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Students' workload should accommodate their home lives

September 21, 2016
At Peachtown, we pride ourselves on teaching our students to be critical thinkers, and we try to practice what we preach. So, as we began a series of meetings to review our philosophical and pedagogical standards, we had to take a long critical look at the status quo. The first tough topic we tackled was homework.
Homework in American education is ubiquitous. However, Peachtown has long eschewed homework in the Lower Classroom and attempted to minimize homework in the early years in the Upper Classroom, but fairly significant loads of homework were assigned in the middle school years.
A recent movement among progressive schools promotes the elimination or drastic reduction in homework in pre-high school years. Alfie Kohn’s book "The Homework Myth" provides a sweeping overview of studies on the efficacy of homework and its consequences for students and families. Kohn declares that homework does little or nothing to improve outcomes in elementary school and may, in fact, have the opposite effect. The case is only slightly less compelling for middle school students. Kohn also condemns the extent to which homework interferes with or completely precludes quality family time. In too many households, school nights are at worst one long argument, and at best a long evening and a short night of sleep. Since Peachtown has a four-day school week, children are in school nearly eight hours per day. It is a day crammed with learning, physical activity and challenge. Why then should they go home and immediately be set back to work with tedious paper work?
A big factor in tackling this topic is the application of a little empathy. Most adults work an eight-hour day and come home looking for a little relaxation. Perhaps they have civic or volunteer obligations that take them out in the evening, but these are matters of choice — and after all, they are adults! And, let’s not forget that most parents are also encouraging their children to be involved in extracurricular sports, music, dance or gymnastic classes as well.
While a high school student might be able to manage this kind of schedule, it is just too much for middle school students, who are navigating one of the most challenging times in their lives. Having some time just to be a family and enjoy each other’s company for a few hours every evening has benefits that outweigh worksheets.
At Peachtown, we began by redefining what we call homework and its more meaningful counterpart. Traditional homework is defined as routine, class-wide assignments to be completed at a specified time with a predictable and quantifiable outcome. This type of work will never be assigned in grades pre-K through five and will only be assigned to students in grades six through eight as an exception, when students feel the need to catch up or choose to continue their studies at home.
Work that will be assigned to middle school students will be project-based work or topical studies: research and project-designs to explore at home. These assignments will be tailored to the individual and of intrinsic value to each student. At every juncture, individual exploration of topics of interest will be encouraged. Lower classroom students may also have very occasional simple projects of this sort.
Due to the special nature of reading, and our commitment to nurturing life-long reading, the reading of fiction is recognized as an exception to the “no-homework” policy. Nonetheless, special project work and fiction reading will be balanced, to retain respect for after-hours family and student time.
Committing to this policy requires teachers to tighten up their lessons, design their projects with more forethought and generally take all the slack (but not the fun) out of the school day. The expectation is to teach students good study habits, time management and a sense of responsibility at school, and to give families a little more freedom to shape their home life.
Everyone deserves a little downtime, and for students struggling with their academics, I suspect that truancy rates would drop precipitously if they could come to school rested and relaxed, without incomplete work looming on their conscience and a failure already built into their day.
As adults, we take on jobs that may require us to work long hours, but if we are fortunate, those extra hours of work are meaningful and rewarding. Let’s allow our children to be children just a little longer, make their school days more meaningful, and let families have a night off.
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