Homework in elementary school is truly a character building assignment.
Have you read any of the recent spate of books discussing the body of research evidence on this issue, such as Bennett and Kalish's
The Case Against Homework and Kohn's
The Homework Myth?
I've always been suspicious about the value of homework on the purely anecdotal grounds that when I was a child, homework in primary (elementary) school was practically unheard of, but that I don't think my generation is especially characterless. The authors I mentioned clearly have strong views, and on other topics I know Kohn at least can sometimes be a bit selective with the research he cites - but I have looked, a bit, for research that genuinely shows positive results from homework for children of this age, and I've never seen any that was convincing. What there's a lot of is research that shows a
correlation between completing homework (if set) and doing well. That's utterly unsurprising, and doesn't show that the homework
causes the children to do well. If you know any, I'd be interested in citations.
We're very happy to have DS in about the only school in our city that doesn't give (compulsory, written) homework to children of this age. Indeed the head has been vocal about why, and about the fact that the school's results improved after he introduced this policy.
