Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Atlantic article on excessive homework

I am thankful that even though dd 8th grade seems to be in an environment that would breed this type of excessive hw, she doesn't appear to actually have excessive hw. I don't think it takes her more than an hour, some nights less, and even with instrument practice and not getting home until 5 she still has time to watch her favorite shows and get enough sleep. I hear it will suck big time next year with the volume of work in the AP classes. I think it will be a very rude awakening. But I don't think increasing the volume now to prepare for it is the answer.

Thank you! This is hilarious. Just started it, and once she said laundry I about lost it.

Most students are not spending too much time on homework. According to

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/how-much-homework-do-american-kids-do/279805/
How Much Homework Do American Kids Do?
Various factors, from the race of the student to the number of years a teacher has been in the classroom, affect a child's homework load.
The Atlantic
JULIA RYAN
SEP 19 2013, 9:04 AM ET

In 2007, the average number of hours per week spent on homework by high school students (grades 9 to 12) was

6.8 all
6.8 whites
6.3 blacks
6.4 Hispanics
10.3 Asians

According to the Met Life survey "THE HOMEWORK EXPERIENCE A SURVEY OF STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND PARENTS" (Figure 2.4), http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED500012.pdf
only 12% of students in grade 7-12 spent 2.5, 3, or more hours a day on homework, and only 11% of "A" students did. As I wrote earlier, most Harvard students studied for 19 hours or less a week in high school.

This comment struck me as particularly pithy:


While flippant and not a little harsh (after all, his daughter IS keeping up okay with the expectations, though I might argue somewhat about the "memorization" credo, this is only because I've seen what it leads to in post-secondary students); it's not entirely incorrect in its conclusions.


Honestly-- the ONLY thing to do about this sort of toxicity is walk away for a less toxic (hopefully even a "healthy") alternative. That definition is going to vary tremendously from parent to parent and child to child. I'm just stunned that he signed up for this and is now unhappy because-- well, apparently because he didn't understand what he was getting his daughter into. Not sure on that point.

As noted up-thread-- my DD would not have found this workload that onerous. She does FAR more in terms of work output, and did even then (as an 8th grader). Yes, it's some busywork-- but looking at the details provided, not THAT much. It's different than the described state capitals assignment from the previous (also selective?) school. I question, at least somewhat, the ability of even most very bright 8th grade students to grasp the finer points of the McCourt or Alexie novels being studied (other than as stylistic examples of memoir), but otherwise this seems quite reasonable to me. Personally, I mean.

After all, this is a selective charter school; it is a school of choice. So choose something ELSE, for heaven's sakes.

What on earth makes this kind of thing WORTH the cost?? Seriously-- answer that question honestly for a minute. What is he hoping that his children will garner from this experience?

I see many, many parents around here who subject their children to this kind of punitive regimen in the hopes of getting them into an "elite college" in order to... well, something vague about success, apparently meaning high earning power or television appearances or something.

I'm not entirely opposed to the neural plasticity thinking about academic ability and achievement, but I see this as inherently being about the egalitarianism espoused by writers like Gladwell, and taken to toxic extremes. No, not everyone can be in the "top" whatever-percentile. No matter how hard they work. "High expectations" also need to be "realistic" expectations, but there's definitely something missing there at this point. IMO.

Walk away to where?

You've described some pretty toxic situations with your DD's school. Why didn't you walk away? Did you know in advance that those problems would happen?

Some people can't walk away. They have nowhere to go. This guy is in New York City. His option might be to bus his daughter to a crappy school across town and 80 blocks north or south. So the choices might very well be "learn little or nothing" or "work all evening." The problem is the system.

And things are rarely so simple that walking away is an option, even if there's a decent school close by. My own DD's math situation is toxic, but everything else about her school is wonderful. Plus, she has wonderful friends there and wants to go to high school and college with them. In her case, walking away could create more problems than staying. So I advocate, just like HomeworkDad is. The system is the problem.

Bostonian, yes, not everyone gets a lot of homework. But those kids aren't the problem here. The ones getting overloaded are. If I sprain my ankle, I can't ignore it just because other people's ankles are fine.

ETA: or to make the point more pertinent, I can't ignore the needs of my gifted kid just because the average IQ is 100.

You're still assuming there's an environment they could walk away to that would be less toxic - not just differently toxic. That's not obvious. I think you're sitting in a position of having found a solution you think close to ideal for your DD and failing to understand that others may not have as good a choice available. I'm also very lucky in having a good solution for my DS right now - but choosing where he goes next is likely to involve a choice of problems that for him may be as bad as that homework. Frankly I feel offended by the wider implications of your words, and would expect parents already living with the best of a bunch of unsatisfactory choices to feel more offended.

Well, I'm not sure HomeworkDad is being entirely honest- my DD is also an 8th grader in New York, (though not in NYC). Now, it's possible that in NYC, the land where every kid is gifted, things are different, but in the state of NY, at least 2 of the courses she lists are technically 9th grade courses, which appear on the high school transcript and include Regents Exam finals (a statewide exam system here in Ny). My DD is also taking both algebra and earth science, and for both, one had to be recommended by previous teachers to take the class (granted, it seems like about half her class somehow got recommended for algebra, resulting in a painfully repetitive and slow class, but that is an issue for a separate thread). So his DD is technically taking at least two accelerated classes, which would be considered high school courses. Now, perhaps taking their charter school entrance exam and gaining a spot in this school suggests that these kids can handle acceleration. But to complain about the work, after seeking a spot in the school (and allowing his second daughter to do the same) seems problematic to me.

(For what it's worth, we have not had similar problems with homework load, though I would not be surprised if some of DD's classmates did).

Remember that the exam high schools in NYC are notorious for giving entering freshmen this choice:

Pick two out of three for the next four years:

1. Academics
2. Friends
3. Sleep

You can't pick all three.


It isn't clear to me why rigor = more homework or why acceleration = more homework. The question isn't "Can the student learn the material?" The question is "Why does the student need to have so much homework?"

But we are already living that ourselves.

We've chosen, for whatever it's worth, to make a lot of parental sacrifices in order to find any workable solution. There are only two given the solution space that we're working in-- homeschool or what we're doing now. Neither of those is even what I'd call "good" by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm far from smug about this, and I don't deny for an instant that the system IS a large part of the problem. But that system would not continue to exist at all if parents were not still buying into it.
This is what I see locally-- parents are buying into it. They are opting in for competitive reasons, ultimately. Not because the other options are more toxic-- but because they perceive that those alternatives would/will place their kids at some kind of competitive disadvantage down the road. It's why they are not choosing "sleep" from the list of options available.

Cricket is exactly on-target there. It was precisely what I picked up on in reading Dad's account of things. He's complaining because it isn't perfect. For HIM.




That, ultimately, is my point. We could walk away-- any of us COULD. This is, when you get down to it, a very first-world sort of problem.

True. But the statistics I cited suggest to me that state or federal policies to combat excessive homework could do more harm than good, because arguably the overall problem, especially for high school students, is not enough homework being done. When too much homework is a problem, parents will need to complain at the school level.