Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy how much homework should my DD11 be doing?

I'm all about no homework. To me, school is like work for kids. None of us like to bring work home with us, why should our children have to?

I honestly never really did homework in school. When my teacher said do problems 1-144, even only, I just chucked my book in my locker after class and took the 0. I put no effort whatsoever into school.

When I got to college and grades mattered and I cared, well, I looked at the syllabus for the classes before I signed up and chose only classes that had no homework.

I had no trouble in college and was always a top student. I listened in class and read the text the night before tests and aced all of my tests. If there were papers to write, I wrote them the night before and usually was late to class waiting on them to print the following day.

After college I've always been a good employee, never been fired or disciplined for anything. I keep my home clean and I manage to take care of everything that needs done with my sons therapies and medical needs.

So, yeah, I don't think work ethic is something you need to drill into kids by making their lives miserable and monotonous. I think it's bad enough they have to spend so much time in an institution each day. Childhood is gone before you know it. Looking back on mine the last thing I find myself thinking is that I wish that I had played less and worked more.

In math, physics, computer science, and other subjects, you learn primarily by grappling with problem sets. I did.

TBH, this isn't something I'd brag about (or maybe even admit).

This is exactly how it should be. Reading to finish and review for a test is plenty of homework...kids have sports practice, instruments lessons, scout stuff to do, religious or community activities, games to play, bikes to ride, trees to climb, dogs to walk, chores, showers, dinner and pleasure reading. Nobody has time for more than 15-20 minutes of homework.

Firmly in the anti homework camp here.


Which is why my grades slowly drooped at university. Giving kids work that's far too easy for their whole lives does them no favors. I was in my late 20s before I discovered that you could actually work to understand something you didn't immediately grasp. What a concept!

There was no trigonometry in the calculus I learnt.

Bostonian, a lot of K-12 homework is busywork and of limited or no value to student learning. My middle schoolers are routinely assigned word searches and other silly assignments that don't teach them anything, yet take a lot of time to complete.

That said, I agree with the idea that a lot of students are taking courses that are too hard for them, or, alternatively, overall course loads that are too much for them cognitively.

Then there is the factor of bad course design combined with bad textbooks. One of my kids was forced into a crappy pre-algebra course last year and two hours a night wasn't enough for him to learn that material. Even my eldest (math whiz) would have done poorly in that course. It was a mess of mixed-up concepts from beginning to end.

Talullah, maybe you took a very light calculus course or you've forgotten the course content. It's not really possible to get a proper grounding in calculus without trigonometry.

I'm going to second the above comment. Tallulah, you defiantly need a good grounding in Trig to do well in calculus. Perhaps you can get through the fist semester of Calculus without it, it's been a while since I've taken it. Looking online what you need is exactly what my DS is doing in pre-calc the trig identities. Many times Trig is rolled into an Algebra II course. In fact this is part of the new CC implementation. But you do need to have seen and understood Trigonometry before finishing a full year of college calculus.

I did first year calculus at university and don't remember any trig either. I will have to check my books sometime.

I think if they did things a bit more efficiently at school they wouldn't need to send homework. But I think the lack efficiency isn't due to the teacher. Mixed ability classes and teamwork waste a lot of time as does teaching things that should be able to be left to the parents. Breaks are never a waste though and I would drop something else rather than cut into those. I remember thinking as a kid that if the teachers coukd just get on with it we would finish before lunch. I don't remember homework but I had a lot of down time.

I feel the same way on principle as PanzerAxelSaturn but recognize the pragmatic reality expressed by Bostonian's comments wrt learning by grappling with problems.

On top of that, I wrestle with my conscience several times a day because I after school my DD10 using AoPS. I was a terrible student as a kid and looking back I believe that I was disengaged from school academics because I was under challenged - when interested or motivated by a good teacher I shone but mostly I cruised.

I know that unstructured time in the evenings and weekends is vitally important to a child but also that being under challenged is also fatal.

My DD (5th grade) gets about 30mins to an hour of regular school homework 4 nights a week plus about 5 hours of AoPS a week where a large chunk of that time is spent on the written challenge problem.

After Friday, when she finishes her Algebra 1 class she will do a Python class to have a break for a couple of months.