Elementary School Homework Studies

By | December 28, 2016

Jessica informed me that I rambled quite a bit on my last post about homework and wasn’t coherant enough.  She’s right.  I did ramble quite a bit but that’s only because this is an emotional subject for me.  I’m quite impassioned about it and its proving to be very difficult to be impartial and just look at the studies.  Last year we (Jessica mostly) had the homework fights, this year we started to and ended up where we are now.  I tend to ramble because I want to explain the basis of my position, and because I really don’t understand how the school system got to this point.  I’ve been having a hard time wrapping my head around how these policies came to be in the first place and how we let them get so far out of control.

I will also point out that after speaking with more of the parents in my son’s first grade class that the homework fights seem to be universal.  All of the parents I’ve talked to are having the same problems getting their kids to do homework.  There is fighting, screaming and crying coming from both the parents and the kids.  Everyone is tired and this greatly diminishes play time and family time.

That being said, in this post I’ve decided not to ramble (I know, too late) and just post some of the reference material I’ve been studying.

This list could go on and on, but suffice to say a lot of studies are being done now and deserve consideration by our schools and their administrators.  The status-quo doesn’t seem to be working anymore.

Lastly, here is a TEDx talk from Pasi Sahlberg, an educator from Finland.  Its not directly related to homework, but it speaks to education as a whole and how we’re doing it wrong here in the US but can’t seem to realize it.  Its worth the watch.

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