Homework: What is it Good For?

When our son was a high school junior, his pre-calc teacher assigned graded midterm review homework: Recopy all math notes from the first half of the school year. It was an arduous assignment. There were a lot of notes. A lot. He hated it and moaned piteously–and audibly– for three nights. He had to squeeze it in between play practice and indoor soccer. Some parents called guidance to complain. We did not.

Homework is a topic of cliched debate. Too much is not enough. Less is more. Take the work out of home. Sometimes the dog eats it. On occasion, mom is still working on it when it’s due.

In the district where I taught middle school English, parents hated homework as much–maybe even more– than their kids did. Do the math people: after hockey, stage crew, gymnastics, cooking class, travel lacrosse and tennis, there simply isn’t time for homework. It’s simple addition. Eventually, administrators reduced 7th and 8th grade homework to a ten-minute fill-in-the blank. Doable but meaningless.

Thoughtful homework, though, is a win-win. Independent skills practice. Content review. When kids work through what they have heard and done in class, it’s no surprise that they own the material. There is more to build on when students sit for tests if they have been completing meaningful homework assignments through the unit. Similarly, learning to write clearly doesn’t happen in the 45-minute bubble of in-class instruction. Written communication requires practice, lots of guided, structured practice. Homework is a safe space to meld structure, language use and supported content into cohesive analysis.

But Wait…There’s More

Homework supports soft skills like time management and personal organization. With adult support, kids learn to self-monitor. What do they need to pack at the end of school day? What happens if they forget required materials? Any after school commitments? In middle school, where kids should make age-appropriate mistakes, homework helps students discover that occasionally missing an assignment isn’t catastrophic. They review the causes of the American Civil War and find ways to talk to teachers when a deadline looms or the dog is hungry. They develop resilience. These soft skills become necessities when kids move into more challenging academic arenas and/or the workplace.

Kids Aren’t Out There All Alone

Parents can help. Creating a weekly calendar that shows after school activities can give kids a visual reminder of upcoming commitments. Giving kids the structure of a time and place for homework is important. Suggesting solutions when kids forget assignments at school or when they simply run out of time develops confidence and coping skills. Reminding kids that even the best among us sometimes mismanage time is reassuring. And honestly, teachers aren’t ice cold. Most of us recognize kids are learning and we are part of the process; process is the key word here.

By completing his pre-calc homework, our son learned more about getting work done even when that work seems impossible than he did about math. That graded high school review homework was a gift that keeps on giving even as he is raising a child of his own.

What Should We Tell the Kids

During the best literature lessons I facilitated, kids engaged with texts that asked a lot of them. Texts like The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor, Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, The Pearl by John Steinbeck.

Tough stuff. History. Morality. Humanity. Survival. What ensues is messy and people do not always live happily ever after.

Tough stuff, but guess what? Kids are always up to the challenge. Always. Unlike adults, kids don’t avert their eyes; they tackle injustice, greed, hatred head-on with a ferocity that only youth can bring. They ask the questions, pass the judgments.

Through the characters in literature, students are able to confront the harsh truth that mankind isn’t necessarily kind. Simultaneously, they may find in the pages of a book people with strength and courage to do what’s right.

And in books, kids can find some version of themselves which can inspire hope and peace as they grapple with where they will go and how to get there.

And now many of these texts are on lists, not reading lists but banned book lists. And even in cases where books aren’t outright banned–like Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb— access to these texts is so restrictive that a ban is defacto.

And when we hear that those proposing these limitations have not even read the full texts in question, it does make you wonder. Why?

Proponents claim–and perhaps believe this– they are acting on behalf of kids and families, protecting children from literature that might be difficult or disturbing. These motives, while misguided, seem noble enough. No one wants to see kids hurt. Over protection, though, may in itself be harmful. Recent studies tie excessive caution to rising rates of anxiety among kids. The NYT piece linked below suggests that, in order to stem anxiety among kids, we allow them to do more rather than less. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/opinion/anxiety-depression-teens.html

Not to mention this simple fact: kids aren’t stupid; they know when we are lying to them.

And this brings us to the reality of the book banning movement. Who’s surprised that the specter of politics lurks here? Wanna-be office holders toss a few more volumes into the book bonfire in the expectation of currying favor among the fearful or the righteous or the angry or the ________________ (fill in the blank).

Are there books that are clearly inappropriate for every kid at every age? Of course. No one denies that. But removing books from library shelves and from carefully curated grade level reading experiences amounts to wholesale book banning. We know–because we have read about it in books–that good things do not happen in societies that have done this.

Literature gives kids a safe place to take on challenges. As outsiders (apologies to S.E. Hinton), they are free to judge, to get mad, to cry, to hope. They are free to do the right thing even when the characters won’t. One of the first whole class reads kids and I shared when I taught middle school was The Pearl. Among my students were a couple of kids coping with very difficult circumstances, kids who knew that things that eighth graders shouldn’t know. One of these kids read ahead and as we were getting to the part of the novella where the greedy doctor is about to administer a substance to the baby designed to sicken him, she stood up and shouted, “Don’t let that doctor touch the baby! Don’t let that doctor touch the baby!” Kids know what’s right.

It’s a lot harder to indoctrinate kids than book banners would have us believe. Meeting characters who have faced inhumanity– and those who, like the evil doctor in The Pearl, commit heinous crimes–gives kids the chance to ask themselves what they would do. We say we want to instill kindness and honesty and empathy. Here’s our chance.

And I would add that literary characters are far less scary than real people in power in public life whose actions are neither genuine nor kind.