Reply to Atlantic piece: "My Daughter's Homework is Killing Me"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Whats interesting is the overwhelming number of posts here saying there's too much homework, which is pretty much what I hear from all parents.  So why is this happening?  Who is supporting it?[/quote]

There are some parents on this thread that don't think 3 hours is too much and they just think kids are busy on social media, exercise too much and spend too much time volunteering and that is the problem.

If they would just stop doing sports and helping others the hw problem will go away.[/quote]

I don't think three hours of homework is too much for a high school student.  If an elementary school student is getting that much homework, I would agree.

The research shows American students are spending more screen time and doing less work than ever before (the numbers on college students are staggering).  I am sympathetic to the poster whose kids are in public school and have homework in seven courses that is limiting them to an unhealthy amount of sleep -- that sounds terrible and perhaps is linked to the NCLB driven test frenzy?

However, as someone with kids in independent schools who taught in independent schools at the high school level a generation ago, I can tell you that the amount of homework does not appear to have increased.  Same general amount of reading assigned in the English classes (and if anything, shorter English papers), same general amount of math homework, etc.  What has increased is outside sports commitment (an athletic kid used to have his/her school team, now there is a club apparatus for almost all sports than can take up a tremendous amount of time, including on weekends); an increased anxiety about college admissions that appears to leave teenagers and parents thinking they need to be experts in a multiplicity of areas; and, yes, "screen time" -- just think honestly about how distracting the internet/cellphone/computer is for grown adults and then think back to what you would have done as a teenager with that magical device, the cell phone.

High school students who are able to use their time efficiently (and I'm not judging, I was a bit of a social gabber in high school myself) can generally knock off an hour or more of work during the school day and/or before school sports begin, and if they work efficiently at home and use the weekend to do some work (reading ahead for English and history, for example), there's no need for staying up to ungodly hours.  But yeah, high school kids are not always efficient, and they want to hang out or get a snack before practice, and they want to chill out on the weekend because they are tired out from an admittedly fast-paced week.  But, at least in the independent school world (can't speak to kids in public school carrying seven homework-assigning classes), to my relatively experienced eye  it's not the schools that have changed in terms of homeowrk, it's the additional demands and distractions that have been added to the kids' lives.[/quote]

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