Good news, kids. According to a information within the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), having too much homework may actually make you poor.
Seriously.
Gerald K. LeTendre, an education professor at Pennsylvania State University, he explains how homework can be economically stressful.
“If we step back from the heated debates about homework and look at how homework is used around the world, we find the highest homework loads are associated with countries that have lower incomes and higher social inequality.”
The study also found that homework has no correlation to “high academic success.” So just because one’s teacher assigns it, and the students follow the assignment through to completion, that isn’t an indicator as to if that student will do well or not.
Staying with that theme, the study shows that if kids receive too much homework, they become sleep deprived and stressed out.
What makes that information worse is that many of the students who may fall under that umbrella are just in elementary school.
In the piece “Why My Kids Aren’t Doing Their Homework Anymore,” blogger Elizabeth Coker Brandt (a parent and former college professor) talks about the emotional toll the overabundance of work takes on her kids.
“Study after study shows that homework in early grades is unnecessary and does not contribute to a child’s long-term academic success. Nor does it ‘teach responsibility’ at a young age; in fact, too much homework too early can backfire and create early burnout,” she writes.
Hopefully studies like this are taken seriously and more involved parents like Ms. Coker Brandt speak up. While it doesn’t advocate for doing away with homework, the study does defend the idea of lessening the homework burden that many children face. As teachers are required to impart more and more knowledge during limited hours, students are inevitably taking more work home – but it appears it may be to the students’ detriment.
If “less is more” means that America’s children will have brighter futures, then maybe we should take a hard look at how we may alter our dogmatic approach to education as a whole.
