Requiring homework on a consistent basis is not an evidence-based practice and actually introduces worse outcomes for kids whose parents/guardians are less present, which disproportionately affects poor kids and kids of color.
Why do we do it? Because there are some parents (you know the ones) who will pester the school and lobby for dropping their funding if they don’t see consistent tangible output from their students. If the kids aren’t coming home with half a dozen papers each day and a bag of books, how can we verify that the teachers aren’t just sitting around on their phones all day not doing shit and collecting a paycheck WITH OUR TAX DOLLARSSSSS?!!!?!?!
So, homework largely serves as busy work to signal to parents that teachers are doing things. And the system is designed for parents to actively encourage and participate in the development of the skills required to regularly complete homework independently by high school. Kids whose parents have less free time are inherently disadvantaged, often labeled as bad kids or lazy early on, and can have a seat on the prison train before they’ve entered middle school. It also harms kids’ self esteem and sets an unhealthy precedent for expectations around work-life balance.
There isn’t a single thing that homework accomplishes by accident which couldn’t be accomplished better on purpose via other methods. Fuck homework.
idk, I feel like homework helps me understand things, get me ready, etc. Practice helps, yk? I feel we’re a bit overcorrecting in terms of opposing everything and absolutely everything that exists in capitalism. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Well in regards to homework the science is clear. If you wanna practice you don’t need homework. This is not a solely leftist position.
I have yet to see a study which shows consistent benefits of homework.
https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/studie-der-universitaet-dresden-hausaufgaben-bringen-nichts-a-532362.html
Refers a now 15 year old study in which there was no effect on grades shown by homework. Homework is more a disciplinary element to filter and out select pupils of lower classes and without the means for private teaching or tutoring. Of course some practice (remember kids do work 30-45 hour weeks anyhow) can help, but actually only if you understood what is going on. Extra material isn’t homework either and that is something you might’ve liked.
Hexbears please stop linking news articles that “reference” studies for which are not actually linked in the article. Anyways do you know of any studies that have explored the 2nd, 3rd or 4th order effects of removing homework from schools? If that has not yet occurred (and I’m certainly not aware of any) then why would you even remotely want to support this as a policy position without pushing for that study first? Because it is definitely possible that removing homework “erodes” the knowledge base of our teachers over multiple generations and gradually erodes our understanding of the topics we wish to teach. We have seen that very dynamic play out throughout history before. It certainly merits further examination and a deeper study of the topic, however.
Removing homework will result in societal…
degendegradation?No one is coming for your homework. Why is the default position considered to be “homework good”?
I don’t really know how I feel about this personally. Isn’t it possible homework is primarily a coercive measure to make children learn in a society that doesn’t care about personal improvement and collective self-actualization and only seeks to exploit them?
Well I believe that the default position is considered to be “homework good” for the same reason that the default position of many things is the status quo. It “works well enough right now” for the purpose that it is purported to serve and any improvements should come with studies that support that it is better with good methodology and examining the impact over multiple generations (in my opinion with regards to education).
That being said it certainly is possible that that is the case. Even more so I’d say that history likely supports that idea. But could it not be that and still be beneficial to the education of children in regards to the knowledge that we as a society are determining is important to pass on to our children? Further, if that doesn’t sit well with you, then could homework be reformed to not be primarily a coercive measure to make children learn in a society that doesn’t care about personal improvement and collective self-actualization and only seeks to exploit them? And if so wouldn’t that be a more fruitful pursuit than running to the support of a policy position over articles in the German equivalent of Vox news, that aren’t peer reviewed, and which hasn’t examined the social impact over generations of time to show that it will be a net-neutral in regards to our education?
Is it working well enough? Maybe by the metrics of standardized testing but my understanding is that even those aren’t showing too great. This entire educational system including homework, the “banking model of education”, is founded upon the idea that we can just force people to learn for ~10-20 years and then they’re good for the rest of their life when we should be restructuring society to provide the conditions for enthusiastic, life-long learning.
Capitalism is working well enough by its standards, as in providing shareholder value and innovating or whatever. There’s many studies “proving” capitalism is the best system. Just because it’s in a study doesn’t mean it isn’t effected by the whole socio-political-economic context in which the study takes place. I don’t think there’s been any studies looking at the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th order effects of socialism but that didn’t dissuade you.
I think you might be right in that homework does serve a purpose under this system in forcing compliance with this model of education, so maybe it is beneficial for learning. I don’t think you can take the coercion out of homework by reform under this system but I think we should try to resolve the contradiction between home and school in some way. Maybe homework has to stick around… for now? Maybe. That being said I think we should definitely be reducing its use where we can.
Yeah I think that this is a good point and I really needed to think about this when you pointed it out. I think for me at least there doesn’t seem to be a way to even really “study” this though. Plus I agree that anything that we would think would make progress for kids and their education should be investigated, but ultimately even if socialism fails, we will just simply move past that with whatever would come after it. However if we lose tons of knowledge on something that we could actually study before implementing… I guess I just see it as completely avoidable as opposed to knowing that socialism with always be smothered in the crib by capitalists and thus cannot be put under rigorous scrutiny to be judged on its merits until capitalism dies.
Super agree with this. I think there are lots of things we could be doing better, and all of them deserve to be looked at.
I definitely agree with you that we should carefully consider next steps before we take any action, anti-homework aktion or not. I think education reform/restructuring will end up being a core component of the socialist programs of the next world-historical revolutions.
And I do think we can study it and determine if it’s a good idea. We just have to take a class-based perspective instead of giving into the usual technocratic, “objective” metrics of how well students are doing (standardized testing, job placement, rates of crime or “behavioral issues”, etc). With the bourgeois state in control of education it will always prioritize the interests of the ruling class over the interests of students and teachers. Thanks for the discussion, I’ve been really thinking about this stuff too. I think homework (in the sense of learning being done outside of a classroom) isn’t inherently a bad idea but we do need an alternative to the way it’s currently practiced.
Why not provide evidence that homework is helpful to understand material for kids who already don’t get the material?
Well there are a couple reason why I don’t need to provide that evidence
Offering up my thoughts however, I’d also like to just mention that I think that isolating one aspect of the education process and assessing its value solely by that aspect is both lacking in a dialectical analysis and also deeply idealist due to the manner in which the advocates are discussing the issue (as a sole atomic item of consideration, without regard for the manner in which this issue is connected to other issues), so even if I could find such studies which support or deconstruct the position you are asking me to find studies for I would still have my criticisms of the deeply liberal way that these studies are conducted and so I wouldn’t include them in my response because I wouldn’t link to studies for which I disagree with their methodology even if it supports that.
Shouldn’t we try to isolate variables like this?
I agree that ultimately we need a comprehensive approach, but studying each variable in turn seems like an appropriate start.
Yeah we definitely should isolate variables but you’ve nailed it one the head, once that is done we look at each one in concert with all the other social factors and figure it out comprehensively. Sorry to reply by basically just saying “yeah”
Practice is cool and good. Kids can and should practice skills outside of the paradigm of assigned and graded homework.
But will they? I believe that grading is awful and punishing kids for not doing homework shouldn’t happen (I didn’t do most hw as a teen so I get it); But as someone who is currently studying to be a maths teacher I find it pretty hard to work simultaniously with the beliefs that:
Pratice and excercises are demonstratively good for learning;
Kids these days are expected to learn a lot and class time simply isn’t enough for that;
HW sucks, it demmotivates kids and most of the time parents/ older siblings do most of the work;
but also a lot of kids, both from annecdotal evidence and actual research, wouldn’t take their time to pratice what they have learned out of their own will, especially if it’s an area they have low interest in.
The most obvious answer is that the current school system is awful and designed by capitalism to create workers at a steady rate, but even if we demolish the capitalist mode of production and renew the education system some of this problems seem very intrinsic to me. Do you (or any other comrade for that matter) have a good book/reference to study if my view is wrong?
i’ve learned things in pursuit of a hobby that other people probably learn in school. I don’t think the tired “when will we ever use this” is a reasonable sentiment, but i’d have certainly learned trigonometry better if I was physically building something at the time and could directly apply it to something other than “at least math problems are less boring than this english novel”
Whoah adding “grading” in there out of no where does a ton of heavy lifting. No one was arguing that homework needs to be graded.
Practice is good. Assigning it is good. Asking students to finish it at home if they don’t have time to finish it in class is also good. That is what homework can be, assessment practice is completely separate from that.
Does “assignment” not imply some kind of coercive measure to make someone carry it out? Like grading?
I can probably be a little more clear. Grading homework is actually bad practice. Finishing your practice isn’t an expression of learning, what you can do after you’ve finished practicing is. Attaching marks to homework just incentivizes cheating, rewards students who have good executive function, amd/or calm households with rich parents, and/or tutors.
Not to mention you shouldn’t be marking practice because that’s where you’re supposed to be making your mistakes.
No. (I’m a teacher, the answer is no.)
It’s optional? I genuinely don’t understand what you mean.
I mean, it’s optional in all cases, whether homework is graded or not. You can opt to do it or not do it.
I can also opt to leave my voluntary contract with my employer (quit my job) but there are very negative consequences to that. Everything is optional unless you consider the coercive forces at play. No one wants to fail classes, so sometimes people with the adequate attentional control can force themselves to do homework.
So I’m not sure what you’re saying. If you don’t do enough practice to pass a class you might not pass it yes that’s true. You can choose to view that as coercive if you want, but if you take that to its logical extension then there are no standards for anything anymore.
In college and a lot of grad programs you have “homework” that is assigned, but your grade is based solely on tests/projects/participation.
True. I was more referring to the kind of rote, repetitive assigned tasks (“worksheets”) that is seen most often in primary and secondary schooling.