I haven't read all the replies, and have no desire to get into the throws of the debate over whether or not most students have too much homework - I believe that unstructured down-time is important for our children. OTOH, I wouldn't choose this particular article as the starting point for a battle-cry to rage against the amount of homework students are receiving across the US, for a few reasons.
The first thing that struck me when reading the article is that the amount and type of homework described sounds very similar to the amount and type of homework our middle school assigns each night and which is not expected to take more than 10 minutes per grade per year (so an 8th grader would expected to spend 80 minutes max on homework. This formula works out fairly well for my kids - my ds' homework takes about 3 hours on a typical night - but it's not the actual homework that takes a long time, it's fall-out from his writing disability that causes homework time to take him longer than most of his peers at school.
So my first thought when reading the article was that perhaps the HomeworkDad's daughter was struggling with work she wasn't really ready for.
I also don't particularly appreciate the "memorize" attitude - in my own life (which is of course, only a sample of one and not anything to draw conclusions from..).. I've found that homework (or any kind of work) goes *faster* when you understand what you're doing. As a parent, I'd not automatically assume that my child had to fly right to "memorize to get by" mode until I fully understood what was expected and what was going on in school. One really important piece of information missing from this article was the amount of time the teachers estimated students should be spending on each bit of homework. If the teachers are assigning homework that (in their estimation) should be taking less time, and my child is telling me that it's all about memorization, I'd be looking at what's up with my child's learning situation first before condemning the system-wide approach to homework.
I also am not surprised that it took a lot of time, effort, and frustration for HomeworkDad to do his daughter's homework - he's not in school studying those courses, listening to the teacher's lectures, participating in classwork during the day - so he has none of the background prep going into his homework sessions that the actual students have. He's also far-removed from his own middle school days, and he's not in a career where he is actively using either Algebra or Earth Science skills - so I wouldn't expect him to be as quick-on-his-toes at working Algebra problems or prepping for a science test as I would expect a student to be.
He's also admitted he wasn't a stellar student himself back in middle school
So that's just my take on it. I empathize with you Val, and with other parents who's children are bogged down with too much homework - but I wouldn't be quoting this specific article as particularly supportive of that concern in a meaningful way.
polarbear
