what are some reasons for no homework

Home » Tips for Teachers » 7 Research-Based Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework: Academic Insights, Opposing Perspectives & Alternatives

7 Research-Based Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework: Academic Insights, Opposing Perspectives & Alternatives

In recent years, the question of why students should not have homework has become a topic of intense debate among educators, parents, and students themselves. This discussion stems from a growing body of research that challenges the traditional view of homework as an essential component of academic success. The notion that homework is an integral part of learning is being reevaluated in light of new findings about its effectiveness and impact on students’ overall well-being.

The push against homework is not just about the hours spent on completing assignments; it’s about rethinking the role of education in fostering the well-rounded development of young individuals. Critics argue that homework, particularly in excessive amounts, can lead to negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, and a diminished love for learning. Moreover, it often disproportionately affects students from disadvantaged backgrounds, exacerbating educational inequities. The debate also highlights the importance of allowing children to have enough free time for play, exploration, and family interaction, which are crucial for their social and emotional development.

Checking 13yo’s math homework & I have just one question. I can catch mistakes & help her correct. But what do kids do when their parent isn’t an Algebra teacher? Answer: They get frustrated. Quit. Get a bad grade. Think they aren’t good at math. How is homework fair??? — Jay Wamsted (@JayWamsted) March 24, 2022

As we delve into this discussion, we explore various facets of why reducing or even eliminating homework could be beneficial. We consider the research, weigh the pros and cons, and examine alternative approaches to traditional homework that can enhance learning without overburdening students.

Once you’ve finished this article, you’ll know:

• Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts →
• 7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework →
• Opposing Views on Homework Practices →
• Exploring Alternatives to Homework →

Insights from Teachers and Education Industry Experts: Diverse Perspectives on Homework

In the ongoing conversation about the role and impact of homework in education, the perspectives of those directly involved in the teaching process are invaluable. Teachers and education industry experts bring a wealth of experience and insights from the front lines of learning. Their viewpoints, shaped by years of interaction with students and a deep understanding of educational methodologies, offer a critical lens through which we can evaluate the effectiveness and necessity of homework in our current educational paradigm.

Check out this video featuring Courtney White, a high school language arts teacher who gained widespread attention for her explanation of why she chooses not to assign homework.

Here are the insights and opinions from various experts in the educational field on this topic:

“I teach 1st grade. I had parents ask for homework. I explained that I don’t give homework. Home time is family time. Time to play, cook, explore and spend time together. I do send books home, but there is no requirement or checklist for reading them. Read them, enjoy them, and return them when your child is ready for more. I explained that as a parent myself, I know they are busy—and what a waste of energy it is to sit and force their kids to do work at home—when they could use that time to form relationships and build a loving home. Something kids need more than a few math problems a week.” — Colleen S. , 1st grade teacher

“The lasting educational value of homework at that age is not proven. A kid says the times tables [at school] because he studied the times tables last night. But over a long period of time, a kid who is drilled on the times tables at school, rather than as homework, will also memorize their times tables. We are worried about young children and their social emotional learning. And that has to do with physical activity, it has to do with playing with peers, it has to do with family time. All of those are very important and can be removed by too much homework.” — David Bloomfield , education professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York graduate center

“Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…) Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say, ‘Is it really making a difference?’” — John Hattie , professor

”Many kids are working as many hours as their overscheduled parents and it is taking a toll – psychologically and in many other ways too. We see kids getting up hours before school starts just to get their homework done from the night before… While homework may give kids one more responsibility, it ignores the fact that kids do not need to grow up and become adults at ages 10 or 12. With schools cutting recess time or eliminating playgrounds, kids absorb every single stress there is, only on an even higher level. Their brains and bodies need time to be curious, have fun, be creative and just be a kid.” — Pat Wayman, teacher and CEO of HowtoLearn.com

7 Reasons Why Students Should Not Have Homework

Let’s delve into the reasons against assigning homework to students. Examining these arguments offers important perspectives on the wider educational and developmental consequences of homework practices.

1. Elevated Stress and Health Consequences

The ongoing debate about homework often focuses on its educational value, but a vital aspect that cannot be overlooked is the significant stress and health consequences it brings to students. In the context of American life, where approximately 70% of people report moderate or extreme stress due to various factors like mass shootings, healthcare affordability, discrimination, racism, sexual harassment, climate change, presidential elections, and the need to stay informed, the additional burden of homework further exacerbates this stress, particularly among students.

Key findings and statistics reveal a worrying trend:

• Overwhelming Student Stress: A staggering 72% of students report being often or always stressed over schoolwork, with a concerning 82% experiencing physical symptoms due to this stress.
• Serious Health Issues: Symptoms linked to homework stress include sleep deprivation, headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems.
• Sleep Deprivation: Despite the National Sleep Foundation recommending 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep for healthy adolescent development, students average just 6.80 hours of sleep on school nights. About 68% of students stated that schoolwork often or always prevented them from getting enough sleep, which is critical for their physical and mental health.
• Turning to Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms: Alarmingly, the pressure from excessive homework has led some students to turn to alcohol and drugs as a way to cope with stress.

This data paints a concerning picture. Students, already navigating a world filled with various stressors, find themselves further burdened by homework demands. The direct correlation between excessive homework and health issues indicates a need for reevaluation. The goal should be to ensure that homework if assigned, adds value to students’ learning experiences without compromising their health and well-being.

By addressing the issue of homework-related stress and health consequences, we can take a significant step toward creating a more nurturing and effective educational environment. This environment would not only prioritize academic achievement but also the overall well-being and happiness of students, preparing them for a balanced and healthy life both inside and outside the classroom.

2. Inequitable Impact and Socioeconomic Disparities

In the discourse surrounding educational equity, homework emerges as a factor exacerbating socioeconomic disparities, particularly affecting students from lower-income families and those with less supportive home environments. While homework is often justified as a means to raise academic standards and promote equity, its real-world impact tells a different story.

The inequitable burden of homework becomes starkly evident when considering the resources required to complete it, especially in the digital age. Homework today often necessitates a computer and internet access – resources not readily available to all students. This digital divide significantly disadvantages students from lower-income backgrounds, deepening the chasm between them and their more affluent peers.

Key points highlighting the disparities:

• Digital Inequity: Many students lack access to necessary technology for homework, with low-income families disproportionately affected.
• Impact of COVID-19: The pandemic exacerbated these disparities as education shifted online, revealing the extent of the digital divide.
• Educational Outcomes Tied to Income: A critical indicator of college success is linked more to family income levels than to rigorous academic preparation. Research indicates that while 77% of students from high-income families graduate from highly competitive colleges, only 9% from low-income families achieve the same . This disparity suggests that the pressure of heavy homework loads, rather than leveling the playing field, may actually hinder the chances of success for less affluent students.

Moreover, the approach to homework varies significantly across different types of schools. While some rigorous private and preparatory schools in both marginalized and affluent communities assign extreme levels of homework, many progressive schools focusing on holistic learning and self-actualization opt for no homework, yet achieve similar levels of college and career success. This contrast raises questions about the efficacy and necessity of heavy homework loads in achieving educational outcomes.

The issue of homework and its inequitable impact is not just an academic concern; it is a reflection of broader societal inequalities. By continuing practices that disproportionately burden students from less privileged backgrounds, the educational system inadvertently perpetuates the very disparities it seeks to overcome.

3. Negative Impact on Family Dynamics

Homework, a staple of the educational system, is often perceived as a necessary tool for academic reinforcement. However, its impact extends beyond the realm of academics, significantly affecting family dynamics. The negative repercussions of homework on the home environment have become increasingly evident, revealing a troubling pattern that can lead to conflict, mental health issues, and domestic friction.

A study conducted in 2015 involving 1,100 parents sheds light on the strain homework places on family relationships. The findings are telling:

• Increased Likelihood of Conflicts: Families where parents did not have a college degree were 200% more likely to experience fights over homework.
• Misinterpretations and Misunderstandings: Parents often misinterpret their children’s difficulties with homework as a lack of attention in school, leading to feelings of frustration and mistrust on both sides.
• Discriminatory Impact: The research concluded that the current approach to homework disproportionately affects children whose parents have lower educational backgrounds, speak English as a second language, or belong to lower-income groups.

The issue is not confined to specific demographics but is a widespread concern. Samantha Hulsman, a teacher featured in Education Week Teacher , shared her personal experience with the toll that homework can take on family time. She observed that a seemingly simple 30-minute assignment could escalate into a three-hour ordeal, causing stress and strife between parents and children. Hulsman’s insights challenge the traditional mindset about homework, highlighting a shift towards the need for skills such as collaboration and problem-solving over rote memorization of facts.

The need of the hour is to reassess the role and amount of homework assigned to students. It’s imperative to find a balance that facilitates learning and growth without compromising the well-being of the family unit. Such a reassessment would not only aid in reducing domestic conflicts but also contribute to a more supportive and nurturing environment for children’s overall development.

4. Consumption of Free Time

In recent years, a growing chorus of voices has raised concerns about the excessive burden of homework on students, emphasizing how it consumes their free time and impedes their overall well-being. The issue is not just the quantity of homework, but its encroachment on time that could be used for personal growth, relaxation, and family bonding.

Authors Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish , in their book “The Case Against Homework,” offer an insightful window into the lives of families grappling with the demands of excessive homework. They share stories from numerous interviews conducted in the mid-2000s, highlighting the universal struggle faced by families across different demographics. A poignant account from a parent in Menlo Park, California, describes nightly sessions extending until 11 p.m., filled with stress and frustration, leading to a soured attitude towards school in both the child and the parent. This narrative is not isolated, as about one-third of the families interviewed expressed feeling crushed by the overwhelming workload.

Key points of concern:

• Excessive Time Commitment: Students, on average, spend over 6 hours in school each day, and homework adds significantly to this time, leaving little room for other activities.
• Impact on Extracurricular Activities: Homework infringes upon time for sports, music, art, and other enriching experiences, which are as crucial as academic courses.
• Stifling Creativity and Self-Discovery: The constant pressure of homework limits opportunities for students to explore their interests and learn new skills independently.

The National Education Association (NEA) and the National PTA (NPTA) recommend a “10 minutes of homework per grade level” standard, suggesting a more balanced approach. However, the reality often far exceeds this guideline, particularly for older students. The impact of this overreach is profound, affecting not just academic performance but also students’ attitudes toward school, their self-confidence, social skills, and overall quality of life.

Furthermore, the intense homework routine’s effectiveness is doubtful, as it can overwhelm students and detract from the joy of learning. Effective learning builds on prior knowledge in an engaging way, but excessive homework in a home setting may be irrelevant and uninteresting. The key challenge is balancing homework to enhance learning without overburdening students, allowing time for holistic growth and activities beyond academics. It’s crucial to reassess homework policies to support well-rounded development.

5. Challenges for Students with Learning Disabilities

Homework, a standard educational tool, poses unique challenges for students with learning disabilities, often leading to a frustrating and disheartening experience. These challenges go beyond the typical struggles faced by most students and can significantly impede their educational progress and emotional well-being.

Child psychologist Kenneth Barish’s insights in Psychology Today shed light on the complex relationship between homework and students with learning disabilities:

• Homework as a Painful Endeavor: For students with learning disabilities, completing homework can be likened to “running with a sprained ankle.” It’s a task that, while doable, is fraught with difficulty and discomfort.
• Misconceptions about Laziness: Often, children who struggle with homework are perceived as lazy. However, Barish emphasizes that these students are more likely to be frustrated, discouraged, or anxious rather than unmotivated.
• Limited Improvement in School Performance: The battles over homework rarely translate into significant improvement in school for these children, challenging the conventional notion of homework as universally beneficial.

These points highlight the need for a tailored approach to homework for students with learning disabilities. It’s crucial to recognize that the traditional homework model may not be the most effective or appropriate method for facilitating their learning. Instead, alternative strategies that accommodate their unique needs and learning styles should be considered.

In conclusion, the conventional homework paradigm needs reevaluation, particularly concerning students with learning disabilities. By understanding and addressing their unique challenges, educators can create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment. This approach not only aids in their academic growth but also nurtures their confidence and overall development, ensuring that they receive an equitable and empathetic educational experience.

6. Critique of Underlying Assumptions about Learning

The longstanding belief in the educational sphere that more homework automatically translates to more learning is increasingly being challenged. Critics argue that this assumption is not only flawed but also unsupported by solid evidence, questioning the efficacy of homework as an effective learning tool.

Alfie Kohn , a prominent critic of homework, aptly compares students to vending machines in this context, suggesting that the expectation of inserting an assignment and automatically getting out of learning is misguided. Kohn goes further, labeling homework as the “greatest single extinguisher of children’s curiosity.” This critique highlights a fundamental issue: the potential of homework to stifle the natural inquisitiveness and love for learning in children.

The lack of concrete evidence supporting the effectiveness of homework is evident in various studies:

• Marginal Effectiveness of Homework: A study involving 28,051 high school seniors found that the effectiveness of homework was marginal, and in some cases, it was counterproductive, leading to more academic problems than solutions.
• No Correlation with Academic Achievement: Research in “ National Differences, Global Similarities ” showed no correlation between homework and academic achievement in elementary students, and any positive correlation in middle or high school diminished with increasing homework loads.
• Increased Academic Pressure: The Teachers College Record published findings that homework adds to academic pressure and societal stress, exacerbating performance gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

These findings bring to light several critical points:

• Quality Over Quantity: According to a recent article in Monitor on Psychology , experts concur that the quality of homework assignments, along with the quality of instruction, student motivation, and inherent ability, is more crucial for academic success than the quantity of homework.
• Counterproductive Nature of Excessive Homework: Excessive homework can lead to more academic challenges, particularly for students already facing pressures from other aspects of their lives.
• Societal Stress and Performance Gaps: Homework can intensify societal stress and widen the academic performance divide.

The emerging consensus from these studies suggests that the traditional approach to homework needs rethinking. Rather than focusing on the quantity of assignments, educators should consider the quality and relevance of homework, ensuring it truly contributes to learning and development. This reassessment is crucial for fostering an educational environment that nurtures curiosity and a love for learning, rather than extinguishing it.

7. Issues with Homework Enforcement, Reliability, and Temptation to Cheat

In the academic realm, the enforcement of homework is a subject of ongoing debate, primarily due to its implications on student integrity and the true value of assignments. The challenges associated with homework enforcement often lead to unintended yet significant issues, such as cheating, copying, and a general undermining of educational values.

Key points highlighting enforcement challenges:

• Difficulty in Enforcing Completion: Ensuring that students complete their homework can be a complex task, and not completing homework does not always correlate with poor grades.
• Reliability of Homework Practice: The reliability of homework as a practice tool is undermined when students, either out of desperation or lack of understanding, choose shortcuts over genuine learning. This approach can lead to the opposite of the intended effect, especially when assignments are not well-aligned with the students’ learning levels or interests.
• Temptation to Cheat: The issue of cheating is particularly troubling. According to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education , under the pressure of at-home assignments, many students turn to copying others’ work, plagiarizing, or using creative technological “hacks.” This tendency not only questions the integrity of the learning process but also reflects the extreme stress that homework can induce.
• Parental Involvement in Completion: As noted in The American Journal of Family Therapy , this raises concerns about the authenticity of the work submitted. When parents complete assignments for their children, it not only deprives the students of the opportunity to learn but also distorts the purpose of homework as a learning aid.

In conclusion, the challenges of homework enforcement present a complex problem that requires careful consideration. The focus should shift towards creating meaningful, manageable, and quality-driven assignments that encourage genuine learning and integrity, rather than overwhelming students and prompting counterproductive behaviors.

Addressing Opposing Views on Homework Practices

While opinions on homework policies are diverse, understanding different viewpoints is crucial. In the following sections, we will examine common arguments supporting homework assignments, along with counterarguments that offer alternative perspectives on this educational practice.

1. Improvement of Academic Performance

Homework is commonly perceived as a means to enhance academic performance, with the belief that it directly contributes to better grades and test scores. This view posits that through homework, students reinforce what they learn in class, leading to improved understanding and retention, which ultimately translates into higher academic achievement.

However, the question of why students should not have homework becomes pertinent when considering the complex relationship between homework and academic performance. Studies have indicated that excessive homework doesn’t necessarily equate to higher grades or test scores. Instead, too much homework can backfire, leading to stress and fatigue that adversely affect a student’s performance. Reuters highlights an intriguing correlation suggesting that physical activity may be more conducive to academic success than additional homework, underscoring the importance of a holistic approach to education that prioritizes both physical and mental well-being for enhanced academic outcomes.

2. Reinforcement of Learning

Homework is traditionally viewed as a tool to reinforce classroom learning, enabling students to practice and retain material. However, research suggests its effectiveness is ambiguous. In instances where homework is well-aligned with students’ abilities and classroom teachings, it can indeed be beneficial. Particularly for younger students , excessive homework can cause burnout and a loss of interest in learning, counteracting its intended purpose.

Furthermore, when homework surpasses a student’s capability, it may induce frustration and confusion rather than aid in learning. This challenges the notion that more homework invariably leads to better understanding and retention of educational content.

3. Development of Time Management Skills

Homework is often considered a crucial tool in helping students develop important life skills such as time management and organization. The idea is that by regularly completing assignments, students learn to allocate their time efficiently and organize their tasks effectively, skills that are invaluable in both academic and personal life.

However, the impact of homework on developing these skills is not always positive. For younger students, especially, an overwhelming amount of homework can be more of a hindrance than a help. Instead of fostering time management and organizational skills, an excessive workload often leads to stress and anxiety . These negative effects can impede the learning process and make it difficult for students to manage their time and tasks effectively, contradicting the original purpose of homework.

4. Preparation for Future Academic Challenges

Homework is often touted as a preparatory tool for future academic challenges that students will encounter in higher education and their professional lives. The argument is that by tackling homework, students build a foundation of knowledge and skills necessary for success in more advanced studies and in the workforce, fostering a sense of readiness and confidence.

Contrarily, an excessive homework load, especially from a young age, can have the opposite effect . It can instill a negative attitude towards education, dampening students’ enthusiasm and willingness to embrace future academic challenges. Overburdening students with homework risks disengagement and loss of interest, thereby defeating the purpose of preparing them for future challenges. Striking a balance in the amount and complexity of homework is crucial to maintaining student engagement and fostering a positive attitude towards ongoing learning.

5. Parental Involvement in Education

Homework often acts as a vital link connecting parents to their child’s educational journey, offering insights into the school’s curriculum and their child’s learning process. This involvement is key in fostering a supportive home environment and encouraging a collaborative relationship between parents and the school. When parents understand and engage with what their children are learning, it can significantly enhance the educational experience for the child.

However, the line between involvement and over-involvement is thin. When parents excessively intervene by completing their child’s homework,  it can have adverse effects . Such actions not only diminish the educational value of homework but also rob children of the opportunity to develop problem-solving skills and independence. This over-involvement, coupled with disparities in parental ability to assist due to variations in time, knowledge, or resources, may lead to unequal educational outcomes, underlining the importance of a balanced approach to parental participation in homework.

Exploring Alternatives to Homework and Finding a Middle Ground

In the ongoing debate about the role of homework in education, it’s essential to consider viable alternatives and strategies to minimize its burden. While completely eliminating homework may not be feasible for all educators, there are several effective methods to reduce its impact and offer more engaging, student-friendly approaches to learning.

Alternatives to Traditional Homework

• Project-Based Learning: This method focuses on hands-on, long-term projects where students explore real-world problems. It encourages creativity, critical thinking, and collaborative skills, offering a more engaging and practical learning experience than traditional homework. For creative ideas on school projects, especially related to the solar system, be sure to explore our dedicated article on solar system projects .
• Flipped Classrooms: Here, students are introduced to new content through videos or reading materials at home and then use class time for interactive activities. This approach allows for more personalized and active learning during school hours.
• Reading for Pleasure: Encouraging students to read books of their choice can foster a love for reading and improve literacy skills without the pressure of traditional homework assignments. This approach is exemplified by Marion County, Florida , where public schools implemented a no-homework policy for elementary students. Instead, they are encouraged to read nightly for 20 minutes . Superintendent Heidi Maier’s decision was influenced by research showing that while homework offers minimal benefit to young students, regular reading significantly boosts their learning. For book recommendations tailored to middle school students, take a look at our specially curated article .

Ideas for Minimizing Homework

• Limiting Homework Quantity: Adhering to guidelines like the “ 10-minute rule ” (10 minutes of homework per grade level per night) can help ensure that homework does not become overwhelming.
• Quality Over Quantity: Focus on assigning meaningful homework that is directly relevant to what is being taught in class, ensuring it adds value to students’ learning.
• Homework Menus: Offering students a choice of assignments can cater to diverse learning styles and interests, making homework more engaging and personalized.
• Integrating Technology: Utilizing educational apps and online platforms can make homework more interactive and enjoyable, while also providing immediate feedback to students. To gain deeper insights into the role of technology in learning environments, explore our articles discussing the benefits of incorporating technology in classrooms and a comprehensive list of educational VR apps . These resources will provide you with valuable information on how technology can enhance the educational experience.

For teachers who are not ready to fully eliminate homework, these strategies offer a compromise, ensuring that homework supports rather than hinders student learning. By focusing on quality, relevance, and student engagement, educators can transform homework from a chore into a meaningful component of education that genuinely contributes to students’ academic growth and personal development. In this way, we can move towards a more balanced and student-centric approach to learning, both in and out of the classroom.

Useful Resources

• Is homework a good idea or not? by BBC
• The Great Homework Debate: What’s Getting Lost in the Hype
• Alternative Homework Ideas

The evidence and arguments presented in the discussion of why students should not have homework call for a significant shift in homework practices. It’s time for educators and policymakers to rethink and reformulate homework strategies, focusing on enhancing the quality, relevance, and balance of assignments. By doing so, we can create a more equitable, effective, and student-friendly educational environment that fosters learning, well-being, and holistic development.

• “Here’s what an education expert says about that viral ‘no-homework’ policy”, Insider
• “John Hattie on BBC Radio 4: Homework in primary school has an effect of zero”, Visible Learning
• HowtoLearn.com
• “Time Spent On Homework Statistics [Fresh Research]”, Gitnux
• “Stress in America”, American Psychological Association (APA)
• “Homework hurts high-achieving students, study says”, The Washington Post
• “National Sleep Foundation’s updated sleep duration recommendations: final report”, National Library of Medicine
• “A multi-method exploratory study of stress, coping, and substance use among high school youth in private schools”, Frontiers
• “The Digital Revolution is Leaving Poorer Kids Behind”, Statista
• “The digital divide has left millions of school kids behind”, CNET
• “The Digital Divide: What It Is, and What’s Being Done to Close It”, Investopedia
• “COVID-19 exposed the digital divide. Here’s how we can close it”, World Economic Forum
• “PBS NewsHour: Biggest Predictor of College Success is Family Income”, America’s Promise Alliance
• “Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background”, Taylor & Francis Online
• “What Do You Mean My Kid Doesn’t Have Homework?”, EducationWeek
• “Excerpt From The Case Against Homework”, Penguin Random House Canada
• “How much homework is too much?”, neaToday
• “The Nation’s Report Card: A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading”, National Center for Education Statistics
• “Battles Over Homework: Advice For Parents”, Psychology Today
• “How Homework Is Destroying Teens’ Health”, The Lion’s Roar
• “ Breaking the Homework Habit”, Education World
• “Testing a model of school learning: Direct and indirect effects on academic achievement”, ScienceDirect
• “National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling”, Stanford University Press
• “When school goes home: Some problems in the organization of homework”, APA PsycNet
• “Is homework a necessary evil?”, APA PsycNet
• “Epidemic of copying homework catalyzed by technology”, Redwood Bark
• “High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame”, The Chronicle of Higher Education
• “Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background”, ResearchGate
• “Kids who get moving may also get better grades”, Reuters
• “Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003”, SageJournals
• “Is it time to get rid of homework?”, USAToday
• “Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework”, Stanford
• “Florida school district bans homework, replaces it with daily reading”, USAToday
• “Encouraging Students to Read: Tips for High School Teachers”, wgu.edu
• Recent Posts

Simona Johnes is the visionary being the creation of our project. Johnes spent much of her career in the classroom working with students. And, after many years in the classroom, Johnes became a principal.

• 28 Exciting Yarn Crafts for Preschool Kids: Igniting Creativity and Fine Motor Skills - April 29, 2024
• 16 Engaging and Educational Cause and Effect Activities for Preschoolers to Boost Cognitive Development - April 24, 2024
• 25 Innovative and Engaging Parts of Speech Activities for Middle School: Fun Grammar Games to Enhance Learning - April 14, 2024

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• Study Skills

No More Homework: 12 Reasons We Should Get Rid of It Completely

Last Updated: May 4, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Finn Kobler . Finn Kobler graduated from USC in 2022 with a BFA in Writing for Screen/Television. He is a two-time California State Champion and record holder in Original Prose/Poetry, a 2018 finalist for the Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate, and he's written micro-budget films that have been screened in over 150 theaters nationwide. Growing up, Finn spent every summer helping his family's nonprofit arts program, Showdown Stage Company, empower people through accessible media. He hopes to continue that mission with his writing at wikiHow. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 134,182 times. Learn more...

The amount of homework students are given has increased dramatically in the 21st century, which has sparked countless debates over homework’s overall value. While some have been adamant that homework is an essential part of a good education, it’s been proven that too much homework negatively affects students’ mood, classroom performance, and overall well-being. In addition, a heavy homework load can stress families and teachers. Here are 12 reasons why homework should be banned (or at least heavily reduced).

School is already a full-time job.

• For years, teachers have followed the “10-minute rule” giving students roughly 10 minutes of homework per grade level. However, recent studies have shown students are completing 3+ hours of homework a night well before their senior years even begin. [2] X Trustworthy Source American Psychological Association Leading scientific and professional organization of licensed psychologists Go to source

Homework negatively affects students’ health.

Homework interferes with student’s opportunities to socialize.

Homework hinders students’ chances to learn new things.

Homework lowers students’ enthusiasm for school.

Homework can lower academic performance.

Homework cuts into family time.

Homework is stressful for teachers.

Homework is often irrelevant and punitive.

• There are even studies that have shown homework in primary school has no correlation with classroom performance whatsoever. [9] X Research source

Homework encourages cheating.

Homework is inequitable.

Other countries have banned homework with great results.

• There are even some U.S. schools that have adopted this approach with success. [13] X Research source

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.edutopia.org/no-proven-benefits
• ↑ https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/03/homework
• ↑ https://healthier.stanfordchildrens.org/en/health-hazards-homework/
• ↑ https://teensneedsleep.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/galloway-nonacademic-effects-of-homework-in-privileged-high-performing-high-schools.pdf
• ↑ https://time.com/4466390/homework-debate-research/
• ↑ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220485.2022.2075506?role=tab&scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=vece20
• ↑ https://kappanonline.org/teacher-stress-balancing-demands-resources-mccarthy/
• ↑ https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-homework-pros-cons-20180807-story.html
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6294446/
• ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/homework-inequality-parents-schedules-grades/485174/
• ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005
• ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-homework-its-the-new-thing-in-u-s-schools-11544610600

About This Article

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Did this article help you?

Anonymous ..

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Get all the best how-tos!

Sign up for wikiHow's weekly email newsletter

Filed under:

• The Highlight

Nobody knows what the point of homework is

The homework wars are back.

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share this on Reddit
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Nobody knows what the point of homework is

As the Covid-19 pandemic began and students logged into their remote classrooms, all work, in effect, became homework. But whether or not students could complete it at home varied. For some, schoolwork became public-library work or McDonald’s-parking-lot work.

Luis Torres, the principal of PS 55, a predominantly low-income community elementary school in the south Bronx, told me that his school secured Chromebooks for students early in the pandemic only to learn that some lived in shelters that blocked wifi for security reasons. Others, who lived in housing projects with poor internet reception, did their schoolwork in laundromats.

According to a 2021 Pew survey , 25 percent of lower-income parents said their children, at some point, were unable to complete their schoolwork because they couldn’t access a computer at home; that number for upper-income parents was 2 percent.

The issues with remote learning in March 2020 were new. But they highlighted a divide that had been there all along in another form: homework. And even long after schools have resumed in-person classes, the pandemic’s effects on homework have lingered.

Over the past three years, in response to concerns about equity, schools across the country, including in Sacramento, Los Angeles , San Diego , and Clark County, Nevada , made permanent changes to their homework policies that restricted how much homework could be given and how it could be graded after in-person learning resumed.

Three years into the pandemic, as districts and teachers reckon with Covid-era overhauls of teaching and learning, schools are still reconsidering the purpose and place of homework. Whether relaxing homework expectations helps level the playing field between students or harms them by decreasing rigor is a divisive issue without conclusive evidence on either side, echoing other debates in education like the elimination of standardized test scores from some colleges’ admissions processes.

I first began to wonder if the homework abolition movement made sense after speaking with teachers in some Massachusetts public schools, who argued that rather than help disadvantaged kids, stringent homework restrictions communicated an attitude of low expectations. One, an English teacher, said she felt the school had “just given up” on trying to get the students to do work; another argued that restrictions that prohibit teachers from assigning take-home work that doesn’t begin in class made it difficult to get through the foreign-language curriculum. Teachers in other districts have raised formal concerns about homework abolition’s ability to close gaps among students rather than widening them.

Many education experts share this view. Harris Cooper, a professor emeritus of psychology at Duke who has studied homework efficacy, likened homework abolition to “playing to the lowest common denominator.”

But as I learned after talking to a variety of stakeholders — from homework researchers to policymakers to parents of schoolchildren — whether to abolish homework probably isn’t the right question. More important is what kind of work students are sent home with and where they can complete it. Chances are, if schools think more deeply about giving constructive work, time spent on homework will come down regardless.

There’s no consensus on whether homework works

The rise of the no-homework movement during the Covid-19 pandemic tapped into long-running disagreements over homework’s impact on students. The purpose and effectiveness of homework have been disputed for well over a century. In 1901, for instance, California banned homework for students up to age 15, and limited it for older students, over concerns that it endangered children’s mental and physical health. The newest iteration of the anti-homework argument contends that the current practice punishes students who lack support and rewards those with more resources, reinforcing the “myth of meritocracy.”

But there is still no research consensus on homework’s effectiveness; no one can seem to agree on what the right metrics are. Much of the debate relies on anecdotes, intuition, or speculation.

Researchers disagree even on how much research exists on the value of homework. Kathleen Budge, the co-author of Turning High-Poverty Schools Into High-Performing Schools and a professor at Boise State, told me that homework “has been greatly researched.” Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer and leader of the education nonprofit Challenge Success, said, “It’s not a highly researched area because of some of the methodological problems.”

Experts who are more sympathetic to take-home assignments generally support the “10-minute rule,” a framework that estimates the ideal amount of homework on any given night by multiplying the student’s grade by 10 minutes. (A ninth grader, for example, would have about 90 minutes of work a night.) Homework proponents argue that while it is difficult to design randomized control studies to test homework’s effectiveness, the vast majority of existing studies show a strong positive correlation between homework and high academic achievement for middle and high school students. Prominent critics of homework argue that these correlational studies are unreliable and point to studies that suggest a neutral or negative effect on student performance. Both agree there is little to no evidence for homework’s effectiveness at an elementary school level, though proponents often argue that it builds constructive habits for the future.

For anyone who remembers homework assignments from both good and bad teachers, this fundamental disagreement might not be surprising. Some homework is pointless and frustrating to complete. Every week during my senior year of high school, I had to analyze a poem for English and decorate it with images found on Google; my most distinct memory from that class is receiving a demoralizing 25-point deduction because I failed to present my analysis on a poster board. Other assignments really do help students learn: After making an adapted version of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book for a ninth grade history project, I was inspired to check out from the library and read a biography of the Chinese ruler.

For homework opponents, the first example is more likely to resonate. “We’re all familiar with the negative effects of homework: stress, exhaustion, family conflict, less time for other activities, diminished interest in learning,” Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, which challenges common justifications for homework, told me in an email. “And these effects may be most pronounced among low-income students.” Kohn believes that schools should make permanent any moratoria implemented during the pandemic, arguing that there are no positives at all to outweigh homework’s downsides. Recent studies , he argues , show the benefits may not even materialize during high school.

In the Marlborough Public Schools, a suburban district 45 minutes west of Boston, school policy committee chair Katherine Hennessy described getting kids to complete their homework during remote education as “a challenge, to say the least.” Teachers found that students who spent all day on their computers didn’t want to spend more time online when the day was over. So, for a few months, the school relaxed the usual practice and teachers slashed the quantity of nightly homework.

Online learning made the preexisting divides between students more apparent, she said. Many students, even during normal circumstances, lacked resources to keep them on track and focused on completing take-home assignments. Though Marlborough Schools is more affluent than PS 55, Hennessy said many students had parents whose work schedules left them unable to provide homework help in the evenings. The experience tracked with a common divide in the country between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.

So in October 2021, months after the homework reduction began, the Marlborough committee made a change to the district’s policy. While teachers could still give homework, the assignments had to begin as classwork. And though teachers could acknowledge homework completion in a student’s participation grade, they couldn’t count homework as its own grading category. “Rigorous learning in the classroom does not mean that that classwork must be assigned every night,” the policy stated . “Extensions of class work is not to be used to teach new content or as a form of punishment.”

Canceling homework might not do anything for the achievement gap

The critiques of homework are valid as far as they go, but at a certain point, arguments against homework can defy the commonsense idea that to retain what they’re learning, students need to practice it.

“Doesn’t a kid become a better reader if he reads more? Doesn’t a kid learn his math facts better if he practices them?” said Cathy Vatterott, an education researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. After decades of research, she said it’s still hard to isolate the value of homework, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned.

Blanket vilification of homework can also conflate the unique challenges facing disadvantaged students as compared to affluent ones, which could have different solutions. “The kids in the low-income schools are being hurt because they’re being graded, unfairly, on time they just don’t have to do this stuff,” Pope told me. “And they’re still being held accountable for turning in assignments, whether they’re meaningful or not.” On the other side, “Palo Alto kids” — students in Silicon Valley’s stereotypically pressure-cooker public schools — “are just bombarded and overloaded and trying to stay above water.”

Merely getting rid of homework doesn’t solve either problem. The United States already has the second-highest disparity among OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations between time spent on homework by students of high and low socioeconomic status — a difference of more than three hours, said Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University and author of No More Mindless Homework .

When she interviewed teachers in Boston-area schools that had cut homework before the pandemic, Bempechat told me, “What they saw immediately was parents who could afford it immediately enrolled their children in the Russian School of Mathematics,” a math-enrichment program whose tuition ranges from $140 to about $400 a month. Getting rid of homework “does nothing for equity; it increases the opportunity gap between wealthier and less wealthy families,” she said. “That solution troubles me because it’s no solution at all.”

A group of teachers at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, made the same point after the school district proposed an overhaul of its homework policies, including removing penalties for missing homework deadlines, allowing unlimited retakes, and prohibiting grading of homework.

“Given the emphasis on equity in today’s education systems,” they wrote in a letter to the school board, “we believe that some of the proposed changes will actually have a detrimental impact towards achieving this goal. Families that have means could still provide challenging and engaging academic experiences for their children and will continue to do so, especially if their children are not experiencing expected rigor in the classroom.” At a school where more than a third of students are low-income, the teachers argued, the policies would prompt students “to expect the least of themselves in terms of effort, results, and responsibility.”

Not all homework is created equal

Despite their opposing sides in the homework wars, most of the researchers I spoke to made a lot of the same points. Both Bempechat and Pope were quick to bring up how parents and schools confuse rigor with workload, treating the volume of assignments as a proxy for quality of learning. Bempechat, who is known for defending homework, has written extensively about how plenty of it lacks clear purpose, requires the purchasing of unnecessary supplies, and takes longer than it needs to. Likewise, when Pope instructs graduate-level classes on curriculum, she asks her students to think about the larger purpose they’re trying to achieve with homework: If they can get the job done in the classroom, there’s no point in sending home more work.

At its best, pandemic-era teaching facilitated that last approach. Honolulu-based teacher Christina Torres Cawdery told me that, early in the pandemic, she often had a cohort of kids in her classroom for four hours straight, as her school tried to avoid too much commingling. She couldn’t lecture for four hours, so she gave the students plenty of time to complete independent and project-based work. At the end of most school days, she didn’t feel the need to send them home with more to do.

A similar limited-homework philosophy worked at a public middle school in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A couple of teachers there turned as much class as possible into an opportunity for small-group practice, allowing kids to work on problems that traditionally would be assigned for homework, Jessica Flick, a math coach who leads department meetings at the school, told me. It was inspired by a philosophy pioneered by Simon Fraser University professor Peter Liljedahl, whose influential book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics reframes homework as “check-your-understanding questions” rather than as compulsory work. Last year, Flick found that the two eighth grade classes whose teachers adopted this strategy performed the best on state tests, and this year, she has encouraged other teachers to implement it.

Teachers know that plenty of homework is tedious and unproductive. Jeannemarie Dawson De Quiroz, who has taught for more than 20 years in low-income Boston and Los Angeles pilot and charter schools, says that in her first years on the job she frequently assigned “drill and kill” tasks and questions that she now feels unfairly stumped students. She said designing good homework wasn’t part of her teaching programs, nor was it meaningfully discussed in professional development. With more experience, she turned as much class time as she could into practice time and limited what she sent home.

“The thing about homework that’s sticky is that not all homework is created equal,” says Jill Harrison Berg, a former teacher and the author of Uprooting Instructional Inequity . “Some homework is a genuine waste of time and requires lots of resources for no good reason. And other homework is really useful.”

Cutting homework has to be part of a larger strategy

The takeaways are clear: Schools can make cuts to homework, but those cuts should be part of a strategy to improve the quality of education for all students. If the point of homework was to provide more practice, districts should think about how students can make it up during class — or offer time during or after school for students to seek help from teachers. If it was to move the curriculum along, it’s worth considering whether strategies like Liljedahl’s can get more done in less time.

Some of the best thinking around effective assignments comes from those most critical of the current practice. Denise Pope proposes that, before assigning homework, teachers should consider whether students understand the purpose of the work and whether they can do it without help. If teachers think it’s something that can’t be done in class, they should be mindful of how much time it should take and the feedback they should provide. It’s questions like these that De Quiroz considered before reducing the volume of work she sent home.

More than a year after the new homework policy began in Marlborough, Hennessy still hears from parents who incorrectly “think homework isn’t happening” despite repeated assurances that kids still can receive work. She thinks part of the reason is that education has changed over the years. “I think what we’re trying to do is establish that homework may be an element of educating students,” she told me. “But it may not be what parents think of as what they grew up with. ... It’s going to need to adapt, per the teaching and the curriculum, and how it’s being delivered in each classroom.”

For the policy to work, faculty, parents, and students will all have to buy into a shared vision of what school ought to look like. The district is working on it — in November, it hosted and uploaded to YouTube a round-table discussion on homework between district administrators — but considering the sustained confusion, the path ahead seems difficult.

When I asked Luis Torres about whether he thought homework serves a useful part in PS 55’s curriculum, he said yes, of course it was — despite the effort and money it takes to keep the school open after hours to help them do it. “The children need the opportunity to practice,” he said. “If you don’t give them opportunities to practice what they learn, they’re going to forget.” But Torres doesn’t care if the work is done at home. The school stays open until around 6 pm on weekdays, even during breaks. Tutors through New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development programs help kids with work after school so they don’t need to take it with them.

As schools weigh the purpose of homework in an unequal world, it’s tempting to dispose of a practice that presents real, practical problems to students across the country. But getting rid of homework is unlikely to do much good on its own. Before cutting it, it’s worth thinking about what good assignments are meant to do in the first place. It’s crucial that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds tackle complex quantitative problems and hone their reading and writing skills. It’s less important that the work comes home with them.

Jacob Sweet is a freelance writer in Somerville, Massachusetts. He is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, among other publications.

Will you support Vox today?

Millions rely on Vox’s journalism to understand the coronavirus crisis. We believe it pays off for all of us, as a society and a democracy, when our neighbors and fellow citizens can access clear, concise information on the pandemic. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive. Support from our readers helps us keep it free for everyone. If you have already made a financial contribution to Vox, thank you. If not, please consider making a contribution today from as little as $3.

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via

Social media platforms aren’t equipped to handle the negative effects of their algorithms abroad. Neither is the law.

The real science behind the billionaire pursuit of immortality, if you want to belong, find a third place, sign up for the newsletter today, explained, thanks for signing up.

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

share this!

August 16, 2021

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in

by Sara M Moniuszko

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide-range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas over workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework .

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy work loads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold, says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace, says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.

And for all the distress homework causes, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night.

"Most students, especially at these high-achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school ," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely, but to be more mindful of the type of work students go home with, suggests Kang, who was a high-school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework, I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the last two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic, making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized... sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking assignments up can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

©2021 USA Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Scientists develop new geochemical 'fingerprint' to trace contaminants in fertilizer

11 hours ago

Study reveals how a sugar-sensing protein acts as a 'machine' to switch plant growth—and oil production—on and off

Researchers develop world's smallest quantum light detector on a silicon chip

How heat waves are affecting Arctic phytoplankton

Horse remains show Pagan-Christian trade networks supplied horses from overseas for the last horse sacrifices in Europe

Ion irradiation offers promise for 2D material probing

12 hours ago

Furry thieves are running loose in a Maine forest, research shows

Study indicates Earth's earliest sea creatures drove evolution by stirring the water

Chemists develop new method for introducing fluorinated components into molecules

From fungi to fashion: Mushroom eco-leather is moving towards the mainstream

Relevant physicsforums posts, physics education is 60 years out of date.

May 16, 2024

Is "College Algebra" really just high school "Algebra II"?

May 14, 2024

Plagiarism & ChatGPT: Is Cheating with AI the New Normal?

May 13, 2024

Physics Instructor Minimum Education to Teach Community College

May 11, 2024

Studying "Useful" vs. "Useless" Stuff in School

Apr 30, 2024

Why are Physicists so informal with mathematics?

Apr 29, 2024

More from STEM Educators and Teaching

Related Stories

Smartphones are lowering student's grades, study finds

Aug 18, 2020

Doing homework is associated with change in students' personality

Oct 6, 2017

Scholar suggests ways to craft more effective homework assignments

Oct 1, 2015

Should parents help their kids with homework?

Aug 29, 2019

How much math, science homework is too much?

Mar 23, 2015

Anxiety, depression, burnout rising as college students prepare to return to campus

Jul 26, 2021

Recommended for you

First-generation medical students face unique challenges and need more targeted support, say researchers

Investigation reveals varied impact of preschool programs on long-term school success

May 2, 2024

Training of brain processes makes reading more efficient

Apr 18, 2024

Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order

Apr 17, 2024

Earth, the sun and a bike wheel: Why your high-school textbook was wrong about the shape of Earth's orbit

Apr 8, 2024

Touchibo, a robot that fosters inclusion in education through touch

Apr 5, 2024

Let us know if there is a problem with our content

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter

Unveiling Why Homework Should not be Banned?

• Post author By admin
• August 18, 2023

Discover the compelling reasons why homework should not be banned in schools. Explore how homework fosters skills, responsibility, and academic growth. Learn why removing homework might hinder students’ development.

Hey there, homework haters and education enthusiasts alike! We’re about to dive into a topic that’s stirred up a storm in schools and households – should homework be banned?

Yep, you’ve heard those whispers, but hold up! Before we jump into conclusions, let’s have a friendly chat about why homework might still have a place in our learning journey.

So, grab your thinking cap and let’s explore why bidding farewell to homework might not be as straightforward as it seems. Ready? Let’s roll!

Table of Contents

Why Homework Matters?

Have a close look at why homework matters.

Practice Makes Perfect

Homework is like your personal practice arena. It’s where you put into action all the cool stuff you learned in class. Remember acing that math problem after solving it at home? Yep, that’s the feeling of triumph you get.

Time Management Champ

Homework is your time management coach. Figuring out when to tackle assignments shows you how to balance work and play. And trust us, that’s a skill you’ll be thanking homework for later in life.

Real-Life Prep

Life’s not just textbooks and exams. Homework gets you ready for the real world. Whether it’s managing tasks or juggling responsibilities, those lessons learned while tackling assignments will come in handy.

Independent Thinker

Homework transforms you into an independent thinker. It’s like you’re in a ninja training program for your brain. You learn to tackle problems on your own and unravel solutions like a clever detective.

Brain Booster

It’s not about rote memorization. Homework is your brain’s workout session. It pushes your mind to think critically, analyze situations, and come up with creative solutions. Your brain gets stronger, and so do your thinking skills.

Study Smart

Homework is your study lab. It’s where you discover your ideal study conditions. Do you need complete silence or a bit of background music? Are you a day-time studier or a midnight genius? Homework helps you figure it all out.

Family Talk

Homework turns your family into co-learners. When you chat about your assignments, it’s like having mini-lessons at home. You get to share what you’re learning and maybe even teach them a thing or two.

Homework sometimes gives you a preview of the future. You’ll read ahead, and suddenly in class, it’s like you’ve got superpowers. You’ll be answering questions like a champion and impressing everyone.

See Your Progress

Homework is your progress tracker. As you tackle assignments, you’ll notice how much you’ve learned and improved. Those “Aha!” moments are like high-fives from yourself, reminding you how awesome you are.

No More Forgetfulness

Homework is your memory’s best friend. It keeps all those amazing facts and formulas fresh in your mind. So when you need them for a test or just to impress your friends, they’re right there, ready to roll.

So, don’t look at homework as a mountain of boredom. It’s your secret weapon to becoming a learning superhero, one assignment at a time!

20 Reasons Why Homework Should not be Banned

Have a close look at 20 reasons why homework should not be banned.

Reinforces Learning

Homework isn’t just a chore – it’s your personal practice arena. Just like a soccer player practices their kicks, you practice what you’ve learned in class.

Remember that tricky math equation? Homework gives you a chance to tackle it again, making sure it stays in your brain for the long haul.

Builds Responsibility

Imagine you’re the captain of a spaceship. Completing homework on time is like steering that spaceship – you’re in charge!

When you meet homework deadlines, you’re showing responsibility, a superpower that makes you reliable in school and beyond.

Prepares for Real Life

Life isn’t always a smooth ride. Homework is like your training wheels for life’s challenges. Whether it’s taking out the trash or finishing a project at work, homework teaches you to manage tasks, no matter how busy life gets.

Boosts Independence

Homework turns you into a learning ninja. You’re like a detective hunting for clues on your own. When you figure things out without help, you’re building the ultimate power – independence.

Enhances Critical Thinking

Ever solved a puzzle that made your brain do a happy dance? Homework is like that puzzle. It’s not just about finishing it; it’s about figuring out how. This makes your brain sharper and helps you tackle real-world problems creatively.

Strengthens Study Habits

Imagine you’re a scientist experimenting with different potions. Homework lets you experiment with how you study best. You find the perfect mix of time, place, and method, so studying becomes a breeze.

Connects Home and School

Remember the feeling of showing off a new toy to your family? Homework lets you show off what you’re learning. When you discuss it at home, you’re building a bridge between school and family life.

Previews Upcoming Lessons

Imagine getting a sneak peek of next week’s video game levels. Homework sometimes gives you a preview of what’s coming up in class. You’ll feel like you’re in on a secret mission.

Provides Feedback

Homework is like a report card for your brain. When you do it, you get to see what you’re great at and where you can improve. It’s like getting a treasure map that shows you the path to success.

Prevents Forgetting

Think of homework as a magical spell that banishes forgetting. Regular practice keeps your memory fresh. That’s how you keep acing the things you learned weeks ago.

Encourages Perseverance

Imagine you’re climbing a mountain. Homework can sometimes feel like a steep hill. But the best part? You never give up. Overcoming those challenges builds your inner strength and helps you conquer bigger mountains in life.

Nurtures Curiosity

Remember asking “Why?” a million times as a kid? Homework lets you do that with your school subjects. When you’re curious and ask questions, you’re becoming a mini scientist on a quest for knowledge.

Improves Time Management

Think of time as your magic wand, and homework as a spell you have to cast. Homework teaches you how to use your wand wisely. You’ll become a time-management wizard who can balance school, fun, and everything else.

Cultivates Research Skills

Imagine being a detective, hunting for clues in a mysterious case. Homework sometimes sends you on a similar mission – finding information. You’re not just learning; you’re becoming a savvy researcher too.

Develops Communication Skills

Remember telling your friends about a cool adventure you had? Homework is your chance to tell stories on paper. Writing assignments boost your storytelling and communication skills.

Prepares for Exams

Imagine exams are like video game bosses. Homework is your training ground, helping you level up. When you practice what you’ve learned, you’re ready to face those tough bosses with confidence.

Promotes Creativity

Think of homework like a canvas waiting for your artistic touch. Creative assignments let you unleash your imagination. You’re not just learning; you’re creating something unique and awesome.

Fosters Responsibility

Imagine your homework as a promise you make to your teachers. Completing it shows them you’re responsible and committed to your learning journey. It’s like being a superhero with integrity.

Encourages Collaboration

Remember the thrill of working together on a group project? Homework can be like that – a team adventure! You learn to listen to others, share ideas, and create something amazing as a team.

Promotes Lifelong Learning

Imagine your brain as a treasure chest, and homework as the key to unlocking it. Homework isn’t just for school; it’s a habit that sticks with you, making you curious, eager to learn, and ready to conquer any challenge life throws your way.

So, before you consider waving the “ban homework” flag, remember these 20 reasons. Homework is like a toolbox filled with skills that’ll make you a super learner in school and in life!

Why should they not ban homework?

Homework shouldn’t be banned because it:

• Builds responsibility and time management.
• Prepares for real-world tasks.
• Boosts independent learning and critical thinking.
• Provides feedback and identifies areas for improvement.
• Prevents forgetting and maintains a strong foundation.
• Encourages perseverance and resilience.
• Nurtures curiosity and further exploration.
• Improves time management skills.
• Develops communication and research abilities.
• Prepares for exams and structured assessments.
• Promotes creativity and diverse problem-solving.
• Fosters responsibility and commitment to education.
• Encourages collaboration and teamwork.
• Cultivates a habit of continuous learning.

In essence, homework equips you with skills and habits that extend beyond the classroom, helping you succeed in the long run.

What are the benefits of homework?

Have a close look at the benefits of homework.

Improves Retention

Homework’s like your memory workout. When you keep practicing through assignments, you remember stuff better for the long haul. It’s like having a trusty vault of knowledge that’s always there when you need it.

Develops Responsibility

Homework’s your responsibility coach. When you get those assignments done on time, you’re not just doing the work – you’re becoming a time management champ. It’s like mastering the art of juggling, but with tasks.

Builds Study Habits

Homework’s your study buddy. By doing assignments regularly, you’re actually training your brain to focus better. It’s like forming a habit that makes studying feel like second nature.

Fosters Independence

Homework’s your ticket to being a learning explorer. As you dive into assignments, you’re taking the wheel of your learning journey. This independence boost makes you feel like you’re ready to conquer new challenges.

Strengthens Skills

Homework’s your skill-building playground. While you’re crunching numbers, writing essays, or digging into topics, you’re also sharpening skills like research and time management. These skills aren’t just for school – they’re life skills.

Encourages Creativity

Creative assignments are like your imagination spark. They push you to think outside the box, try new angles, and show your ideas in cool ways. Whether it’s a story or a project, creativity gets a big high-five from homework.

Previews Lessons

Homework’s like a teaser trailer for what’s next. Sometimes, assignments drop hints about upcoming topics. So, when your teacher dives into it, you’re already in the know, nodding along like a pro.

Encourages Responsibility

Meeting homework deadlines isn’t just about getting stuff done. It’s showing that you’re responsible for your education. It’s like a little flag that says, “Hey, I’m committed to this learning journey!”

Promotes Collaboration

Group assignments are your teamwork practice. When you team up with classmates, you’re learning how to talk, share ideas, and work together. These are skills that work not just in school, but in the big wide world too.

Prevents Procrastination

Homework’s got your back against last-minute panic. When you make studying and finishing tasks a regular thing, you’re creating a routine that kicks procrastination out the door. It’s like having your own superhero sidekick against the urge to delay things.

In essence, homework offers a range of benefits that extend beyond academic achievement, preparing you for success in various aspects of life.

What would happen if homework was banned?

Have a close look at what would happen if homework was banned.

Less Practice

Think of homework like practice for a sport. If it’s gone, you might not get as many chances to practice what you learn in class. It’s like skipping practice sessions and then feeling a bit rusty during the big game.

Missing Skills

Homework isn’t just about the assignments. It’s like a secret teacher that helps you learn skills like time management and responsibility. Without it, you might miss out on learning these important life skills. It’s like skipping the “how to ride a bike” lesson.

Exam Trouble

Homework is like your superhero sidekick for tests. It helps you get ready and confident. Without homework, tests might feel like facing a boss level in a video game without any power-ups.

Thinking Skills

Homework is like a puzzle that makes your brain stronger. It makes you think hard, solve problems, and get those brain muscles working. Without it, you might not get to flex your thinking skills as much. It’s like having a gym but never going.

Responsibility Lesson

When you finish your homework, you’re showing that you’re in charge of your learning journey. You’re taking responsibility for your education. No homework might mean missing out on this important lesson in being responsible.

Talking Less

Homework chats at home are like mini classroom sessions. They’re your chance to tell your family all the cool stuff you’re learning. Without homework, you might not have as much to share with them about your school adventures.

Time Challenge

Homework is like a time management coach. It helps you figure out how to get things done on time. Without it, managing your time might feel a bit like solving a tricky puzzle without any hints.

Parents Less Involved

Homework often brings your parents into your learning journey. They get to help you, learn with you, and cheer you on. Without homework, they might be a little less involved in your school adventures.

Skills Practice Missing

Homework is like a practice ground for skills like researching and writing. Without it, you might not get to sharpen these skills as often. It’s like having a musical instrument but never playing any tunes.

No Feedback

Homework is like a sneak peek at your progress. It shows you where you’re doing great and where you might need a little help. Without it, you might not get that helpful feedback that makes you even better at what you do.

So, if homework disappeared, we might miss out on practicing, learning important skills, and getting ready for tests. It’s like losing a helpful teammate on our learning journey.

Is homework necessary pros and cons?

• Reinforces Learning: Homework helps reinforce what’s learned in class, making sure the concepts stick.
• Practice Makes Perfect: Regular practice through homework improves understanding and retention.
• Prepares for Assessments: Homework readies students for exams and quizzes, boosting confidence.
• Skill Development: Completing assignments hones time management and responsibility skills.
• Critical Thinking: Homework encourages deep thinking and problem-solving, boosting skills.
• Parental Involvement: Homework discussions at home engage parents in students’ learning.
• Independent Learning: Homework fosters self-directed learning and independent thinking.
• Life Skills: Homework teaches skills like research, writing, and task management.
• Future Readiness: Homework preps students for future tasks that require meeting deadlines.
• Feedback Loop: Homework offers feedback, helping students identify areas for improvement.
• Stress and Overload: Too much homework can lead to stress and impact students’ well-being.
• Time Constraints: Homework can consume time meant for extracurricular activities, hobbies, and family time.
• Unequal Access: Some students might not have the resources at home to complete assignments.
• Creativity Limitation: Excessive homework might limit time for creative activities outside school.
• Diminished Engagement: Repetitive or excessive homework can lead to disengagement from learning.
• Burnout Risk: An overload of homework might lead to burnout and decreased interest in learning.
• Inflexibility: Homework might not account for different learning paces and styles.
• Parental Pressure: Homework can sometimes lead to undue parental pressure and involvement.
• Reduced Family Time: Too much homework might cut into valuable family time.
• Impact on Sleep: Excessive homework can affect sleep patterns, impacting overall health.
• Balancing the benefits and drawbacks of homework is essential to ensure it contributes positively to students’ education and overall well-being.

So, that’s the scoop on why homework shouldn’t be banned. It’s like a helper on your learning journey, giving you a chance to practice and become a pro at what you’ve learned in class. It’s not just about school stuff – homework teaches you skills like managing time, thinking critically, and being responsible.

Sure, there are times when homework might feel like a mountain to climb, and we get it – nobody wants to drown in assignments. But here’s the thing: finding a balance is the key.

Instead of waving goodbye to homework completely, we can make it work better for everyone. We’re talking about assignments that actually make sense, and that don’t gobble up all your free time.

In the end, it’s about making homework your sidekick, not your arch-nemesis. With a bit of homework magic, you’re not just acing tests – you’re picking up life skills that will come in handy down the road.

So, the next time you’re scribbling away on an assignment, remember – it’s more than just paper and ink; it’s your ticket to learning and growing in and out of the classroom.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is homework causing excessive stress.

It’s important to strike a balance between the amount of homework assigned and its impact on students’ stress levels. Teachers should consider assigning reasonable amounts and providing guidance on time management.

Does homework infringe on students’ free time?

Homework should be designed to complement, not replace, students’ free time. Effective assignments can be completed within a reasonable timeframe, leaving ample time for extracurricular activities and relaxation.

Are students spending too much time indoors?

Homework can be an opportunity for students to explore topics beyond the classroom. Assignments that encourage outdoor exploration, research, or creative projects can address this concern.

Does homework impede creativity?

Homework can be structured to foster creativity. Assignments that allow for personal expression, critical thinking, and alternative approaches can actually enhance students’ creative abilities.

Does homework negatively impact family time?

By setting clear guidelines and expectations for homework completion, students can manage their time effectively and still participate in family activities.

• australia (2)
• duolingo (13)
• Education (275)
• General (75)
• How To (16)
• IELTS (127)
• Latest Updates (162)
• Malta Visa (6)
• Permanent residency (1)
• Programming (31)
• Scholarship (1)
• Sponsored (4)
• Study Abroad (187)
• Technology (12)
• work permit (8)

Recent Posts

Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

Getty Images

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful.

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

Tags: K-12 education , students , elementary school , children

2024 Best Colleges

Search for your perfect fit with the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities.

• About the Hub
• Announcements
• Faculty Experts Guide
• Subscribe to the newsletter

Explore by Topic

• Arts+Culture
• Politics+Society
• Science+Technology
• Student Life
• University News
• Voices+Opinion
• About Hub at Work
• Gazette Archive
• Benefits+Perks
• Health+Well-Being
• Current Issue
• About the Magazine
• Past Issues
• Support Johns Hopkins Magazine
• Subscribe to the Magazine

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

Posted in Voices+Opinion

You might also like

News network.

• Johns Hopkins Magazine
• Get Email Updates
• Submit an Announcement
• Submit an Event
• Privacy Statement
• Accessibility

Discover JHU

• About the University
• Schools & Divisions
• Academic Programs
• Plan a Visit
• my.JohnsHopkins.edu
• © 2024 Johns Hopkins University . All rights reserved.
• University Communications
• 3910 Keswick Rd., Suite N2600, Baltimore, MD
• X Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Instagram

Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

• The New Face of Doctor Who
• Putin’s Enemies Are Struggling to Unite
• Women Say They Were Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control
• Scientists Are Finding Out Just How Toxic Your Stuff Is
• Boredom Makes Us Human
• John Mulaney Has What Late Night Needs
• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Write to Katie Reilly at [email protected]

• Our Mission

Homework: No Proven Benefits

Why homework is a pointless and outdated habit.

This is an excerpt from Alfie Kohn's recently published book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. For one teacher's response to this excerpt, read In Defense of Homework: Is there Such a Thing as Too Much? .

It may surprise you, as it did me, to learn that no study has ever demonstrated any academic benefit to assigning homework before children are in high school. In fact, even in high school, the association between homework and achievement is weak -- and the data don't show that homework is responsible for higher achievement. (Correlation doesn't imply causation.)

Finally, there isn't a shred of evidence to support the folk wisdom that homework provides nonacademic benefits at any age -- for example, that it builds character, promotes self-discipline, or teaches good work habits. We're all familiar with the downside of homework: the frustration and exhaustion, the family conflict, time lost for other activities, and possible diminution of children's interest in learning. But the stubborn belief that all of this must be worth it, that the gain must outweigh the pain, relies on faith rather than evidence.

So why does homework continue to be assigned and accepted? Possible reasons include a lack of respect for research, a lack of respect for children (implicit in a determination to keep them busy after school), a lack of understanding about the nature of learning (implicit in the emphasis on practicing skills and the assertion that homework "reinforces" school lessons), or the top-down pressures to teach more stuff faster in order to pump up test scores so we can chant "We're number one!"

All of these explanations are plausible, but I think there's also something else responsible for our continuing to feed children this latter-day cod-liver oil. We don't ask challenging questions about homework because we don't ask challenging questions about most things. Too many of us sound like Robert Frost's neighbor, the man who "will not go behind his father's saying." Too many of us, when pressed about some habit or belief we've adopted, are apt to reply, "Well, that's just the way I was raised" -- as if it were impossible to critically examine the values one was taught. Too many of us, including some who work in the field of education, seem to have lost our capacity to be outraged by the outrageous; when handed foolish and destructive mandates, we respond by asking for guidance on how best to carry them out.

Passivity is a habit acquired early. From our first days in school we are carefully instructed in what has been called the "hidden curriculum": how to do what one is told and stay out of trouble. There are rewards, both tangible and symbolic, for those who behave properly and penalties for those who don't. As students, we're trained to sit still, listen to what the teacher says, run our highlighters across whatever words in the book we'll be required to commit to memory. Pretty soon, we become less likely to ask (or even wonder) whether what we're being taught really makes sense. We just want to know whether it's going to be on the test.

When we find ourselves unhappy with some practice or policy, we're encouraged to focus on incidental aspects of what's going on, to ask questions about the details of implementation -- how something will get done, or by whom, or on what schedule -- but not whether it should be done at all. The more that we attend to secondary concerns, the more the primary issues -- the overarching structures and underlying premises -- are strengthened. We're led to avoid the radical questions -- and I use that adjective in its original sense: Radical comes from the Latin word for "root." It's partly because we spend our time worrying about the tendrils that the weed continues to grow. Noam Chomsky put it this way: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Parents have already been conditioned to accept most of what is done to their children at school, for example, and so their critical energies are confined to the periphery. Sometimes I entertain myself by speculating about how ingrained this pattern really is. If a school administrator were to announce that, starting next week, students will be made to stand outside in the rain and memorize the phone book, I suspect we parents would promptly speak up . . . to ask whether the Yellow Pages will be included. Or perhaps we'd want to know how much of their grade this activity will count for. One of the more outspoken moms might even demand to know whether her child will be permitted to wear a raincoat.

Our education system, meanwhile, is busily avoiding important topics in its own right. For every question that's asked in this field, there are other, more vital questions that are never raised. Educators weigh different techniques of "behavior management" but rarely examine the imperative to focus on behavior -- that is, observable actions -- rather than on reasons and needs and the children who have them. Teachers think about what classroom rules they ought to introduce but are unlikely to ask why they're doing so unilaterally, why students aren't participating in such decisions. It's probably not a coincidence that most schools of education require prospective teachers to take a course called Methods, but there is no course called Goals.

And so we return to the question of homework. Parents anxiously grill teachers about their policies on this topic, but they mostly ask about the details of the assignments their children will be made to do. If homework is a given, it's certainly understandable that one would want to make sure it's being done "correctly." But this begs the question of whether, and why, it should be a given. The willingness not to ask provides another explanation for how a practice can persist even if it hurts more than helps.

For their part, teachers regularly witness how many children are made miserable by homework and how many resist doing it. Some respond with sympathy and respect. Others reach for bribes and threats to compel students to turn in the assignments; indeed, they may insist these inducements are necessary: "If the kids weren't being graded, they'd never do it!" Even if true, this is less an argument for grades and other coercive tactics than an invitation to reconsider the value of those assignments. Or so one might think. However, teachers had to do homework when they were students, and they've likely been expected to give it at every school where they've worked. The idea that homework must be assigned is the premise, not the conclusion -- and it's a premise that's rarely examined by educators.

Unlike parents and teachers, scholars are a step removed from the classroom and therefore have the luxury of pursuing potentially uncomfortable areas of investigation. But few do. Instead, they are more likely to ask, "How much time should students spend on homework?" or "Which strategies will succeed in improving homework completion rates?," which is simply assumed to be desirable.

Policy groups, too, are more likely to act as cheerleaders than as thoughtful critics. The major document on the subject issued jointly by the National PTA and the National Education Association, for example, concedes that children often complain about homework, but never considers the possibility that their complaints may be justified. Parents are exhorted to "show your children that you think homework is important" -- regardless of whether it is, or even whether one really believes this is true -- and to praise them for compliance.

Health professionals, meanwhile, have begun raising concerns about the weight of children's backpacks and then recommending . . . exercises to strengthen their backs! This was also the tack taken by People magazine: An article about families struggling to cope with excessive homework was accompanied by a sidebar that offered some "ways to minimize the strain on young backs" -- for example, "pick a [back]pack with padded shoulder straps."

The People article reminds us that the popular press does occasionally -- cyclically -- take note of how much homework children have to do, and how varied and virulent are its effects. But such inquiries are rarely penetrating and their conclusions almost never rock the boat. Time magazine published a cover essay in 2003 entitled "The Homework Ate My Family." It opened with affecting and even alarming stories of homework's harms. Several pages later, however, it closed with a finger-wagging declaration that "both parents and students must be willing to embrace the 'work' component of homework -- to recognize the quiet satisfaction that comes from practice and drill." Likewise, an essay on the Family Education Network's Web site: "Yes, homework is sometimes dull, or too easy, or too difficult. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be taken seriously." (One wonders what would have to be true before we'd be justified in not taking something seriously.)

Nor, apparently, are these questions seen as appropriate by most medical and mental health professionals. When a child resists doing homework -- or complying with other demands -- their job is to get the child back on track. Very rarely is there any inquiry into the value of the homework or the reasonableness of the demands.

Sometimes parents are invited to talk to teachers about homework -- providing that their concerns are "appropriate." The same is true of formal opportunities for offering feedback. A list of sample survey questions offered to principals by the central office in one Colorado school district is typical. Parents were asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the following statements: "My child understands how to do his/her homework"; "Teachers at this school give me useful suggestions about how to help my child with schoolwork"; "Homework assignments allow me to see what my student is being taught and how he/she is learning"; and "The amount of homework my child receives is (choose one): too much/just right/too little."

The most striking feature of such a list is what isn't on it. Such a questionnaire seems to have been designed to illustrate Chomsky's point about encouraging lively discussion within a narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion, the better to reinforce the key presuppositions of the system. Parents' feedback is earnestly sought -- on these questions only. So, too, for the popular articles that criticize homework, or the parents who speak out: The focus is generally limited to how much is being assigned. I'm sympathetic to this concern, but I'm more struck by how it misses much of what matters. We sometimes forget that not everything that's destructive when done to excess is innocuous when done in moderation. Sometimes the problem is with what's being done, or at least the way it's being done, rather than just with how much of it is being done.

The more we are invited to think in Goldilocks terms (too much, too little, or just right?), the less likely we become to step back and ask the questions that count: What reason is there to think that any quantity of the kind of homework our kids are getting is really worth doing? What evidence exists to show that daily homework, regardless of its nature, is necessary for children to become better thinkers? Why did the students have no chance to participate in deciding which of their assignments ought to be taken home?

And: What if there was no homework at all?

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

• Student information
• Faculty/Staff information

We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you. Your selection is stored in a browser cookie which you can remove at any time using “Clear all personalization” below.

Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

* Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

* Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

* Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Media Contacts

Denise Pope, Stanford Graduate School of Education: (650) 725-7412, [email protected] Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected]

School Life Balance , Tips for Online Students

The Pros and Cons of Homework

Updated: December 7, 2023

Published: January 23, 2020

Homework is a word that most students dread hearing. After hours upon hours of sitting in class , the last thing we want is more schoolwork over our precious weekends. While it’s known to be a staple of traditional schooling, homework has also become a rather divise topic. Some feel as though homework is a necessary part of school, while others believe that the time could be better invested. Should students have homework? Have a closer look into the arguments on both sides to decide for yourself.

Photo by  energepic.com  from  Pexels

Why should students have homework, 1. homework encourages practice.

Many people believe that one of the positive effects of homework is that it encourages the discipline of practice. While it may be time consuming and boring compared to other activities, repetition is needed to get better at skills. Homework helps make concepts more clear, and gives students more opportunities when starting their career .

2. Homework Gets Parents Involved

Homework can be something that gets parents involved in their children’s lives if the environment is a healthy one. A parent helping their child with homework makes them take part in their academic success, and allows for the parent to keep up with what the child is doing in school. It can also be a chance to connect together.

3. Homework Teaches Time Management

Homework is much more than just completing the assigned tasks. Homework can develop time management skills , forcing students to plan their time and make sure that all of their homework assignments are done on time. By learning to manage their time, students also practice their problem-solving skills and independent thinking. One of the positive effects of homework is that it forces decision making and compromises to be made.

4. Homework Opens A Bridge Of Communication

Homework creates a connection between the student, the teacher, the school, and the parents. It allows everyone to get to know each other better, and parents can see where their children are struggling. In the same sense, parents can also see where their children are excelling. Homework in turn can allow for a better, more targeted educational plan for the student.

5. Homework Allows For More Learning Time

Homework allows for more time to complete the learning process. School hours are not always enough time for students to really understand core concepts, and homework can counter the effects of time shortages, benefiting students in the long run, even if they can’t see it in the moment.

6. Homework Reduces Screen Time

Many students in North America spend far too many hours watching TV. If they weren’t in school, these numbers would likely increase even more. Although homework is usually undesired, it encourages better study habits and discourages spending time in front of the TV. Homework can be seen as another extracurricular activity, and many families already invest a lot of time and money in different clubs and lessons to fill up their children’s extra time. Just like extracurricular activities, homework can be fit into one’s schedule.

The Other Side: Why Homework Is Bad

1. homework encourages a sedentary lifestyle.

Should students have homework? Well, that depends on where you stand. There are arguments both for the advantages and the disadvantages of homework.

While classroom time is important, playground time is just as important. If children are given too much homework, they won’t have enough playtime, which can impact their social development and learning. Studies have found that those who get more play get better grades in school , as it can help them pay closer attention in the classroom.

Children are already sitting long hours in the classroom, and homework assignments only add to these hours. Sedentary lifestyles can be dangerous and can cause health problems such as obesity. Homework takes away from time that could be spent investing in physical activity.

2. Homework Isn’t Healthy In Every Home

While many people that think homes are a beneficial environment for children to learn, not all homes provide a healthy environment, and there may be very little investment from parents. Some parents do not provide any kind of support or homework help, and even if they would like to, due to personal barriers, they sometimes cannot. Homework can create friction between children and their parents, which is one of the reasons why homework is bad .

3. Homework Adds To An Already Full-Time Job

School is already a full-time job for students, as they generally spend over 6 hours each day in class. Students also often have extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or art that are just as important as their traditional courses. Adding on extra hours to all of these demands is a lot for children to manage, and prevents students from having extra time to themselves for a variety of creative endeavors. Homework prevents self discovery and having the time to learn new skills outside of the school system. This is one of the main disadvantages of homework.

4. Homework Has Not Been Proven To Provide Results

Endless surveys have found that homework creates a negative attitude towards school, and homework has not been found to be linked to a higher level of academic success.

The positive effects of homework have not been backed up enough. While homework may help some students improve in specific subjects, if they have outside help there is no real proof that homework makes for improvements.

It can be a challenge to really enforce the completion of homework, and students can still get decent grades without doing their homework. Extra school time does not necessarily mean better grades — quality must always come before quantity.

Accurate practice when it comes to homework simply isn’t reliable. Homework could even cause opposite effects if misunderstood, especially since the reliance is placed on the student and their parents — one of the major reasons as to why homework is bad. Many students would rather cheat in class to avoid doing their homework at home, and children often just copy off of each other or from what they read on the internet.

5. Homework Assignments Are Overdone

The general agreement is that students should not be given more than 10 minutes a day per grade level. What this means is that a first grader should be given a maximum of 10 minutes of homework, while a second grader receives 20 minutes, etc. Many students are given a lot more homework than the recommended amount, however.

On average, college students spend as much as 3 hours per night on homework . By giving too much homework, it can increase stress levels and lead to burn out. This in turn provides an opposite effect when it comes to academic success.

The pros and cons of homework are both valid, and it seems as though the question of ‘‘should students have homework?’ is not a simple, straightforward one. Parents and teachers often are found to be clashing heads, while the student is left in the middle without much say.

It’s important to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of homework, taking both perspectives into conversation to find a common ground. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal is the success of the student.

Related Articles

Inspired Together Teachers

10 Reasons Why Students Don’t Do Homework

January 18, 2019 by Inspired Together Teachers 3 Comments

Though the issue of homework is complicated and often involves a debate of whether or not homework is actually beneficial, the fact remains that most teachers still assign homework and some students will not do their homework.

If we can understand why students don’t do their homework, we have a better chance of both assigning homework that students will do and in doing what we can to create the motivation for them to do it. At the very least, understanding that there are many reasons that students don’t do homework can help teachers to realize that it isn’t personal. Students often don’t do homework for reasons that aren’t even about you, your teaching, or your subject matter.

Here is a list of 10 reasons that students don’t do homework, aligned with suggestions that may help to alleviate the problem.

They don’t know how to do the assignment. 

In order to do their work, students need to understand the directions and have the basic skills need in order to complete the task. This usually means that students have been introduced to a topic, have had some instruction and are not trying to learn something new and difficult on their own. The material also needs to be at the students’ instructional or independent level. Be sure your directions are clear and specific and that the level of the work is appropriate for the students.

They don’t understand the purpose for the assignment.

When students understand the importance of something they are learning, they are more likely to feel compelled to do it. We want to know and do things that are going to help us in our lives. When students perceive an assignment as busywork, they often rebel. If a student can do ten math problems correctly, doing one hundred math problems is overkill and perceived as busywork. So is spending hours using a dictionary to define words. Make sure that students know how the homework will help them. Help them to connect the content to real world tasks.

Students are overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

We’ve all had experiences where we have felt overloaded with too much to do. As adults, we have also figured out ways to break down tasks. Students are still learning to manage large tasks. Help them to break down large assignments into smaller parts. Instead of assigning a large project due in three weeks, help students to break down the project into smaller chunks and then assign smaller chunks for homework in the days leading up to the due date for a big project.

Assignments are based on low level tasks.

Basic recall gets boring quickly. An assignment such as giving students fifty sentences and having them underline the noun once and the verb twice is drudgery and doesn’t engage them. How much more fun would it be to have a contest to see who could correctly incorporate the most verbs in a sentence?  Consider homework that require higher thinking levels such as application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

Students have too many assignments. 

This is a particular danger in middle and high school when students have many different teachers. At this level, teachers often don’t know what other teachers are assigning. You may think that homework will only take them thirty minutes. But if they have seven subjects and every teacher gives them thirty minutes of homework, the student is facing three to four hours of homework. Good teaching teams often discuss homework assignments and try to balance the load so that students don’t have many big assignments due at the same time.

Students don’t have time.

Many students are involved in many extracurricular activities. This is positive and those activities often help students to be engaged with school. When you add practices or games into the mix, it often becomes impossible to do hours of homework on any given night. Older students may have jobs or other responsibilities. Consider giving students assignments ahead of time so they can work on them throughout the week rather than assigning everything to be due the next day.

Students don’t get feedback on their work .

When a student turns in an assignment, they expect feedback. They may get a grade, but they also want comments, especially on written work. Homework should be an opportunity for learning. Students need feedback in order to learn. Teachers can read student work and provide feedback, or use homework in classroom discussions and activities in ways that allow students to get feedback or use their work for a purposeful activity.

Sometimes, the reason that students don’t do work is not related to you or your content. These are more difficult to control, but there are usually positive things you can do to help with the situation.

Students don’t have an appropriate environment to do work at home .

Let’s face it, some students live in chaotic environments. They may not have a quiet place to work or the tools they need in order to do homework. Having a one-on-one conversation with students can help. Talk about what they need in order to do their work and how they might get it. Could they stay at school and extra hour and work in a quiet room? Could they go to the public library? Could they carve a quiet corner of their home?

The student’s family is not supportive of education.

As much as we wish it weren’t true, some students come from families that do not value education. The student is not then likely to get the support or encouragement to do homework. Other families value education, but parents are absent or unable to help their children with homework. Your first instinct might be to “fix” the family. An easier route is to work with the student. Be their encourager. Let them know that you think they can succeed. Let them know how valuable a good education might be to them. We know of a first grader whose parent would not read with him. The teacher made a deal that the student could read to his baby brother, his dog, or even a stuffed animal. If he did that, he could sign his own name on the form that parents usually signed stating that they read together.

The student is rebelling against a parent.

If a parent cares about a student’s grades and a student is trying to rebel, often a quick way to do so is to stop doing homework. This usually gets the parent’s attention quickly. This is particularly true in cases where parents are very demanding and very controlling. Sometimes, the only way an adolescent knows how to rebel is to refuse to do something. This causes grief for both parties. Guiding the parent and student to compromise can be successful.  Essentially, help them to negotiate trade. For example, if the student agrees to do homework each night when he chooses to do it, the parent gives up the demand that it be done immediately when the student gets home from school. Both parties can even sign a contract.

If you suspect a student is rebelling, see if you can find out why. That will also help you see possible solutions. Don’t hesitate to get help and support from a guidance counselor, instructional coach or administrator.

These are some of the most common reasons students don’t complete homework. There are undoubtedly many more possible reasons. Though you can’t control all things, you can try to identify why students aren’t doing the homework and then see if there are ways to fix the problem. If we keep our eye on the goal, which is learning, it is less likely that we will fall into the “blame and punish” game that many teachers engage in. Blaming and punishing don’t usually result in more learning!

What are some of the effective strategies you have used to increase homework completion? We would love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

Share this:

• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

October 3, 2022 at 11:41 pm

For me, I struggled to do homework as a child because my attention needs were not met. I had no friends in school and spent the whole day wishing to be with family who loved me, only to be forced into isolation again for an hour of homework that I couldn’t always do alone and made me feel inferior and hopeless about myself and the future. Meanwhile, everyone else, in my mind, was doing something fun together while that was happening and I felt like I was being punished.

In adulthood, work has taken the place of homework and I am even more unhappy, isolated and have no life outside work that makes up for it. Luckily, I am not the type to become addicted to substances.

So, don’t let you child’s fate be like mine. Make sure your child’s needs for love are met, and that way they will have the internal strength to do an unfun task, and each one thereafter.

October 5, 2022 at 2:59 pm

Hi Christine, Thank you for sharing your experiences. You are not alone in your struggles either as a child or now as an adult. I hope that you are getting help for your depression. You can get better! There are ways to shift your mindset and to discover ways to be happier. No one has a perfect life, but we can all find ways to enjoy life. I hope you can find someone to talk to who can help you through your struggles. You are worth it!

[…] you know that one of the top 10 reasons kids don’t do their homework is lack of an appropriate space to do assignments at […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Connect with us on Social Media!

Occasionally, posts on this site will contain affiliate links. We only write about or recommend products we truly like or use and would personally recommend to you. If you purchase a product through our link, we may receive a small percentage of the purchase amount. There is no additional cost to you. This allows us to pay for the costs of hosting this blog.

Additionally, we do collect a small amount of personal data so that we may create the best experience possible for our visitors. To learn more about how we collect this data please review our Privacy Policy .

Money + Investing

20 Reasons Why No One Is Interested in Working Anymore

Posted: May 17, 2024 | Last updated: May 17, 2024

The prevailing narrative suggesting that “no one wants to work anymore” has gained popularity in recent discussions, yet this simplification fails to capture the intricate and diverse reasons behind the shifts in work preferences and labor market behavior. Modern workers are exploring a landscape that has dramatically changed from that of past generations, driven by desires for a better work-life balance, meaningful engagement in their roles, advancements in technology, and the appeal of freelancing and gig economy opportunities. The rapid pace of recent economic developments has further underscored the significance of mental well-being, the feasibility of remote work, and the need for flexible working hours. Challenges such as insufficient wages, discrepancies between the skills workers have and those employers need, and evolving industry requirements add layers of complexity to the relationship between individuals and traditional employment models. A deeper understanding of these nuanced factors is essential for effectively meeting the changing needs and expectations of both workers and employers in the contemporary economic landscape.

Remote Work Preference

The pandemic has fundamentally altered the work environment, leading to a pronounced preference for remote work opportunities that offer greater flexibility and eliminate the need for commuting. This shift is driven not only by the convenience of working from home but also by the enhanced ability to balance work with personal life. Companies that provide options for remote work are discovering they have a competitive edge in attracting applicants in today’s job market.

In numerous sectors, wages have not kept pace with the escalating cost of living, rendering some positions less appealing to those in pursuit of financial security. This issue is especially acute in fields demanding specialized skills, where the anticipated remuneration surpasses what is currently provided. This hesitance to accept such positions underscores the urgency for adjustments in wages to align with living standards.

Desire for Autonomy

There is a growing trend among workers seeking greater autonomy in their jobs, with a strong preference for control over their tasks, schedules, and work environments. This desire for self-direction frequently clashes with conventional employment models, which typically place a higher emphasis on meeting the organization’s requirements rather than accommodating individual worker preferences. This inclination towards autonomy is shaping career decisions, leading an increasing number of individuals to search for positions that provide the flexibility to work in a manner that aligns with their personal lifestyles and enhances their productivity.

Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) Concerns

Today’s employees are increasingly attentive to the environmental and social footprint of their employers, frequently assessing job opportunities based on the company’s performance in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. This careful evaluation is part of a wider aspiration to effectuate positive societal change through professional endeavors, rendering organizations with robust ESG commitments more appealing to potential employees. As the urgency around environmental and social challenges intensifies, the significance of aligning one’s career with personal values is becoming more evident.

Lack of Meaningful Work

Many individuals are seeking employment that offers more than just financial compensation; they desire roles that provide a sense of purpose and a way to contribute to the greater good. This drive for meaningful work is leading people to contemplate career shifts or turn down offers that don’t resonate with their personal values or passions. Employers who can showcase the significance and societal contribution of their roles find themselves more attractive to this expanding portion of the job market.

Gig Economy and Freelancing

The allure of gig work and freelancing is growing, particularly among those who prioritize having control over their schedules and the nature of their work. This inclination is supported by digital platforms that simplify the process of finding freelance opportunities across diverse fields. This move towards gig employment indicates a significant departure from conventional employment paradigms, as a greater number of individuals now prefer the autonomy of freelancing over the stability offered by traditional full-time positions.

Automation and Technological Advances

Technological progress and automation are transforming the employment landscape, making certain jobs redundant while paving the way for new roles in burgeoning sectors. This shift necessitates that workers adapt by learning new skills, frequently resulting in a phase of transition and reconsideration of career trajectories. The unpredictability and constant demand for upskilling that come with automation may discourage people from entering or staying in specific industries.

Skills Mismatch

The job market is experiencing an increasing divide between the skills that job seekers have and the precise skills that employers are looking for, resulting in a skills mismatch. This issue is intensified by swift technological advancements and changing business requirements, which necessitate ongoing skill enhancement. Initiatives aimed at closing this skills gap, via education and training programs, are essential to ensure the workforce’s abilities are in step with the demands of the industry.

Entrepreneurship

The appeal of entrepreneurship, characterized by the prospect of autonomy and substantial financial gain, has encouraged a shift away from conventional career routes. The proliferation of digital resources and online platforms has reduced entry barriers, making it feasible for a wider range of people to launch their own ventures. This movement towards self-employment mirrors a wider aspiration for personal control over one’s professional journey and the opportunity to directly benefit from one’s efforts.

Shift in Generational Values

As younger generations join the workforce, they introduce distinct priorities, including a pronounced focus on company culture, the significance of work-life balance, and a preference for roles that contribute positively to society and the environment. These changing values are compelling organizations to reconsider their policies, benefits, and corporate responsibilities to ensure they attract and retain skilled employees. This evolving scenario highlights the imperative for businesses to adapt to the shifting expectations of their workforce.

Early Retirement

The pandemic has prompted a reevaluation of life priorities for many, with a significant number opting for early retirement after reviewing their financial positions and personal aspirations. This trend is contributing to a decrease in the available workforce, especially among seasoned professionals. The move towards early retirement highlights the critical role of financial planning and reflects a growing preference for a more balanced lifestyle that equally values both personal well-being and professional commitments.

Health Concerns

Ongoing health worries have led certain individuals to be cautious about re-entering traditional work settings that could heighten their exposure risk. This concern is especially pronounced among those with pre-existing health issues or individuals responsible for the care of susceptible family members. The pandemic has underscored the necessity for employers to emphasize health and safety protocols within the workplace to safeguard their staff.

Childcare and Eldercare Responsibilities

The scarcity of affordable and accessible childcare options, alongside the growing demands of eldercare, presents considerable obstacles for numerous working parents and caregivers. These caregiving responsibilities frequently necessitate flexible working conditions that are not universally offered, prompting some individuals to exit the workforce or transition to part-time roles. It’s vital to develop supportive policies and services for caregivers to facilitate their sustained engagement in the labor market.

Education and Training Opportunities

Individuals are increasingly taking time off from work to pursue higher education or specialized training, aiming to transition into more fulfilling or higher-paying roles. This trend is driven by the recognition that upskilling and reskilling are essential in a rapidly changing job market. Education and training opportunities are seen as investments in one’s career, offering long-term benefits over immediate employment.

Increased Unemployment Benefits

More and more individuals are choosing to take breaks from their careers to engage in higher education or specialized training, with the goal of shifting into roles that are either more satisfying or offer better pay. This trend is fueled by the understanding that acquiring new skills or enhancing existing ones is crucial in a job market that is evolving quickly. Viewing education and training as investments in one’s professional future, these opportunities are considered to provide greater long-term advantages compared to the immediate returns of staying in the current job.

Housing and Location Flexibility

Remote work capabilities have empowered many individuals to reside farther from urban hubs and traditional job markets, granting them enhanced flexibility in terms of housing and location. This development carries significant implications for local economies and the dispersal of skilled labor, possibly impacting the pool of available talent for roles requiring physical presence. The move towards remote work is altering the landscape of living and working preferences, creating novel prospects for both workers and businesses.

Immigration Restrictions

In several countries, stricter immigration regulations have diminished the pool of available labor, especially in sectors traditionally dependent on immigrant workers. These constraints may result in workforce shortages, affecting the broader economy and hindering businesses from functioning at optimal levels. The ongoing debate concerning immigration policies highlights its essential impact on labor market dynamics, emphasizing the necessity for measured strategies that accommodate the requirements of both national economies and the individuals within them.

Changing Industry Demands

As industries undergo transformation, the demand for labor shifts accordingly, creating shortages in certain domains while leading to surpluses in others. This dynamic is propelled by technological progress, changes in consumer preferences, and global economic trends. Both workers and employers must recognize and adjust to these shifts, which necessitates continuous learning and adaptability in career strategies. Embracing these changes is crucial for maintaining relevance and ensuring success in the evolving professional landscape.

Increased Demand for Work-Life Balance

Today’s workforce values work-life balance more than ever, actively seeking employment that offers flexible hours and remote work opportunities. This change highlights a growing recognition of the profound link between quality of life and job satisfaction. Businesses that acknowledge and support these priorities are better positioned to attract and retain skilled employees.

Burnout and Mental Health Awareness

As awareness around mental health rises, people are becoming more vigilant about avoiding roles that risk burnout. Stressful work settings, extended hours, and positions lacking emotional satisfaction can lead to mental fatigue. As a result, there’s a growing preference for jobs that nurture mental health and promote a more balanced approach to work and life.

As the work environment continues to transform, it’s evident that unraveling the varied and intricate causes behind shifting employment trends demands deliberate reflection and intervention from both policymakers and business executives. Adopting flexible approaches, nurturing workplaces that champion work-life harmony, and investing in skills development are critical steps in closing the gap between what the workforce anticipates and the current job market conditions. Acknowledging the significance of purposeful employment, equitable remuneration, and the transformative capacity of technology in redefining job roles is crucial for attracting and retaining skilled individuals. As we adjust to these changes, the future of work seems poised to better cater to the well-being and ambitions of employees. Ultimately, cultivating a more dynamic, inclusive, and satisfying work culture serves not only the interests of the workforce but also enhances the overall economy and societal well-being.

For the Latest Financial News, Headlines & Videos, head to Money + Investing

More for You

NFL quarterback’s wife knocks Harrison Butker’s divisive commencement speech

Ukraine launched what may be the biggest drone attack on Russia since the war started

The public colleges that are most worth the money, based on data

17 Jobs That Pay $25 an Hour to Work From Home

Why Are Bullies So Mean? A Psychology Expert Explains Their Harmful Behavior

Noodle Recall as Warning Issued to Four States

25 Iconic Female Heroes in Film and TV

Feud Ignites After Nevada Governor Sends Letter To Newsom About Gas Price Concerns

Connecticut Sun Coach Issues Blunt Response to Caitlin Clark's Early Struggles

Chiefs Cut Championship-Winning Running Back

Texas' labor market is booming. Here are the 26 highest-paying jobs in the Lone Star State.

Does red light therapy actually work? A dermatologist explains.

I'm a Parent and a Psychologist: Here Are 5 Signs of Low Self-Worth in Kids

11 Of The Coolest American Pony Cars Ever Built

Iran’s regime slated to execute innocent young Jew on Monday

New 'Dream Team'? USA basketball unveils 2024 Paris Olympics roster

'All they do is wreak chaos and havoc': Rep. Jasmine Crockett responds to MTG's insult

14 High-Paying Jobs for People Who Hate Office Environments

What Is The Minimum Wage In Each US State?

Young Sheldon’s Jim Parsons finale cameo changes the meaning of the entire series

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

How to Ask for the Feedback You Really Need

• Liane Davey

Three steps to move past generic, unhelpful conversations.

When we ask for feedback on our work, we often get poor-quality feedback that’s not useful or that makes us feel attacked or defensive. Part of the reason is in how we’re asking for feedback. Most requests are too generic, too open, and too late. The result is that you’re more likely to get a heap of opinion rather than a helping of insight. Instead of saying, “I’d love it if you could provide some feedback,” try setting the other person up to add more value by being more prescriptive about what you’re looking for. This article discusses a three step process for getting more constructive feedback that supports your growth, strengthens your relationships, and accelerates your career.

You’ve probably heard of “the gift of feedback,” but have you ever actually received it? When delivered well, the gift of feedback is candor, and it comes when someone exposes how your behavior affected their own thoughts and feelings — for example, “When you spoke over me, I felt like my perspective wasn’t valued.”

• LD Liane Davey is a team effectiveness advisor and professional speaker . She is the author of The Good Fight , You First , and co-author of Leadership Solutions . Share your comments and questions with her on Twitter at @LianeDavey .

Partner Center

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Study Suggests Genetics as a Cause, Not Just a Risk, for Some Alzheimer’s

People with two copies of the gene variant APOE4 are almost certain to get Alzheimer’s, say researchers, who proposed a framework under which such patients could be diagnosed years before symptoms.

By Pam Belluck

Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer’s that would mean that up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease.

Currently, the vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases do not have a clearly identified cause. The new designation, proposed in a study published Monday, could broaden the scope of efforts to develop treatments, including gene therapy, and affect the design of clinical trials.

It could also mean that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone could, if they chose, receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s before developing any symptoms of cognitive decline, although there currently are no treatments for people at that stage.

The new classification would make this type of Alzheimer’s one of the most common genetic disorders in the world, medical experts said.

“This reconceptualization that we’re proposing affects not a small minority of people,” said Dr. Juan Fortea, an author of the study and the director of the Sant Pau Memory Unit in Barcelona, Spain. “Sometimes we say that we don’t know the cause of Alzheimer’s disease,” but, he said, this would mean that about 15 to 20 percent of cases “can be tracked back to a cause, and the cause is in the genes.”

The idea involves a gene variant called APOE4. Scientists have long known that inheriting one copy of the variant increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, and that people with two copies, inherited from each parent, have vastly increased risk.

The new study , published in the journal Nature Medicine, analyzed data from over 500 people with two copies of APOE4, a significantly larger pool than in previous studies. The researchers found that almost all of those patients developed the biological pathology of Alzheimer’s, and the authors say that two copies of APOE4 should now be considered a cause of Alzheimer’s — not simply a risk factor.

The patients also developed Alzheimer’s pathology relatively young, the study found. By age 55, over 95 percent had biological markers associated with the disease. By 65, almost all had abnormal levels of a protein called amyloid that forms plaques in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. And many started developing symptoms of cognitive decline at age 65, younger than most people without the APOE4 variant.

“The critical thing is that these individuals are often symptomatic 10 years earlier than other forms of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist at Mass General Brigham in Boston and an author of the study.

She added, “By the time they are picked up and clinically diagnosed, because they’re often younger, they have more pathology.”

People with two copies, known as APOE4 homozygotes, make up 2 to 3 percent of the general population, but are an estimated 15 to 20 percent of people with Alzheimer’s dementia, experts said. People with one copy make up about 15 to 25 percent of the general population, and about 50 percent of Alzheimer’s dementia patients.

The most common variant is called APOE3, which seems to have a neutral effect on Alzheimer’s risk. About 75 percent of the general population has one copy of APOE3, and more than half of the general population has two copies.

Alzheimer’s experts not involved in the study said classifying the two-copy condition as genetically determined Alzheimer’s could have significant implications, including encouraging drug development beyond the field’s recent major focus on treatments that target and reduce amyloid.

Dr. Samuel Gandy, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Mount Sinai in New York, who was not involved in the study, said that patients with two copies of APOE4 faced much higher safety risks from anti-amyloid drugs.

When the Food and Drug Administration approved the anti-amyloid drug Leqembi last year, it required a black-box warning on the label saying that the medication can cause “serious and life-threatening events” such as swelling and bleeding in the brain, especially for people with two copies of APOE4. Some treatment centers decided not to offer Leqembi, an intravenous infusion, to such patients.

Dr. Gandy and other experts said that classifying these patients as having a distinct genetic form of Alzheimer’s would galvanize interest in developing drugs that are safe and effective for them and add urgency to current efforts to prevent cognitive decline in people who do not yet have symptoms.

“Rather than say we have nothing for you, let’s look for a trial,” Dr. Gandy said, adding that such patients should be included in trials at younger ages, given how early their pathology starts.

Besides trying to develop drugs, some researchers are exploring gene editing to transform APOE4 into a variant called APOE2, which appears to protect against Alzheimer’s. Another gene-therapy approach being studied involves injecting APOE2 into patients’ brains.

The new study had some limitations, including a lack of diversity that might make the findings less generalizable. Most patients in the study had European ancestry. While two copies of APOE4 also greatly increase Alzheimer’s risk in other ethnicities, the risk levels differ, said Dr. Michael Greicius, a neurologist at Stanford University School of Medicine who was not involved in the research.

“One important argument against their interpretation is that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in APOE4 homozygotes varies substantially across different genetic ancestries,” said Dr. Greicius, who cowrote a study that found that white people with two copies of APOE4 had 13 times the risk of white people with two copies of APOE3, while Black people with two copies of APOE4 had 6.5 times the risk of Black people with two copies of APOE3.

“This has critical implications when counseling patients about their ancestry-informed genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” he said, “and it also speaks to some yet-to-be-discovered genetics and biology that presumably drive this massive difference in risk.”

Under the current genetic understanding of Alzheimer’s, less than 2 percent of cases are considered genetically caused. Some of those patients inherited a mutation in one of three genes and can develop symptoms as early as their 30s or 40s. Others are people with Down syndrome, who have three copies of a chromosome containing a protein that often leads to what is called Down syndrome-associated Alzheimer’s disease .

Dr. Sperling said the genetic alterations in those cases are believed to fuel buildup of amyloid, while APOE4 is believed to interfere with clearing amyloid buildup.

Under the researchers’ proposal, having one copy of APOE4 would continue to be considered a risk factor, not enough to cause Alzheimer’s, Dr. Fortea said. It is unusual for diseases to follow that genetic pattern, called “semidominance,” with two copies of a variant causing the disease, but one copy only increasing risk, experts said.

The new recommendation will prompt questions about whether people should get tested to determine if they have the APOE4 variant.

Dr. Greicius said that until there were treatments for people with two copies of APOE4 or trials of therapies to prevent them from developing dementia, “My recommendation is if you don’t have symptoms, you should definitely not figure out your APOE status.”

He added, “It will only cause grief at this point.”

Finding ways to help these patients cannot come soon enough, Dr. Sperling said, adding, “These individuals are desperate, they’ve seen it in both of their parents often and really need therapies.”

Pam Belluck is a health and science reporter, covering a range of subjects, including reproductive health, long Covid, brain science, neurological disorders, mental health and genetics. More about Pam Belluck

The Fight Against Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, but much remains unknown about this daunting disease..

How is Alzheimer’s diagnosed? What causes Alzheimer’s? We answered some common questions .

A study suggests that genetics can be a cause of Alzheimer’s , not just a risk, raising the prospect of diagnosis years before symptoms appear.

Determining whether someone has Alzheimer’s usually requires an extended diagnostic process . But new criteria could lead to a diagnosis on the basis of a simple blood test .

The F.D.A. has given full approval to the Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi. Here is what to know about i t.

Alzheimer’s can make communicating difficult. We asked experts for tips on how to talk to someone with the disease .

Here’s why heat pumps are becoming more attractive to homeowners

Commitment to decarbonization, technology improvements, are some reasons for a sales boom..

If you’re considering a new heating and cooling system, you’ve likely come across heat pumps . They’ve been around for over a century, but in 2020, they officially surpassed gas furnaces in sales. Unlike furnaces, which rely on natural gas, propane gas or oil for heating and electricity for cooling, heat pumps are fully electric.

Heat pumps are attractive because they are very energy efficient and environmentally friendly; they don’t burn fossil fuels like natural gas. Heat pumps are seen as a big solution for reducing carbon emissions and studies show that heat pumps are a more environmentally friendly option for home heating. However, concerns about their performance in cold weather have held back some consumers. But that’s changing — thanks to new technology.

Learn more about how heat pump technology improvements are making these units more attractive than ever to today’s consumer.

Why heat pumps

Generating about four times the amount of energy than it uses, a heat pump is more efficient than a standard gas furnace system and can even be more efficient than a high efficiency gas furnace And while coal-fired electrical power plants still operate today, new renewable energy sources like wind and solar are on the rise, making all-electric heating and cooling systems even more appealing to today’s eco-conscious consumers.

On top of that, federal tax credits of up to $2,000 for qualified heat pumps are another factor driving the popularity of heat pumps. When combined with other state and local incentives, homeowners can save even more.

“Heat pumps are certainly more energy efficient than standard gas furnaces, and they can help you dramatically reduce your power bill — in some cases, $500 or more a year,” said Cary Reed, a Service Experts heating and cooling pro.

How it works

During colder months, heat pumps use heat from the outside air to warm a home by transferring it through coils. The heat is released indoors, increasing the home’s temperature. The star of the show here is the refrigerant, which changes from liquid to gas, and then back to liquid, as it gathers and releases heat along the way.

In warmer weather, the process reverses. Heat is removed from the inside of the home and transferred outside through the refrigerant coils.

This is how the cycle works:

• In colder weather, a coil heat exchanger combined with a metering device transfers heat from the outside air to the liquid refrigerant inside the coil. Even at low outdoor temperatures, there is still heat available in the outside air.  As the heat transfers to the refrigerant, it increases its temperature to its boiling point and changes it from a liquid to a gas.
• Next, a compressor pumps the gas refrigerant throughout the system, increasing the pressure of the gas where the heat is released into the home by a fan or blower. As the heat is released, the refrigerant becomes a liquid again. The process continues until the home’s thermostat is satisfied.
• A reversing valve is used to reverse the system from heating to cooling. The reversing valve is controlled by the thermostat and will reverse the cycle during the summer, moving heat from inside the home to the outside.

New technologies to the rescue

As the outdoor temperature decreases, heat pumps become less efficient and have less heating capacity. But manufacturers have implemented significant technological advancements to improve both the efficiency and capacity of heat pumps during cold weather.

For starters, all manufacturers are building systems to meet higher SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) rating standards. A higher SEER rating means lower operating costs for the system. While SEER primarily relates to cooling, the heat pump’s energy and cost savings during the summer increase significantly as minimum SEER standards rise.

When it comes to heating, many brands have developed systems capable of maintaining optimal efficiency and heating capacity even in temperatures as low as -15 degrees. This marks a dramatic 20- to 30-degrees improvement compared to what was typical just five years ago.

“How are they doing it? Manufacturers are using upgraded variable-speed compressors to adjust power rapidly while using less energy. Also, the heat exchangers inside modern units are much larger, which allows them to transfer heat around more effectively,” Reed explained. During extreme cold weather, the systems also utilize backup heaters that kick in below certain temperatures.

These advancements have been partly spurred by the Department of Energy’s Residential Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge , a government initiative aimed at accelerating heat pump innovation.

“The heat pump boom is a kind of positive perfect storm,” Reed said. “People want to do the right thing for the environment while saving money, and there are significant economic and government forces incentivizing it. We are even seeing some customers, who purchase a heat pump , will also upgrade their insulation to maximize their energy efficiency and savings.”

To learn more about heat pumps, visit Serviceexperts.com/heat-pumps . To schedule an appointment with a heating and cooling pro, visit the Service Experts Scheduling Page .

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

There's usually no need to panic when planes make emergency landings. Here's why

James Doubek

An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 taxis at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on March 25 in Seattle. Planes sometimes make emergency landings, but it's rare that anyone is seriously hurt. Stephen Brashear/Getty Images hide caption

An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 taxis at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on March 25 in Seattle. Planes sometimes make emergency landings, but it's rare that anyone is seriously hurt.

After a door plug blew out from an Alaska Airlines flight in January, igniting a scandal about safety practices at Boeing, some people have been nervous to fly.

It hasn't helped that news articles have spotlighted various emergency landings in the months since the incident.

But it's incredibly rare that anyone is killed or even injured on a commercial flight, especially a flight in the U.S., including on Boeing planes. Major U.S. airlines are in the midst of a remarkable safety streak, with none of them having a fatal crash in the U.S. in 15 years.

The FAA handles 45,000 flights per day with 2.9 million passengers aboard. Data from the National Transportation Safety Board shows only a handful of problems on commercial passenger jets happen in any given month.

It might be unnerving to read that a plane had to make an emergency landing , but it doesn't alarm pilots.

"Things that appear really dramatic to non-aviation folks, in a lot of ways, really are not," says Shawn Pruchnicki, who is a professor at The Ohio State University in aviation and a former commercial pilot.

Airlines are ordered to give full refunds instead of vouchers and to stop hiding fees

Here are a few things to know about plane safety and what happens when things do go wrong.

Planes are made with multiples of the important parts

In March, a plane leaving San Francisco lost a wheel after taking off. The plane was diverted to Los Angeles, where it landed safely.

That safe landing was possible because there are at least two wheels on every part of a landing gear, Pruchnicki says, in case one wheel falls or a tire goes flat.

With close calls mounting, the FAA will require more rest for air traffic controllers

It's called redundancy: having doubles or triples of critical systems in case one fails.

When it comes to the generators that create electricity for everything from reading lights to flight displays, "typically, for almost every commercial jet out there, there's three of them," Pruchnicki says.

There's redundancy in other crucial systems: the air data computers that generate numbers like airspeed and altitude, the hydraulic systems used to operate various parts of the plane, and the cabin pressurization systems that keep the air inside safe to breathe.

Most commercial passenger jets also have two engines and can operate for long distances with just one of them functioning.

Planes can even glide down with no engines working, most famously when Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River in 2009 after hitting a flock of geese. Everyone on board survived.

Pilots and crews train extensively to prepare for things going wrong

An EasyJet pilot trains in a flight simulator at the EasyJet CAE center near the Milan Malpensa airport in 2023, in Lonate Pozzolo, Italy. Pilots and crews train for things going wrong. Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

An EasyJet pilot trains in a flight simulator at the EasyJet CAE center near the Milan Malpensa airport in 2023, in Lonate Pozzolo, Italy. Pilots and crews train for things going wrong.

In flight simulators, pilots practice how to handle scenarios like landing in low visibility, having to abort a landing, dealing with a fire on board, or working through various equipment failures.

Situations like flying a plane with one engine are practiced in simulators all the time, says Douglas Boyd, an aviation research professor who directs a fear-of-flying program in Houston. "They're not really raising the heart rate of the pilot because they're so routine," he says, though they still require the pilot to divert the plane and land early.

And when it comes to flight attendants, "there's a big misconception" that their main job is serving drinks or helping passengers find their seats, says Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. Instead, "the primary role of flight attendants is safety," he told NPR in March .

Cabin crews are trained to lead evacuations in emergencies; United Airlines notes in a job description that flight attendants need to be able to operate oxygen systems, aircraft doors, evacuation slides, fire extinguishers, life rafts and communications and lighting systems.

Emergency landings aren't necessarily "emergencies"

A person walks past a Boeing 737 Max 8 for United Airlines parked at Renton Municipal Airport adjacent to Boeing's factory in Renton, Wash., on Jan. 25. Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A person walks past a Boeing 737 Max 8 for United Airlines parked at Renton Municipal Airport adjacent to Boeing's factory in Renton, Wash., on Jan. 25.

The phrase "emergency landing" is a bit of a misnomer used by the media, pilots say. They're more often called "diversions" by pilots when the plane is forced to land somewhere other than the intended destination. It's usually not because the plane is in immediate danger.

"I have made numerous diversionary landings where I wasn't concerned about the safety of the airplane at all," says John Cox, a longtime pilot and founder of the aviation consulting group Safety Operating Systems.

For example, news articles have covered multiple incidents of planes diverting due to cracked windshields.

Cox says a crack would usually happen just in the inner layer of the windshield, which has two layers of glass as well as a layer of plastic. The flight crew will want to lower altitude to ease pressure on the windshield, affecting fuel calculations, and the cracked windshield could alter a pilot's view. So "you don't really want to do that for a longer period of time than is necessary," he says.

Still, in these situations, "it's not a safety issue. I'm just going to take action to prevent a safety issue from arising," Cox says.

If pilots do declare an emergency, Pruchnicki says, they get to skip the queue to land and get to choose which runway to land on.

Also, declaring an emergency frees pilots from following "hundreds and hundreds of tiny little regulations," he adds — including speed limits.

"A lot of the reasons why we declare an emergency is because it just gives us all this freedom to deal with whatever problem we're dealing with and not have to worry about all these other things," Pruchnicki says.

Injuries from turbulence are more common, but still rare

An American Airlines jet flies over Nickerson Beach Park on Sept. 4, 2023, in Lido Beach, N.Y. Passengers should pay attention when the captain warns about turbulence. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images hide caption

An American Airlines jet flies over Nickerson Beach Park on Sept. 4, 2023, in Lido Beach, N.Y. Passengers should pay attention when the captain warns about turbulence.

If you have to worry about something (though you don't really have to worry), pay attention when the captain warns about turbulence.

More than a third of commercial airline accidents involving a serious injury are caused by turbulence, according to a 2021 NTSB report.

"That's a leading cause for diversions, because if I've got injured people in the back, we're going to divert," Cox says. "I want to get them medical attention."

How dangerous is turbulence on airplanes? Here's what you need to know

Still, injuries from turbulence are rare and most often happen to flight attendants, who aren't able to stay buckled in their seats all the time. In 2022, just four passengers and 13 crew members were seriously injured by turbulence, according to FAA data . (Airlines aren't required to report more minor injuries.)

The best thing you can do as a passenger, as you are constantly reminded: Keep your seat belt fastened.

"The system is still safe"

The spotlight on Boeing has some people nervous about their planes. There are legitimate concerns about Boeing's quality control and that of its subcontractors.

But Cox, for one, has no qualms about flying on Boeing or other commercial planes. There has not been a fatal plane crash involving a major American airline in the U.S. since 2009 (though in one notable case, one person was killed on a Southwest Airlines flight in 2018 ). For comparison, more than 40,000 people are killed on U.S. roads each year.

"The system is still safe," Cox says. "Does that mean that we that we should lose our focus on safety? Absolutely not. Aviation did not get to be the safest form of transportation ever designed by humankind by not continuing the quest for better quality. And that needs to continue."