Is Homework a Waste of YOUR Time?
© 2004 Laurie A. Couture, M.Ed., LMHC

How many kids actually enjoy homework? Why do most kids dread homework to the point where each night there is a struggle with parents over whether or not it is done, sometimes ending in tears, anger, fighting and punishment?

Kids are in school for seven hours per day…

Think of how much of your time and your life is consumed and taken up by school: Many children are placed in preschool at three years old! From age three on, they are confined to school until the age of 18 when they graduate. School eats up seven hours of every school kid’s weekday, sometimes more if a kid has detention or is into extra curricular activities! Add to that the hours in the morning it takes a kid to get ready for school and the hours after school that it takes to get home. That now adds up, for some kids, to nine hours per day!

School is in session five days per week, for 180 days per year. So, seven hours per day devoted to school, five days per week is 35 hours per week! That is almost equivalent to an adult’s work week! Multiply that by a 30-day month and school has 210 hours of your time per month!

And we haven’t even added in homework yet!

Homework for kindergartners and first graders?

When I was in first grade in 1981, we occasionally had fun things sent home from school such as instructions to cut out things in a magazine that were various shades of the color blue or red or yellow, or draw several animals and objects that started with a letter of the alphabet. (I preferred to wait until bedtime to tell my parents about these assignments, so I could stay up later!) Then, we made a book in class out of our projects. Now, in 2004, I am mortified at the expectations I see placed on the kids I work with who are as young as five: They are expected to do ½ hour to an hour’s worth of math and reading homework nightly! As children advance to the next grade each year, another 15 minutes to ½ hour is added to their nightly homework load. Children who are unmotivated, or have trouble with the work can take as long as three hours to all night to finish!

Back To Top  |  Youth Rights Homepage

So, how much precious time is lost each day doing homework?

We already figured out that you lose about nine hours per day getting ready for school, going to school and getting home- more if you have to stay after school. Most kids get home from school between 2:45 and 4:00, depending on what time school starts. Let’s average that to 3:30. If you get home from school at 3:30, and have homework, chores, supper, a job and night time wind-down rituals, you have very little time in between all of that to do some of the most important things a kid can do:

1. Pursuing your own interests and hobbies (art, video games, independent study, building things, writing, role playing, games, etc.)
2. Physical activities or sports (Riding bike, skateboarding, swimming, snowboarding, basketball, gymnastics, dance, etc.)
3. Spending time with family
4. Hanging out with friends
5. Spending time in solitude just thinking or inventing
6. Reading for yourself
7. Exploring and traveling (the woods, the pond, the ocean, the city, etc.)
8. Letting your curiosity run wild
9. Making up adventures

Kids don’t bother dream or play anymore…

Are you sick of adults that say that all kids ever do is spend all of their free time in front of the TV, the computer or the PS2? In talking to many kids of different ages, I have found that most kids are so exhausted when they come home from school that they can’t tolerate doing much else but vegging. Add homework to the already burnt-out kid, and you have a zombie by the end of the day! Most adults do not take any work home with them. When they get home, their time is their own. Yet, kids do not even own their time when they get home. I wonder if kids are so burnt out after a day of school and homework that it seems too hard for them to do anything else besides play video games, watch TV, chat with friends on-line, cause trouble in the community or smoke weed?

Back To Top  |  Youth Rights Homepage

What is the purpose of homework, anyway?

Teachers will tell you that homework helps kids put into practice what they’ve learned in school. However, the reality is that most homework is nothing but “busy-work”- that means that it is repetitive and a waste of time. For example, if you can learn a math problem by doing three problems, why do teachers force kids to do 20 or 50? If you can learn how to construct a sentence in French after writing out two, why does the teacher force you to write out the entire sentence ten times? If you can sum up a book in one page, why does the teacher expect you to write three drafts of five pages? In real life, this is not how adults learn. Adults learn by going out and doing things- hands on. Instead of having you read 20 pages about how the United States is a democracy, why not allow you to actually practice that by having a political debate in class? In truth, homework teaches very little, but frustrates a lot and eats up a lot of time.

Back To Top  |  Youth Rights Homepage

What can you do?

1. Get your hands on The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn. This can be ordered through www.Amazon.com or ordered through your local bookstore if you can’t find it at your library. This book tells kids how they can home school themselves and get the education that they want- spending their time doing worthwhile learning!
2. Talk to your parents about home schooling. Develop a plan in writing that you are willing to stick to and see if they will go for it.
3. Ask your parents to write a note to the teacher saying that you are only allowed to do ½ hour of homework per night due to family responsibilities.
4. Try to get all of your homework done during study halls, free periods and lunch time. You’ll have more free time later!
5. If your homework doesn’t count for a big portion of your grade, boycott homework and only do work at home for big projects or term papers that account for a big part of your grade.
6. Do homework only for the classes in which grades and credits are most important and for classes that you enjoy.
7. Ask your teacher if she/he will allow you to put together an independent study of your choice instead of the regularly assigned homework.
8. Use Cliff Notes for large reading projects or learn to speed read by skimming headings (you’ll need to learn that skill for college homework!).
9. Instead of reading 50 pages of your history textbook, ask if you could read books that aren’t textbooks- Textbooks are often biased and don’t present the whole truth about history and politics. A good place to start is A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, or Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen.
10. If you are in a situation where you cannot sacrifice your grade point average and your parents are unwilling to take your side, try to put homework into perspective: Your high school grades do not determine your career, nor how successful you will be as an adult.

Back To Top  |  Youth Rights Homepage