their children do the homework. To my mind, children do not have to do homework not only while virtual school but always. Because they have to be tought at school, but not in home by their parents. Parents do not have to help their children with homework, it must be done by teachers at school. Homework brings only stress and tears. I also suffered from doing my child’s homework. But now i hve already solved this problem, and want to share the solution to other parents. Do not waste your freetime, just chooe some writing service and order your homework. They will do everything in the highest quality. You can try this out https://www.topwritersreview.com/reviews/pro-essay-writer/ . If you visit this website you will find a list of such services and reviews to them. Choose what you like.

Eliott • May 22, 2021 at 4:15 pm

my spanish teacher didn’t warn us that we had any work for the weekend, on Monday she asked if we submitted our ten assignments, thenn proceeded to give us 7 for the week, it all took me 32 hours to catch up, i also got behind on my other classes

paul ryan • May 20, 2021 at 6:26 pm

yeah I’m a middle school student with quite a bad track record of missing assignments, and I’ll admit that is due to laziness and procrastination. and when I have to work on them during the weekend and there’s also regular homework too, it’s just exponential stress.

(not showing my name) • May 2, 2021 at 11:30 am

Weekends are meant for relaxation. If teachers will give us homework on the weekends, why not just send us into school on Saturdays and Sundays? Those two options are on the same level in my opinion, since weekend homework typically takes MUCH longer than traditional weekday homework.

Yusuf • Apr 23, 2021 at 9:59 am

I agree with all of you. Having school on the weekends is annoying and stressful. I can’t watch a movie on Sundays without stressing on the fact that I have homework to do. I’m always staying up till 12 am to finish up. I want to relax on the weekends rather than stress and have anxiety. Yes, I get anxiety because of homework. I wish we could only be assigned homework on the weekdays but not Friday, since that’s basically the start of the weekend. Sometimes i’m so tired and there is so much work to do I just don’t even do it. I let it be a missing assignment for a couple of days while i’m finishing it up on the weekdays. But normally that wouldn’t even be an option to finish and get an extra day because the teachers have it marked missing. The only class where I didn’t get any homework was Spanish class, which didn’t give me stress because of my nice teacher.

mm • Apr 5, 2021 at 8:24 pm

Homework should not be on the weekend because that can lead you to be behind in class as a middle schooler it can affect metal qulitys and it does not help that there is homework on the weekend it does NOT make you smarter it just stresses people out and makes you get behind in class.

Lol no • Mar 21, 2021 at 8:28 pm

Wasn’t the whole point of weekends to not have a bunch of stuff to do? Why they gotta give so much homework I’m ok with school but I CAN’T DEAL WITH HOMEWORK ON THE WEEKENDS.

(who cares abt my name) • Feb 21, 2021 at 8:03 pm

Im doing homework non-stop all day every day even on weekends and I feel like it’s gonna go on forever they give me way too much homework at least 3-4 assignments every day and I have past due assignments also to do and its so insanely stressful and I can’t even do anything and I could barely play with my puppy and I never get a day off or free time like youtube or video games or something. And it takes me so long to do the assignments bc its really long and its super hard. Im in 7th grade.

( not gonna say my name ) • Feb 11, 2021 at 11:11 am

I dont think that after 5 days of working I should have more work on the day I’m suppose to be relaxing.

Beren • Jan 8, 2021 at 1:08 pm

I always do my homeworks

Amber Keller • Apr 16, 2020 at 9:20 pm

I think homework should be reserved on weekdays only because after a full 5 day school week you would like to have some free time and go to a friend’s house.

Can’tSayMyName • Apr 4, 2020 at 2:54 pm

I agree, it’s especially stressful when you not only have homework to make up from being sick, and you have to study for old and new tests.

Hazel • Mar 3, 2020 at 9:46 pm

I agree that homework should not be given on weekends. I often want to relax on the weekend and don’t want to do school work on my time off. Teachers need to realize that high schoolers have a social life and need a break from school on the weekends. Or we can have just a four day week at school 🙂

sandy • Feb 12, 2020 at 11:41 am

i wake up at six in the morning and drag my self out of bed just to go to school, then i come back and at least do one hour of homework, then i do housework, and then sleep and do all of that for the rest of the week. And especially on the weekends doing that will just take all the fun out of it.

Maddox • Feb 5, 2020 at 12:37 pm

Homework is so stressful i play sports and when i come home I have to do algebra homework for 2 hours. If i went on a family trip i could actually be able to catch up if there wasn’t extra homework from school.

matt • Jan 31, 2020 at 9:33 am

I agree with all of you. Hw on the weekends kills me bc I can’t go on any family trips.

devan • Jan 21, 2020 at 4:06 pm

i am a student and i think the idea of home work on the weekend is dumb its like never ending school and it gives to much worry about ” how will i finish all this”

Yung Anthony • Oct 22, 2019 at 5:47 am

I’m stressed bro.

Alexa Danley • Oct 14, 2019 at 11:34 pm

This particular weekend was a four day weekend, and I just finished everything up. It’s 1am. I have been working on it for the past 3 days for about 5 hours each day. I had soccer on Saturday and Monday, and church on Sunday.

Hamzah Shaif • Sep 1, 2019 at 10:05 pm

My son has been given of 24 pages of homework this 3 day weekend. He has put 24 hours so far into his homework, but he estimates tha tomorrow he will have 6 hours more at least of homwork. He has not been able to go on family trips, much less leave his room. The Ironic part is that it is Labor Day,

Matthias Scunter • Sep 25, 2018 at 10:44 am

Me: I have homework. Dad: idc come here boi Me: no!

bob davis • Nov 2, 2011 at 10:08 am

i think that there should be no hw on weekends because i am a student and it is very stressful to come home and have to do more school work. it is never ending school.

Homework-Free Weekends: The Ongoing Debate over How Much Homework is Too Much

A new debate in New Jersey is bringing the homework controversy to light once again. The Galloway Township school district is discussing whether students should be given homework-free weekends so that children can have more time with their families and for extracurricular activities and sports . The plan is still in the discussion phase in this district, and it will need to go before the school board for a vote before it becomes official. In the meantime, the issue has resurfaced around the country as educators discuss once again how much homework is too much and whether it is actually counterproductive to the learning process.

This video explains how schools in California, New York, and Maryland are taking a progressive shift to completely eliminate homework for all students.

Why Galloway is Talking

The Galloway Township is considering recommendations from district officials and school board members to limit the amount of homework students receive. The recommendations have come through research, as well as parent-teacher surveys. According to the Huffington Post, officials making the recommendations have determined that less homework will allow additional time for students to focus on extracurricular activities and spend more quality time with their families. Many of the parents and school officials in the district have also voiced their frustration overstressed students who can’t seem to find enough hours in the day to complete assignments – especially when some of the homework looks like simple “busy work” on the surface.

“We really believe that when kids get to be kids, that benefits their academic performance in school,” Galloway Superintendent Dr. Annette Giaquinto told NBC Philadelphia . Many parents agree with Giaquinto.

“I would be all for not having homework on the weekends,” Galloway parent Jennifer Arrom told NBC. Monday through Friday is a good time and weekends should be spent with your family.” Some students were also in favor of the plan.

“People have sports,” Galloway sixth-grader Nicole Gruber told NBC. Gruber added, “I think that'd be a good idea and if there were tests on Monday, we could study for it and have a lot more time for it.”

This video explains how Galloway Township eliminated weekend homework.

The proposal drawn up by the Galloway Township would prohibit teachers from assigning homework on Friday that is due the following Monday. It would also ban homework from being assigned over school holidays. A similar ban is already in effect in Upper Pittsgrove Township, Salem County. If the ban is approved by the school board in Galloway, it could go into effect when students return to classes next month.

Too Much Homework a Real Phenomenon?

Despite the widespread support for such a ban, there is still a question over whether limiting homework is the most effective path to higher student performance. A study done by Harris Cooper, Department of Psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and reported in the Huffington Post , found the link between time spent on homework and academic achievement was mostly dependent on grade level. Cooper found, “The effects of homework on elementary students appear to be small, almost trivial; expectations for homework’s effects, especially short-term and in the early grades, should be modest…For high school students, however, homework can have significant effects on achievement.”

The Harris Cooper study also found that even in high school, “too much homework may diminish its effectiveness or even become counterproductive.” This finding was cited on StopHomework.com, a website created by Sara Bennett, co-author of the book, The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting our Children and What We can do about It . Bennett’s research also found that the countries that performed the best on achievement tests, such as Japan and Denmark, children were assigned very little homework. By the same token, countries where children had abundant homework, such as Thailand and Greece, performed worse on the same achievement tests.

Alfie Kohn, author of “The Homework Myth” and advocate for getting rid of all kinds of homework, told the Huffington Post, “It’s one thing to say we are wasting kids’ time and straining parent-kid relationships, but what’s unforgivable is if homework is damaging our kids’ interest in learning, undermining their curiosity.” Kohn added that one of the core culprits of the excessive homework dilemma may well be the country’s obsession with standardized test scores . Kohn said, “The standards and accountability craze that has our students in its grip argues for getting tougher with children, making them do more mindless worksheets at earlier ages so that we can score higher in international assessments…it’s not about learning, it’s about winning.”

This video discusses the question "Are we doing too much homework?"

However, there are some solid benefits to homework as well, including the ability to build study habits , self-discipline, and more effective time-management strategies. A report at NPR asks, “How many people would have learned their multiplication tables without at least some rote memorization or done those math sheets they hated so much if they weren’t required?” Yes, there are definitive, measurable benefits to nightly assignments. So how do educators, parents, and students find a happy medium?

Recommendations from the Pros

Harris Cooper recommends that children get 10 minutes of homework each night as they progress from grade to grade. For example, first-graders could receive about 10 minutes of homework each night, while fifth-graders could do up to 50 minutes a night. NPR also recommends in their op-ed that teachers focus on the quality of the homework assignments rather than simply the quantity. If homework can be effectively used to help students practice valuable skills that address their individual learning needs, it would be time well spent indeed.

As far as homework over the weekends, that is a debate for another day – one that Galloway Township in New Jersey will continue to take up in earnest as they determine the best way to educate the students heading to their school buildings this fall.

Questions? Contact us on Facebook. @publicschoolreview

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Should Students Have Homework?

by Suzanne Capek Tingley, Veteran Educator, M.A. Degree

Look before you leap at giving to much or to little homework.

It used to be that students were the only ones complaining about the practice of assigning homework. For years, teachers and parents thought that homework was a necessary tool when educating children. But studies about the effectiveness of homework have been conflicting and inconclusive, leading some adults to argue that homework should become a thing of the past.

What Research Says about Homework

According to Duke professor Harris Cooper, it's important that students have homework. His meta-analysis of homework studies showed a correlation between completing homework and academic success, at least in older grades. He recommends following a "10 minute rule" : students should receive 10 minutes of homework per day in first grade, and 10 additional minutes each subsequent year, so that by twelfth grade they are completing 120 minutes of homework daily.

But his analysis didn't prove that students did better because they did homework; it simply showed a correlation . This could simply mean that kids who do homework are more committed to doing well in school. Cooper also found that some research showed that homework caused physical and emotional stress, and created negative attitudes about learning. He suggested that more research needed to be done on homework's effect on kids.

Further reading: Get Homework Done and Turned In

Some researchers say that the question isn't whether kids should have homework. It's more about what kind of homework students have and how much. To be effective, homework has to meet students' needs. For example, some middle school teachers have found success with online math homework that's adapted to each student's level of understanding. But when middle school students were assigned more than an hour and a half of homework, their math and science test scores went down .

Researchers at Indiana University discovered that math and science homework may improve standardized test grades, but they found no difference in course grades between students who did homework and those who didn't. These researchers theorize that homework doesn't result in more content mastery, but in greater familiarity with the kinds of questions that appear on standardized tests. According to Professor Adam Maltese, one of the study's authors, "Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be."

So while many teachers and parents support daily homework, it's hard to find strong evidence that the long-held practice produces positive results.

Problems with Homework

In an article in Education Week Teacher , teacher Samantha Hulsman said she's frequently heard parents complain that a 30-minute homework assignment turns into a three-hour battle with their kids. Now, she's facing the same problem with her own kids, which has her rethinking her former beliefs about homework. "I think parents expect their children to have homework nightly, and teachers assign daily homework because it's what we've always done," she explained. Today, Hulsman said, it's more important to know how to collaborate and solve problems than it is to know specific facts.

Child psychologist Kenneth Barish wrote in Psychology Today that battles over homework rarely result in a child's improvement in school . Children who don't do their homework are not lazy, he said, but they may be frustrated, discouraged, or anxious. And for kids with learning disabilities, homework is like "running with a sprained ankle. It's doable, but painful."

Barish suggests that parents and kids have a "homework plan" that limits the time spent on homework. The plan should include turning off all devices—not just the student's, but those belonging to all family members.

One of the best-known critics of homework, Alfie Kohn , says that some people wrongly believe "kids are like vending machines—put in an assignment, get out learning." Kohn points to the lack of evidence that homework is an effective learning tool; in fact, he calls it "the greatest single extinguisher of children's curiosity that we have yet invented."

Homework Bans

Last year, the public schools in Marion County, Florida, decided on a no-homework policy for all of their elementary students . Instead, kids read nightly for 20 minutes. Superintendent Heidi Maier said the decision was based on Cooper's research showing that elementary students gain little from homework, but a lot from reading.

Orchard Elementary School in South Burlington, Vermont, followed the same path, substituting reading for homework. The homework policy has four parts : read nightly, go outside and play, have dinner with your family, and get a good night's sleep. Principal Mark Trifilio says that his staff and parents support the idea.

But while many elementary schools are considering no-homework policies, middle schools and high schools have been reluctant to abandon homework. Schools say parents support homework and teachers know it can be helpful when it is specific and follows certain guidelines. For example, practicing solving word problems can be helpful, but there's no reason to assign 50 problems when 10 will do. Recognizing that not all kids have the time, space, and home support to do homework is important, so it shouldn't be counted as part of a student's grade.

Further reading: Balancing Extracurriculars with Homework in High School

So Should Students Have Homework?

Should you ban homework in your classroom? If you teach lower grades, it's possible. If you teach middle or high school, probably not. But all teachers should think carefully about their homework policies. By limiting the amount of homework and improving the quality of assignments, you can improve learning outcomes for your students.

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Suzanne Capek Tingley started as a high school English/Spanish teacher, transitioned to middle school, and eventually became a principal, superintendent, and adjunct professor in education administration at the State University of New York. She is the author of the funny, but practical book for teachers, How to Handle Difficult Parents (Prufrock Press). Her work has appeared in many publications including Education Week, and her blog, Practical Leadership, was featured on the Scholastic website. She has been a presenter and consultant, and with Magna Publications she developed videos on demand highlighting successful strategies for classroom teachers. Among her honors is a Woman of Distinction Award from the New York State Senate. She is a strong believer that all kids can learn and that teaching requires art, skill, and a good sense of humor.

Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful. (Getty Images)

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

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Is Homework Necessary? Education Inequity and Its Impact on Students

Schools are getting rid of homework from Essex, Mass., to Los Angeles, Calif. Although the no-homework trend may sound alarming, especially to parents dreaming of their child’s acceptance to Harvard, Stanford or Yale, there is mounting evidence that eliminating homework in grade school may actually have great benefits , especially with regard to educational equity.

In fact, while the push to eliminate homework may come as a surprise to many adults, the debate is not new . Parents and educators have been talking about this subject for the last century, so that the educational pendulum continues to swing back and forth between the need for homework and the need to eliminate homework.

The Problem with Homework: It Highlights Inequalities

How much homework is too much homework, when does homework actually help, negative effects of homework for students, how teachers can help.

One of the most pressing talking points around homework is how it disproportionately affects students from less affluent families. The American Psychological Association (APA) explained:

“Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs.”

[RELATED] How to Advance Your Career: A Guide for Educators >> 

While students growing up in more affluent areas are likely playing sports, participating in other recreational activities after school, or receiving additional tutoring, children in disadvantaged areas are more likely headed to work after school, taking care of siblings while their parents work or dealing with an unstable home life. Adding homework into the mix is one more thing to deal with — and if the student is struggling, the task of completing homework can be too much to consider at the end of an already long school day.

While all students may groan at the mention of homework, it may be more than just a nuisance for poor and disadvantaged children, instead becoming another burden to carry and contend with.

Beyond the logistical issues, homework can negatively impact physical health and stress — and once again this may be a more significant problem among economically disadvantaged youth who typically already have a higher stress level than peers from more financially stable families .

Yet, today, it is not just the disadvantaged who suffer from the stressors that homework inflicts. A 2014 CNN article, “Is Homework Making Your Child Sick?” , covered the issue of extreme pressure placed on children of the affluent. The article looked at the results of a study surveying more than 4,300 students from 10 high-performing public and private high schools in upper-middle-class California communities.

“Their findings were troubling: Research showed that excessive homework is associated with high stress levels, physical health problems and lack of balance in children’s lives; 56% of the students in the study cited homework as a primary stressor in their lives,” according to the CNN story. “That children growing up in poverty are at-risk for a number of ailments is both intuitive and well-supported by research. More difficult to believe is the growing consensus that children on the other end of the spectrum, children raised in affluence, may also be at risk.”

When it comes to health and stress it is clear that excessive homework, for children at both ends of the spectrum, can be damaging. Which begs the question, how much homework is too much?

The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association recommend that students spend 10 minutes per grade level per night on homework . That means that first graders should spend 10 minutes on homework, second graders 20 minutes and so on. But a study published by The American Journal of Family Therapy found that students are getting much more than that.

While 10 minutes per day doesn’t sound like much, that quickly adds up to an hour per night by sixth grade. The National Center for Education Statistics found that high school students get an average of 6.8 hours of homework per week, a figure that is much too high according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It is also to be noted that this figure does not take into consideration the needs of underprivileged student populations.

In a study conducted by the OECD it was found that “after around four hours of homework per week, the additional time invested in homework has a negligible impact on performance .” That means that by asking our children to put in an hour or more per day of dedicated homework time, we are not only not helping them, but — according to the aforementioned studies — we are hurting them, both physically and emotionally.

What’s more is that homework is, as the name implies, to be completed at home, after a full day of learning that is typically six to seven hours long with breaks and lunch included. However, a study by the APA on how people develop expertise found that elite musicians, scientists and athletes do their most productive work for about only four hours per day. Similarly, companies like Tower Paddle Boards are experimenting with a five-hour workday, under the assumption that people are not able to be truly productive for much longer than that. CEO Stephan Aarstol told CNBC that he believes most Americans only get about two to three hours of work done in an eight-hour day.

In the scope of world history, homework is a fairly new construct in the U.S. Students of all ages have been receiving work to complete at home for centuries, but it was educational reformer Horace Mann who first brought the concept to America from Prussia. 

Since then, homework’s popularity has ebbed and flowed in the court of public opinion. In the 1930s, it was considered child labor (as, ironically, it compromised children’s ability to do chores at home). Then, in the 1950s, implementing mandatory homework was hailed as a way to ensure America’s youth were always one step ahead of Soviet children during the Cold War. Homework was formally mandated as a tool for boosting educational quality in 1986 by the U.S. Department of Education, and has remained in common practice ever since.  

School work assigned and completed outside of school hours is not without its benefits. Numerous studies have shown that regular homework has a hand in improving student performance and connecting students to their learning. When reviewing these studies, take them with a grain of salt; there are strong arguments for both sides, and only you will know which solution is best for your students or school. 

Homework improves student achievement.

• Source: The High School Journal, “ When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math ,” 2012. 
• Source: IZA.org, “ Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement? ,” 2014. **Note: Study sample comprised only high school boys. 

Homework helps reinforce classroom learning.

• Source: “ Debunk This: People Remember 10 Percent of What They Read ,” 2015.

Homework helps students develop good study habits and life skills.

• Sources: The Repository @ St. Cloud State, “ Types of Homework and Their Effect on Student Achievement ,” 2017; Journal of Advanced Academics, “ Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework ,” 2011.
• Source: Journal of Advanced Academics, “ Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework ,” 2011.

Homework allows parents to be involved with their children’s learning.

• Parents can see what their children are learning and working on in school every day. 
• Parents can participate in their children’s learning by guiding them through homework assignments and reinforcing positive study and research habits.
• Homework observation and participation can help parents understand their children’s academic strengths and weaknesses, and even identify possible learning difficulties.
• Source: Phys.org, “ Sociologist Upends Notions about Parental Help with Homework ,” 2018.

While some amount of homework may help students connect to their learning and enhance their in-class performance, too much homework can have damaging effects. 

Students with too much homework have elevated stress levels. 

• Source: USA Today, “ Is It Time to Get Rid of Homework? Mental Health Experts Weigh In ,” 2021.
• Source: Stanford University, “ Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework ,” 2014.

Students with too much homework may be tempted to cheat. 

• Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, “ High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame ,” 2010.
• Source: The American Journal of Family Therapy, “ Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background ,” 2015.

Homework highlights digital inequity. 

• Sources: NEAToday.org, “ The Homework Gap: The ‘Cruelest Part of the Digital Divide’ ,” 2016; CNET.com, “ The Digital Divide Has Left Millions of School Kids Behind ,” 2021.
• Source: Investopedia, “ Digital Divide ,” 2022; International Journal of Education and Social Science, “ Getting the Homework Done: Social Class and Parents’ Relationship to Homework ,” 2015.
• Source: World Economic Forum, “ COVID-19 exposed the digital divide. Here’s how we can close it ,” 2021.

Homework does not help younger students.

• Source: Review of Educational Research, “ Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Researcher, 1987-2003 ,” 2006.

To help students find the right balance and succeed, teachers and educators must start the homework conversation, both internally at their school and with parents. But in order to successfully advocate on behalf of students, teachers must be well educated on the subject, fully understanding the research and the outcomes that can be achieved by eliminating or reducing the homework burden. There is a plethora of research and writing on the subject for those interested in self-study.

For teachers looking for a more in-depth approach or for educators with a keen interest in educational equity, formal education may be the best route. If this latter option sounds appealing, there are now many reputable schools offering online master of education degree programs to help educators balance the demands of work and family life while furthering their education in the quest to help others.

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The Journal Rewired

Homework should not be assigned on weekends or breaks

Alice Ottolino , Reporter December 6, 2017

Imagine you are back in elementary school, playing outside in the snow with your old neighborhood friends. Making a snowman, having a snowball fight, drinking hot chocolate and all of a sudden you hear your mom or dad yell for you because you have homework to do. That is one of the worst feelings ever when you are young and playing outside with your friends.

There are so many different studies debating if teachers should give out homework over the weekends, or if it should just be given on weekdays. According to Eastside Online, on a weeknight students will spend up to two hours a night working on homework. Teachers should only give homework out Monday through Thursday. There are so many different reasons as to why teachers shouldn’t be permitted to hand out homework over the weekends and especially over breaks.

Having a heavy workload on weekends or on breaks will take time away from friends and family. Having time with your friends and family is a crucial aspect in a childhood. According to My Homework Help, students need to be able to relax after a busy scheduled week. While some kids get to have fun, there are others who have to stay home and do homework, this will make them feel left out and not wanted. It’s not their fault that their teacher gave them homework on the weekends. We could avoid this entire problem if teachers just left the homework for the weekdays.

Kids need to be kids. In order for that to happen, teachers need to stop giving out so much homework on weekends. According to My Homework Help, too much homework can have a negative effect on kids and their learning experiences, which will often lead them to hate school work in general. Knowing that there will most likely be homework on the weekdays, the weekends need to be left open for kids to enjoy their free time and the activities they like to do.

Students just need time to relax. They have enough stress  during the week with homework, and if that carries into the weekend it could cause an issue.  

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Tiiu Tak • Aug 17, 2021 at 2:41 am

Great writing! This helped me a lot. Thanks!

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The Tyranny of Homework: 20 Reasons to Stop Assigning Homework Over the Holidays

M any students agree that assigning homework over the holidays really is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

Upon returning from winter break, you’ll probably have a handful of students saying the dog ate their homework or it got blown away in a winter storm. But you’ll probably be surprised to learn that some research suggests assigning too much homework can be a bad thing.   A 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times , suggests that some districts have cut back on the amount of homework in the effort to consider children’s social development. In fact, the San Ramon Valley district modified its homework policy and no homework is allowed over weekends and holiday vacations, except for reading.

The US   National Education Association   recommends no more than ten minutes (of homework) per grade level, per night.

Homework has fallen in and out of favor over the decades. California even established a law in 1901 limiting the amount of homework teachers could assign. Assigning homework is highly in favor now a days. With recent trends of information overload, packed activity schedules, and childhood obesity, it’s no wonder educators are reconsidering their stance on homework.

Learn more about how to progress in your teaching career with an online Certificate in Education Support today.

Here are 20 reasons why you shouldn’t assign homework over the holidays. Perhaps one of your students will print this list and encourage you to reconsider your ideas about homework.

• Students are learning all the time in the 21 st   century.   According to a   recent article   in MindShift traditional homework will become obsolete in the next decade. Thanks to computers, learning is occurring 24/7. With access to software programs, worldwide connections, and learning websites such as the Khan Academy, learning occurs all the time. According to Mindshift, “the next decade is going to see the traditional temporal boundaries between home and school disappear.” Try to see if you can bridge the gap between school and home by getting students interested in doing their own research over holiday break. Rather than assigning homework, create a true interest in learning. They will often pursue learning about topics they like on their own. After all, this is the way of the 21 st   century and information is everywhere.
• More homework doesn’t necessarily equate to higher achievement . Yes, too much homework can actually be a bad thing. A 1989 Duke University study that reviewed 120 studies found a weak link between achievement and homework at the elementary level and only a moderate benefit at the middle school level. In a similar recent review of 60 studies,   researchers at Duke U   found assigning homework was beneficial, but excessive amounts of homework was counterproductive. The research found homework was more beneficial for older students than younger ones. The study was completed by Harris Cooper, a leading homework research and author of “The Battle over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents”. Cooper suggests that teachers at the younger level may assign homework for improving study skills, rather than learning, explaining why many studies concluded less benefit for younger children. Many teachers do not receive specific training on homework. Cooper suggests that homework should be uncomplicated and short, involve families, and engage student interests.
• Countries that assign more homework don’t outperform those with less homework.   Around the world, countries that assign more homework don’t see to perform any better. A   Stanford study   found that in countries like Japan, Denmark, and the Czech Republic little homework was assigned and students outperformed students in counties with large amounts of homework such as Greece, Thailand, and Iran. American and British students seem to have more homework than most counties, and still only score in the international average. In fact, Japan has instituted no homework policies at younger levels to allow family time and personal interests. Finland, a national leader in international tests, limits high school homework to half hour per night. Of course, there are other factors not taken into account in the study, such as length of the school day. But in itself, it is interesting to see this issue from a world perspective.
• Instead of assigning homework, suggest they read for fun.   There are great holiday stories and books you can recommend to parents and students. If you approach the activity with a holiday spirit, many students   will be engaged . They may want to check out the stories on their own. You can start by reading the first chapter in class and leaving them intrigued. For instance, you can read the first chapter of   The   Gift of the Magi   and suggest students read it over winter break. With younger students, you might promise roles in a play for students who read over break.
• Don’t assign holiday busy work.   Most academics agree that busy work does little to increase learning. It is best to not assign packets of worksheets if they do nothing to add to student learning. You also don’t want to waste valuable time grading meaningless paperwork. Some studies show that much homework may actually decline achievement. Assigning excessive amounts of homework may be detrimental. In fact, a 2006 study by Yankelovick found that reading achievement declined when students were assigned too much homework. Actually, interesting reading such as   Harry Potter   produced higher reading achievement.
• Have students attend a local cultural event.   You can let parents know that instead of assigning homework, you are suggesting students attend a particular event that relates to your classroom. For instance, if you are reading Shakespeare, they might attend a related play or ballet.
• Family time is more important during the holidays . Assigning less homework makes it easier for families to have time together. Family studies at the University of Michigan, show that family time is extremely important to achievement and behavior. Studies on family meals, suggest that students who have dinner with their family have better academic scores and behavioral outcomes. Perhaps this is only a correlation, but family time is undeniably important to child development. Students spent most of their days at school while parents are at work. When all is said and done, remember what it was like being a kid. The things you remember most about the holidays aren’t the assignments you took home, but the time you spend with family and friends.
• For students who travel during the holidays, assigning homework may impede learning on their trip . The Holiday time is the one time of year that many families reconnect with distant family members or travel. I remember having to pack hoards of books over some holidays to Spain and it was not fun. I wanted to enjoy the time with family and experience the country fully. Traveling in itself is a learning activity. Let students experience their travels fully.
• Kids need time to be kids.   A recent article from Australia’s Happy Child website,   “What is the value of Homework: Research and Reality”   considers this issue and explains how children need unstructured play time. Homework can have a negative influence on early learning experiences. Suggest students use holiday time to do physical activity, such as ice-skating or sledding. Many kids don’t get enough exercise. Childhood obesity is a major problem in the United States. Suggesting students play outside or participate in a sport is a good way to get them to value physical activity. The holidays are a great time for kids to go sledding in the snow or play with friends outside. If no one has homework, classmates might exchange phone numbers to play together. You can suggest this to parents. If the teacher thinks physical activity is important, students will too.
• Some education experts recommend an end to all homework . Etta Kralovec and John Buell, authors of   The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning ,   controversially suggests that homework may be a form of intrusion on family life, and may increase the drop-out rate in high schools. The authors blame homework for increasing the achievement gap due to socio-economic differences in after-school obligations. Consider challenging your own views of the benefits of homework and try to create a level playing field when considering assignments.
• Send a letter to parents explaining why you are not assigning work.   You might want to take the Christmas holiday as a chance to engage parents to play a learning game or do some art with their kids. If families know there is an intentional purpose to not assigning work, they may take the chance to spend more one-on-one time with their child.
• You can make the holidays a time for an “open project” for extra credit.   Students might take this time to do something related to the curriculum that they would like to explore on their own terms. Before the holidays, you might talk about topics or provide books students for students to take home. Learning for fun and interest, might produce more meaningful engagement than assigning homework.
• Suggest they visit a museum instead.   With families at home, the holiday time is a great time for students to see an exhibit that interests them or do a fun activity at a nearby museum. Sometimes encouraging these field trips may be more beneficial than assigning homework. You might want to print coupons, a schedule, or a list of upcoming exhibits so that families have the information at their fingertips.
• Encourage students to volunteer during the holiday time.   The holidays are a great time for students to give back. Students might volunteer at a local soup kitchen or pantry. Volunteer organizations are often at their busiest during the holiday time. Plus, students learn a lot from the experience of doing community service. I remember visiting a group home during the holiday time in high school and helping kids wrap Christmas gifts for their families. This is a great alternative to assigning homework, especially for Generation Y who highly values civic involvement.
• Develop a class game.   You might have the class play a   learning game   the week before vacation and have them take it home to show their family. My fourth grade teacher had hop-scotch math. We often drew with chalk outside to replicate her game at home. Try to think of a holiday-themed game or one that the whole family can get involved in.
• Students might learn more from observing the real world.   Learning isn’t just about paper and pencil activities. Teachers should also inspire students to seek ways to learn from real-world experiences. They might cook with their parents and practice measuring. Or tag along with a parent who is putting up holiday lights or building a shed. Ask students to observe a job around the house or ask their parents about their job over holiday break. They might be enlightened to learn more about the real world and different jobs they might pursue in the future. Perhaps some students might be able to go to work with their parents instead of a formal assignment.
• Go on a hike.   Students learn a great deal from nature. Tell students to go outside on a walk and be ready to share their experience when they get back. Did they observe natural phenomena you talked about in science class or different types of rocks you discussed in geology? Or can you tie their walk into a discussion of poetry?
• Tell students to visit an amusement park.   If you are teaching physics or math, amusement parks give ample room to explain the laws of physics and mathematical probability. This outing would allow students to think about the real world implications of science. You may want to even plan a lesson beforehand that ties this idea in. On another level, it allows students to create a lasting memory with their own families.
• Kids need rest!   Everyone needs a mental breather and the holidays are the best time for students to play and take a break from school. Kids need a full ten hours of sleep and adequate rest. The vacation time is a great time for students to take a mental breather from school. With many family outings and vacations during the holiday time, they will have less time to complete homework. They will come back to school feeling re-energized.
• Many parents and students dislike holiday homework.   You want parents to buy-in to your classroom community and support your endeavors with students. Assigning homework over the holidays is usually unpopular with parents because it may the one time of year they have to give children their undivided attention. Instead, you might want to take a survey to see if parents agree with the idea. You can then send a letter with the survey results. Taking parents’ perspectives into account shows you value their opinions and feedback. Students prefer some free time too. Not surprisingly one student created a Facebook page, titled, “Why do teachers give us homework over the holiday.” If the students know you are giving them a break over the holidays they may work harder for you when they get back.

If you’re still not convinced, check out this   fact sheet   based on   The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It   by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish. If you still plan on assigning homework over the holidays, at least keep in mind some guidelines.

The US   National Education Association   recommends no more than ten minutes per grade level, per night. If you must assign homework make sure it is meaningful and doesn’t take away from time with families. And most of all, remember what it was like being a kid during the holiday time. Homework is generally not a part of those memories, nor should it be. Those days playing outside and spending time with family are lifelong memories just as important as school.

Childhood is over in the blink of an eye.

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College Reality Check

Should Students Have Homework? 8 Reasons Pro and 8 Against

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students in the US spend an average of 6.64 hours in school per day.

It doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that they can spend the rest of the day — excluding sleep hours — as they please. Doing homework, for one, should be squeezed into a student’s schedule to get good grades.

Homework instills many skills students can benefit from throughout their academic and professional careers, too. They include self-discipline, time management, organizing and communication skills. However, it can also leave students stressed, not to mention that some studies suggest homework does not make them smarter.

Got some homework and torn between doing it ASAP or saving it for later? Read on.

While there are many good reasons why students should have homework, all of which can be helpful in the pursuit of a grade school or high school diploma or an undergraduate degree, there are also some downsides that are hard to overlook.

8 Reasons Why Students Should Have Homework

Let’s kick things off by enumerating some of the perks that homework brings to a student’s life. Many of them can be beneficial for them not only during the time being but also in their future academic and professional endeavors.

Students Forget 95% of Things They Learn in School

Students tend to forget up to 95% of the things they learn in the classroom after 3 days.

Of course, some may forget less and some may forget more in a shorter or longer period of time. But the main takeaway is that the way information is retained can look different from one student to the other.

This is when homework can help students keep the lessons intact, reviewing allows students to remember and retain particulars in the long term.

So, in other words, doing homework facilitates the transfer of lessons learned from their short-term to their long-term memory.

By giving students homework to take care of, say, over the weekend, all the information obtained in the classroom in the past week can be reinforced, thus allowing them to benefit from them going forward.

Homework instills self-discipline

Since homework is done without any teacher in sight, it encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning.

To put it another way, it gives students the opportunity to learn how to be disciplined .

Discipline is essential to helping students obtain their academic goals. It adds that being disciplined does so effectively as a result of the following:

• Fostering of positive academic performance
• Encouraging to stay focused on goals
• Minimizing problems brought about by peer pressure

Other than bad grades, lack of discipline that homework helps fight off can cause many other problems, too.

For one, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) says that indiscipline can result in disobeying school rules and being late to class .

The organization adds that it can also promote all kinds of anti-social behaviors and vices, all of which, if allowed to continue, may manifest later in life.

Homework hones time management

A tell-tale sign of poor time management is procrastination, and many students are no strangers to it.

As a matter of fact, the counseling office at the University at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) says that around 25% of students end up being chronic procrastinators .

Having excellent time-management skills can prove to be extremely beneficial to students whose everyday schedules are hectic. It lets them stay organized, well-prepared and on schedule by enabling them to use their time wisely.

In the process, students also develop self-confidence and self-reliability, both of which can help them excel in and out of academia.

But, like many other vital skills, managing time well is something that requires students to learn and practice, too, and doing their homework dutifully each and every time helps ensure that they are on the right path.

Studying for 3 to 4 hours Gets the Work Done

Scientists say that, as reported by Think Impact, students should study 3 to 4 hours daily to get the best results.

But it’s possible to cut down on the number of hours students spend studying outside of the classroom by developing good study habits. So, in other words, if they want to study less, they should study more for the time being!

Doing homework is an effective way for students to develop much-needed study skills. This makes it possible for the brain to be able to process and retain information so much better.

The brain may be made of soft tissue called the gray matter and white matter alright. However, it’s like a muscle that needs to be exercised on a regular basis for strength and efficiency.

Good study habits can help students in more ways than one.

Besides their grades, it can also increase their self-confidence and self-esteem. Additionally, it can lower stress and anxiety related to examinations and deadlines.

And since it can promote more effective studying, students need not spend a lot of time trying to remember everything that needs to be remembered, thus giving them plenty of time to do other things.

More Homework Limits Screen Time

According to a report by Medline Plus, most American children spend around 3 hours a day in front of the TV.

But because there are things such as smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles and computers, added together, the online health information resource, which is a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), says that all screen time types daily can total 5 to 7 hours.

But here’s the deal: young ones aged 2 and above should have screen time of only between 1 to 2 hours a day of high-quality programming, says the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Too much screen time in kids may lead to the following problems:

• Difficulty sleeping at night
• Increased risk of anxiety, depression and attention issues
• Increased risk of obesity (due to lack of physical activity and unhealthy food choices resulting from ads)

It’s a good thing that there are many ways to reduce screen time in school-age kids, such as encouraging unplugged and unstructured playtime as well as urging them to do their homework instead.

Homework fosters communication

In some instances, homework has to be done in groups.

This helps students hone good communication skills as they discuss and share their views with their co-members on the various elements of the task at hand.

In the process, they also get to know some of their classmates better and even establish friendships with them in case they haven’t already in school.

On the other hand, homework that needs to be done separately by students gives the child and the parent the opportunity to communicate with one another and strengthen their bond.

Experts say that parents helping with homework brings the following benefits:

• Cultivates positive learning behavior
• Reinforces knowledge learned in the classroom
• Gives kids the sense of just how important education is

Homework helps parents see what their kids are learning

Sending a child to a public school may be cheaper than sending him or her to a private school. But it doesn’t mean that parents have no more various education-related expenses to shoulder.

Due to the fact that money is involved, it’s important that kids are getting the best education possible.

Thanks to homework, parents can have an idea of what sort of things their youngsters are learning in school.

It also allows them to have a sense of their children’s learning style or progress and inform the teachers or school administration of any problem encountered that could have an impact on their academic achievement or development.

Homework helps teachers improve their craft

Believe it or not, it’s not just the students who can benefit from having homework and doing them diligently, too. In many instances, teachers who assign homework themselves can also gain something positive from it.

For one, homework allows them to determine whether or not their students understand the lessons well.

Depending on their observations, it also enables them to come up with alternative teaching approaches to help students become better learners, which requires them to become better teachers — much of teaching is learning on the job.

Besides, teaching methods are constantly changing, and teachers need to keep up every single time.

8 Reasons Why Students Should Have No Homework

And now, let’s enumerate some of the things that make students better off without any homework to complete after school hours or over the weekend, many of which can prove to be beneficial for their academic performance and overall well-being.

Homework causes additional stress

Based on a stress statistics report by Finances Online, 75% of high school students and 50% of middle school students report that schoolwork makes them often or always feeling stressed .

It goes without saying, then, that bringing some schoolwork to their homes for them to complete can make matters worse for them.

Especially if the goal is for the student to earn a diploma, too much stress is a no-no because it can cause:

• Demotivation to study
• Reduced overall academic achievement
• Increased dropout rate

It’s no secret, too, that a lot of stress can affect the mental health of a person, student or otherwise.

Homework promotes a sedentary lifestyle

While we were talking about the reasons why students should have homework, it was mentioned that doing schoolwork at home lessens screen time, which can lower the risk of obesity.

But on the flip side, homework can be a reason for students to pack on excess pounds.

Instead of spending time in the playground with their friends, students sit at their desks at home for hours until such time that they have completed their homework.

Clearly, homework promotes a sedentary lifestyle , which, according to a warning issued by WHO, can double the risk of obesity as well as many other serious health concerns such as diabetes and heart disease.

Homework takes away quality time

Most of the waking hours of students are spent with their classmates and teachers. But they also have a relationship with family members and friends outside of the campus they need to build and foster.

Rather than spend their time away from the books with people they care about and who care about them, students have no choice but to devote their remaining energy to school-related matters because of homework.

It can also keep them from partaking in extracurricular and/or everyday activities they are interested in or are passionate about.

Homework has no favorable impact on grades

It can be easy to assume that the more homework assigned, the brighter students get.

However, data obtained by Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMSS) says not so fast — there’s no proof that homework can be associated with increased academic achievement .

Going by the said information, needless to say, some of the perks that come with doing homework, including better study habits and knowledge consolidation, are complete baloney.

Doing homework also does not guarantee improvement in a student’s knowledge and academic performance.

Access to the internet, for instance, allows them to find answers without much effort with the help of Google or send their smart classmates (who probably have already completed their homework) emails or DMs, which fosters cheating.

Homework takes no account of various types of learners

The name itself pretty much explains what homework is: schoolwork students need to do at home. Needless to say, without any teacher in sight, students have to complete their homework on their own accord and at their own pace.

According to a report by Digital Promise, whose mission is to shape the future of learning as well as to advance equitable education systems by collating solutions across research, practice and technology, not every student is capable of working at his or her own pace.

It adds that, for some children, self-paced learning means no-pace learning.

So, in other words, not all students are very good with homework , depending on their learning style or preference.

Homework does not go well with all types of homes

Earlier, it was mentioned that one of the reasons why students should have homework is that it helps in building good study habits, which is a critical component of attaining academic success.

And the #1 tip for developing good study habits?

Find a good place to study.

Unfortunately, not all students have homes that are conducive to homework completion. Someone who is from a big family that lives in a small home where space is constrained, undeniably, will have a hard time finding a nice quiet spot in which to do his homework.

The same conundrum will surely be faced by a student who lives in a very busy and noisy neighborhood.

Also mentioned above is the fact that homework gives the child and parent the opportunity to bond over the assignment. Clearly, this perk excludes students whose parents are juggling multiple jobs or are from broken homes.

Homework may cause conflict with parents

Speaking of which, not all parents are good at guiding their little ones in doing their homework.

As a matter of fact, according to many child psychologists, the relationship between a parent and child can create a learning environment at home that can pose a lot of challenges.

Parents, for instance, may contrast their kids’ accomplishments and failures against their own. Children, on the other hand, may see criticisms from their parents as personal attacks.

Because the parent-child dynamic can vary from one home to the other, it’s not all the time that homework can have a positive impact on the student’s grades and relationship with the parentals.

Homework makes teachers even busier

Last but not least, it’s not just students who end up with even more hectic everyday schedules by being given homework to work on but also those who assign the homework themselves — teachers!

Based on a global report that was featured by Australia-based The Educator Magazine , teachers are overworked and underworked professionals.

And that is why allowing their students to leave the school grounds without any homework to worry about later, which they will have to check during the following class meeting, can be immensely favorable for teachers.

Recap: Should Students Have Homework or Not

Assigning students with homework comes from a good place — teachers allocate them daily or weekly to reinforce knowledge learned in the classroom and instill good study skills, not to torture them.

For many students who have to go to school 160 to 180 times each year, however, homework that they need to take care of at the end of the day or over the weekend can be easily mistaken for punishment because, more often than not, it feels like one.

As a result, it’s not unlikely for many to overlook the positives of having homework and see only the negatives.

Indeed, as discussed above, homework comes with both pros and cons.

Here’s a great suggestion to allow students to continue to enjoy the benefits homework brings while minimizing the associated negatives: the Center for American Progress (CAP) recommends the 10-minute rule, which, simply put, means that students should be able to finish their homework in no more than 10 minutes multiplied by their grade level.

I graduated with BA in Nursing and $36,000 in student loan debt from the UCF. After a decade in the workforce, I went back to school to obtain my MBA from UMGC.

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