Research shows that homework should be limited or it could have a negative effect.

High
school students should spend between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 hours on homework. Middle school
students should spend no more than 1 hour per night. Any more than this actually
diminishes achievement. (Cooper, Robinson, and Patall 2006)

pros-
reinforces what you have learned in class
gets parents involved
teaches time management
helps your grade if you do poorly on tests and quizzes

cons-
can take away from family time
With obesity becoming a greater problem, homework can sometimes mean less activity
time for sports and exercise.
While homework is important academically, colleges look for well rounded people. If
you have too much homework, it takes away for extracurriculars, such as music lessons.
You may get less sleep, causing you to not focus in class.

Arguments for and against homework

For: It develops home/school partnerships.

Against: What about parent/child relationships? Forcing children to work on after school
has finished is detrimental to everyone, harming relationships and causing disruption to
family life.

For: Homework reinforces skills and knowledge learnt at school.

Against: Children are at school for around six hours a day. The expectations of the
curriculum are excessive. Something needs to change in order for effective learning to
happen during the school day, without the need for additional work at home. Students
are expected to spend most of this time sitting and listening and the curriculum is
gradually squeezing out almost all physical education. Most children come home from
school mentally exhausted, tired and hungry. They need to relax and use up their
contained physical energy in the very short space of time left in the day after out-of-
school activities, homework, eating, bathing, and story telling.

For: It raises children’s achievements.

Against: Teachers and children are under extraordinary pressure to achieve, driven by the
school’s need for a good OFSTED report, which will ensure that parents want their
children to attend the school, which will ensure the school stays open. This has nothing to
do with the individual, creative development of the children (despite sterling work by
teachers doing their best to tackle an impossibly large curriculum). Rather, it is about
goverment education departments satisfying and achieving their own attainment targets
(in essence, “ticking the right boxes”).

For: Homework helps children to work independently.

Against: Children want to do well, so what happens when they can’t do it? They ask for
help, which is not independence. Children should be so stimulated by their lessons that
they do research at home BECAUSE THEY WANT TO!

For: It assists in building children’s self-esteem.

Against: Not in my experience. Children quickly become distressed when they feel they
can’t do their homework and feel that they have failed when they cannot complete it in
the given time.

“We destroy most of the intellectual and creative capacity of children by the things we do
to them or make them do. We destroy this capacity above all by making them afraid,
afraid of not doing what other people want, or not pleasing, of making mistakes, of
failing, or being wrong.” John Holt (1964, as above)

For: Homework prepares children for the next stage of their education.

Against: Creative play and imagination are vital for a child’s development. Why should
this be jeopardised in the name of ‘achievement’? Children need time to relax in the same
way adults do when they come home from a hard day’s work. What is the system afraid
of: children having a good time, or being independent, or expressing their own free will?

“…we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that
they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.” John Holt (1964, as above)

“The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave
when we don’t know what to do.” John Holt (1964, as above)

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Albert Einstein

Research of the Pros of Homework,

Part 1
 Research indicates that homework in general is extremely beneficial for students. The
supporting research is somewhat dichotomous indicating (1) objective benefits ascertained from
standardized test scores, and (2) subjective benefits ascertained from parents, teachers, and the
students themselves.

"…[H]omework's effect on achievement can be described most accurately as above average,"

claims Harris Cooper in "Homework Research and Policy: A Review of Literature." (March
2000) Cooper indicates that, of twenty studies completed since 1962, fourteen are pro-
homework. Of fifty studies correlating the time on homework with student achievement, Cooper
states that forty-three of the studies showed students who did homework had better
achievement. A typical homework-completing high school student, according to Cooper's
research, will outperform students who do not do homework by 69% on standardized tests.

Debbie Reese in "Homework: What Does Research Say?", reinforces the data presented by
Cooper. She also adds more data that runs consistent in much of the available data on
homework: on standardized tests, homework-completing junior high students outperform
homework non-completers by 35%. There seems to be no difference in scores in the elementary
grades. (Reese, 1997)

By simply evaluating the effectiveness of homework using behaviorist evaluation techniques

such as standardized testing, one can ascertain that the short-term stimulus of assigning
homework reaps the long-term response of improved student achievement.

A typical
homework-
completing
high school
student will
outperform
students
who do not
do
homework
by 69% on
standardized
tests.

Research of the Pros of Homework, Part 2

In the article "How Important Is Homework," a summary of the U.S. Department of Education's stance on the
issue provided by Kid Source Online nicely summarizes the subjective benefits of homework:

It serves as an intellectual discipline, establishes study habits, eases time constraints on the amount of
curricular material that can be covered in class, and supplements and reinforces work done in school. In
addition, it fosters student initiative, independence, and responsibility, and brings home and school closer
together.

Harris Cooper (1994) presents immediate and long-term effects of homework:

Immediate: Students retain information and understand material better. Critical thinking and concept formation
are increased. Information processing is improved, and the curriculum in enriched.
Long-term academic: Learning is encouraged during leisure time. Attitude toward school is improved. Study
habits and skills are better.
Long-term non-academic: Students have greater self-direction and self-discipline. Time management is easier
for students. Students are more inquisitive and participate in more independent problem solving.

Even though the objective statistics claim homework in the elementary level has little effect on testing, Diana
Brown suggests that a reasonable amount of homework for younger students has benefits. Self-responsibility is
cultivated when a student completes and hands in an assignment, no matter how small. In addition, the simple
assignment of reading at home has shown to have a positive effect on student achievement.

Nancy Paulu (2000) indicates that parents can reap benefits from homework, also. The assignment of
homework can help them learn about and become involved in their child's education. They can also
communicate more with their children and their schools. Perhaps most importantly, parents who promote
homework can assist teachers in creating a lifelong love of learning.

Homework
"reinforces
work done in
school, fosters
student
initiative,
independence,
and
responsibility,
and brings
home and
school closer
together."
1. The negative effects of homework are well known. They include children’s
frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest in
learning. Many parents lament the impact of homework on their relationship with their
children; they may also resent having to play the role of enforcer and worry that they will
be criticized either for not being involved enough with the homework or for becoming
too involved.

• homework demands can limit the time available to spend on other beneficial
activities, such as sport and community involvement
• too much homework can lead to students losing interest in the subject, or even in
learning
• parents can confuse students by using teaching methods different from those of
their teachers
• homework can widen social inequalities
• homework may encourage cheating

2. The positive effects of homework are largely mythical. In preparation for a book
on the topic, I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through the research. The results are nothing
short of stunning. For starters, there is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit
from assigning homework in elementary or middle school. For younger students, in fact,
there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they
do) and any meaningful measure of achievement. At the high school level, the
correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures
are applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds
character or teaches good study habits.