The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing

We live in an achievement driven culture that is so obsessed with success we often don't question the value of those things we do to reach them. Alife Kohn's book The Homework Myth takes us down the rabbit hole showing us the flawed assumptions and conlcusions of numberous studies and how they shape school policy teaaching children not to love learning but to hate it. We categorize, grade and put our children into slots using homework, "standardized testing" and other devices that often are meaningless measures of true intelligence or success. As Kohn quotes one writer, grades are "an inadquate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined mastery of anunknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material". Got that? In other words, grades are as subjective and uninformative as can be. The same can be said for homework and how it adds to our children's understanding of the material. Kohn takes apart multiple studies that have been done to support the concept of homework and discovers that these flawed studies were designed to prove their point rather than find out the true meaning and understanding of homework in our children's ability to learn. Kohn suggests that a placebo like effect is seen in studies designed to evaluate the effectiveness of homework and he has a valid point. He points out the flawed thinking of teachers and school districts believing that homework correlates to academic benefit. There's no clear cut evidence of this. He also looks at the detrimental effect that homework has on family life, social interaction and questions the nonacademic benefits of the homework "system". He shows why homework persists based on miconceptions about how people learn, competitiveness and an essential distrust of children and how they spent their time (something you'll also find in the business world which is why "busy work" is assgined as well despite the fact that it burns out employees and makes them not enjoy the work they do. In a sense, I suppose you could argue that homework prepares children for the pointlessness of the work world--i.e., "better get used to it" as Kohn refers to the pointless tasks we'll be asked to do later in life). Kohn also takes on the myths of testing (since homework often is preparation for testing particularly to make sure that children do well on standardized testing). We find out nothing about whether a child's learning has improved or deepened but instead how well a child can memorize by rote. Every hour spent making sure that children do well on standardized testing is time taken away from true learning (you're teaching them to take the test well not to develop critical thinking skills). For example, he looks at standarized testing and discovers that 1) Timed tests put a premuium not on thoughtfulness but on speed. 2) Tests that focus on "basic skills" are geared towards cramming facts that are useless without the connection

This book has changed my life. I've shared it with dozens of friends and even got my husband to read it! It challenges the traditional reasons why children do so much homework. It asks parents and teachers to question meaningless homework. It asks us to also reconsider issues like rewards and punishments, traditional teaching, standardized tests, and grades. I've read four more of the author's books since starting with this one. It's a must for any parent of school-age children or for any teacher or administrator!

Growing up, I was a gifted student who absolutely hated school and teachers with the end result of becoming a proud college drop out. I picked this book up to, frankly, justify my educational opinions and to perhaps collect ammunition for when my own daughter goes to school. That's not the book I got. I got an even better one. People seem to think this book is about how homework is bad for you. It's not. The premise of the book is that homework isn't good for you, an important distinction. This isn't a book about homework. This is a book about the homework myth - why we believe it, why we want to believe it, why we can't ignore it, and why we are controlled by it. When the author quotes Chomsky, you know the subject has moved beyond the usefulness of worksheets. This is a book essentially about faith. I may actually be doing a disservice to the book when I describe it that way, since I've made a polarizing connection with the material, but it's really what the book is about. When faced with the lack of evidence, why do we still choose to believe things? Like why does Harris Cooper, despite his own research either having nothing to say or even contradicting his opinion, still conclude that homework is good for you? He goes from point A to point C. This book is about that hidden point B. The first part of the book is basically tearing down a bunch of preconceived notions about homework. Rather than saying homework is bad, he spends considerable effort convincing us that there is no evidence that homework is good. To some people, that's not enough, but his point is, I think, that it's plenty enough to at least open a serious discussion on the matter. If a group of kids do just as well without homework as those who do, why then must we burden them, their parents, and their teachers on what is ultimately a time wasting effort? If the net effect is zero, then wouldn't that time be better spent on just about anything else? It's not that homework is bad, it's that it isn't good enough to justify itself. The second part of the book is where it gets interesting. The author then proceeds to examine the why of homework. Given the lack of measurable support in favor of homework, why do we still insist that it is a good thing? He tackles many subjects, from parental pressure, to common misconceptions, to political ideals, to the distrust of children. There is a lot of good commentary and insight here and I think he hits the nail on the head plenty. Ultimately, I think he fails to solve any of these problems, which may frustrate some readers, but his point was never to solve them. Exposing a hidden problem is simply the first step, and I see this book as the beginning of a discussion rather than the end of one. My daughter's homework free future is anything but secured, even in light of this book, but I feel more confident in my ability to affect it. The problem of homework no longer seems impenetrable and omnipotent, but petty and pitiable - something I c

In addition to this book, I read an interview with Mr. Kohn in Parent & Child Magazine, and I agree with his thesis one hundred percent. I have first-hand experience of homework ruining home life, exhausting children, eliminating the joy of childhood, ruling out extracurricular activities and down time, and occupying a child's every waking hour with school. As a child of a special-needs student, I have been in the situation in three different schools where I would have to re-teach the day's lessons before even starting homework, which would take twice as long for my son. There was no way out of this nightmare, other than removing my son from school and homeschooling him. I am not saying homeschooling is for everyone. But because my son is able to complete and comprehend his work during his school hours, he is now free in his non-school hours to participate in activities which are at least as educational as school. Playing with his younger siblings and learning to care for them; independent reading apart from school assignments; learning daily living skills and chores; participating in theater and martial arts; and spending time with family and friends, or alone. One of the problems with homework is, not every child is typical. What one child can complete in an hour could take the whole afternoon and evening for another, robbing them of life and making education a misery. When one teacher offered us the option of limiting homework to an hour, all this meant was that my son would be hopelessly behind his class, so it was really a non-option. My last point is: teachers, please give families AND kids some credit for making good, positive use of OUR time. Teachers are not the only people in a child's life with something valuable to offer them, and we do not need schools dictating how our children's, and therefore our family's, non-school hours are spent. To me, it doesn't matter how many research studies Mr. Kohn has done; there is more than one way to measure the quality of a child's education and of his life. My observations of the positive changes in my son's life since we said NO to homework tell me more than any studies ever could.

I didn't realize I got this book from a bookstore on the first day it was available. I've read half of it so far, and must say that Kohn makes some excellent points about how homework is something we don't consider doing without. Nor do we tend to consider whether or not it is even helpful. Thinking back on my experience as a student growing up, homework was just a chore I had to do. Of course it helped me remember the forgetable facts I was being tested on, but to justify assigning homework based on that is to assume memorizing forgetable facts is a productive and valuable experience. He brings up a valuable point that homework does not play upon any intrinsic desire to learn something but is just more forced learning that can even make students hate certain subjects or even learning in general. If only teachers knew how much making me read a bunch of stories I didn't want to read caused me to hate literature. If only teachers knew how much all the performance-based math homework and testing made me hate mathematics when I may have loved learning it with a focus on understanding the concepts involved and possibly considering how it could be applied to something practical. All I got was math homework and grading from math teachers Although this book is good, I would recommend reading Kohn's What Does It Mean to be Well Educated first to get a good idea of his perspective on education in general. Kohn displays his brilliance and revolutionary thinking in 18 concise essays that should be seriously considered by students and teachers alike. There are two things Kohn has not mentioned so far. First, sometimes students do homework at school. I don't mean during lunch or recess or other non-instructional times, but during classes so they don't have to do it at home. Second, he never referred to sibling rivalry/jealousy involving homework. It was quite a negative experience to know my brother was free to play Nintendo or do other enjoyable activities while I was stuck with significantly more homework than him. The previous review mentioned that Kohn's theories dominated public schools, but that is FAR from the truth. My high school experience did not involve much homework, except in my honors classes. Even if that's a standard high school experience, that would only be consistent with ONE of Kohn's theories although it may not even be based on Kohn's concepts but for other reasons. In conclusion, even if you don't agree with what Kohn says, he presents questions to you about education that MUST be considered if you want to be a powerful and effective teacher or if you want your child to grow up enjoying learning and not just going through the motions of our current school system motivated simply by making grades and the unjustified rewards and consequences tied to them.