First, thank you to the folks who have read my controversial post “Why we say “No” to Homework.” I must admit, I was blown away by the thousands upon thousands who read that post.
Many of you have asked excellent follow-up questions, but since there were so many of them I didn’t know how to respond at first. Now I know. I’m incorporating “Homework” as a major topic in my next renegade parenting book. Meanwhile, I’ll answer one of your burning questions here.
What happened after our family wrote the “we ban homework” letter?
The letter sparked a good conversation with my son’s third grade teacher. We talked about how we supported his education at home. We talked about her goals for the class and her goals for him. We agreed to no homework and that it was still his responsibility to master what kids were learning in class. Thanks to her flexibility and understanding of individual needs, the year went by without a glitch.
It seems more teachers are willing to be flexible in the younger years, especially if parents show they care and are involved. My child’s first and second grade teachers also agreed to no homework for our family, but each year the pressure increased. This school, on the whole, believed in homework for elementary students and had the common “10 minutes a grade” policy. By 4th and 5th grade homework was expected to be 40-50 minutes long each night (though many families will attest it took much longer) and became more serious. We were heading into a true clash of education cultures.
So last year we changed schools. This is difficult in our small town because there aren’t a lot of options. We now send both our kids to a charter school that basically has no homework until middle school. They encourage reading every night at home.
The individual approach — the “no homework” letter — is a difficult path that gets harder as children grow older. What really needs to happen is mass change and education of educators. For my next book, I’m digging into research that shows that there is no evidence that homework at the elementary school age helps at all. Many scholars dispute its worth at the middle school level, either, and that any homework over two hours a night for high school has a diminishing return.
So it’s a happy ending for us. My son is in 5th grade now and tells anyone who will listen that he goes to a “really cool school!” But the problem is immense. Every day people find my blog by typing pleas on the internet like this: “my 7-year-old is in tears with three hours of homework” “homework is ruining my family” and “it’s past 10pm and my 4th grader is still working on homework.”
What’s your update? For those of you who have tried to buck the homework system, what was the result? I’d love to hear from you.
What happened? Did it work for you? What’s your homework story?
Heather Shumaker is the author of It’s OK Not to Share and It’s OK to Go Up the Slide (published 2016) If you’re interested in alternatives to a homework culture in elementary school, pick up a copy of It’s OK to Go Up the Slide.
