Many parents tend to think that their children are overloaded with homework, which is the biggest cause of stressing children out and not giving them a chance to be normal kids. However, according to two studies done, homework overload is largely a myth. According to the Brookings Institution, most students actually have less than an hour of homework a night. This same place insists that parents are unduly alarmed over the amount of homework because in reality children are not overworked. They contend that our children have room for even more work.
According to the study that was done by the Brookings Institute in 1999, children aged nine, thirteen and seventeen, were asked how much homework they were given the night before as a part of their study. Most of the students that they questioned reported that they had less than an hour of homework the night before. The results of this study has shown that the number of students who have been assigned more than an hour of homework a night has dropped among all three age groups since 1984.
How much homework is too much?
Another study that was done by the RAND Corporation found that only one out of every ten high school students does a substantial amount of homework each night. What the study determines to be a substantial amount of homework is more than two hours a night. Interesting to note was that this number has remained stable for the last fifty years.
Just because there have been studies done that suggest students are not overloaded with homework may not apply to every student. All that the studies do is prove that for the majority of students homework overload is not a problem. What these studies are proving is that homework overload is more of the exception rather than the rule. In a survey done in 2000, by Public Agenda, parents were asked about how they felt about the amount of homework their children were receiving. Two-thirds of the parents stated that their children received the right amount of homework, where one-quarter said that their children didn’t get enough homework. Only ten percent of the parents questioned stated that their children received too much homework.
One thing that parents need to think about is that our nation’s high school students have a much lighter homework load when compared to their international peers. According to a 1995-96 math and science study, public school students from France, Italy, Russia, and South America reported spending at least twice as much time on homework as American students reported. On average, a child should spend about ten minutes of homework per grade each night. For example, a third grader should spend about 30 minutes on homework, whereas a 9th grader should spend about ninety minutes a night on homework.
No matter how many times the question about too much or too little homework is asked it is always answered on a local level. There is no state or federal law stating how much homework should be assigned to students each night; this is left up to the teachers to determine. While some teachers or schools do not assign homework most support assigning a small amount of homework. The teachers and schools that believe in assigning homework do so because they believe that homework is a great way to reinforce the lessons that were learned that day in class. They also think that homework is a great way to help develop study skills and encourage parental involvement.
If you feel that your child is overloaded by homework, the best thing that you can do is to talk to their teacher. The reason for this is that schools, with the help of parents, have come up with a variety of ways to help students handle their homework, including community hotlines and after school programs with teachers.
Parenting viewpoints from parents in the trenches, because parenting doesn’t come with a manual. In addition to