The Truth About Homework

Homework continues to be assigned – in ever greater quantities – despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.

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Finally, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the widely accepted assumption that homework yields nonacademic benefits  for students of any age.  The idea that homework teaches good work habits or develops positive character traits (such as self-discipline and independence) could be described as an urban myth except for the fact that it’s taken seriously in suburban and rural areas, too.

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Carole Ames of Michigan State University points out that it isn’t “quantitative changes in behavior” – such as requiring students to spend more hours in front of books or worksheets – that help children learn better.  Rather, it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view themselves in relation to the task, engage in the process of learning, and then respond to the learning activities and situation.”  In turn, these attitudes and responses emerge from the way teachers think about learning and, as a result, how they organize their classrooms.  Assigning homework is unlikely to have a positive effect on  any of these variables.  We might say that education is less about how much the teacher covers than about what students can be helped to discover – and more time won’t help to bring about that shift.

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Alongside an overemphasis on time is the widely held belief that homework “reinforces” the skills that students have learned – or, rather, have been taught -- in class.  But what exactly does this mean?  It wouldn’t make sense to say “Keep practicing until you understand” because practicing doesn’t create understanding – just as giving kids a deadline doesn’t teach time-management skills.  What might make sense is to say “Keep practicing until what you’re doing becomes automatic.”  But what kinds of proficiencies lend themselves to this sort of improvement?

The answer is behavioral responses.  Expertise in tennis requires lots of practice; it’s hard to improve your swing without spending a lot of time on the court.  But to cite an example like that to justify homework is an example of what philosophers call begging the question.  It assumes precisely what has to be proved, which is that intellectual pursuits are like tennis.

The assumption that they are analogous derives from behaviorism, which is the source of the verb “reinforce” as well as the basis of an attenuated view of learning.  In the 1920s and ‘30s, when John B. Watson was formulating his theory that would come to dominate education, a much less famous researcher named William Brownell was challenging the drill-and-practice approach to mathematics that had already taken root.  “If one is to be successful in quantitative thinking, one needs a fund of meanings, not a myriad of ‘automatic responses,’” he wrote.  “Drill does not develop meanings.  Repetition does not lead to understandings.”  In fact, if “arithmetic becomes meaningful, it becomes so in spite of drill.”

Brownell’s insights have been enriched by a long line of research demonstrating that the behaviorist model is, if you’ll excuse the expression, deeply superficial.  People spend their lives actively constructing theories about how the world works, and then reconstructing them in light of new evidence.  Lots of practice can help some students get better at remembering an answer, but not to get better at – or even accustomed to -- thinking.  And even when they do acquire an academic skill through practice, the way they acquire it should give us pause.  As psychologist Ellen Langer has shown, “When we drill ourselves in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature,” we may come to perform that skill “mindlessly,”  locking us into patterns and procedures that are less than ideal. 

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But even if practice is sometimes useful, we’re not entitled to conclude that homework of this type works for most students.  It isn’t of any use for those who don’t understand what they’re doing.  Such homework makes them feel stupid; gets them accustomed to doing things the wrong way (because what’s really “reinforced” are mistaken assumptions); and teaches them to conceal what they don’t know.  At the same time, other students in the same class already have the skill down cold, so further practice for them is a waste of time.  You’ve got some kids, then, who don’t need the practice and others who can’t use it.

Furthermore, even if practice was helpful for most students, that doesn’t mean they need to do it at home.  In my research I found a number of superb teachers (at different grade levels and with diverse instructional styles) who rarely, if ever, found it necessary to assign homework.  Some not only didn’t feel a need to make students read, write, or do math at home; they preferred to have students do these things during class where it was possible to observe, guide, and discuss.

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it’s “qualitative changes in the ways students view themselves in relation to the task

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, engage in the process of learning, and then respond to the learning activities and situation.

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Supporters of homework rarely look at things from the student’s point of view, though; instead, kids are regarded as inert objects to be acted on:  Make them practice and they’ll get better.  My argument isn’t just that this viewpoint is disrespectful, or that it’s a residue of an outdated stimulus-response psychology.  I’m also suggesting it’s counterproductive.  Children cannot be made to acquire skills.  They aren’t vending machines such that we put in more homework and get out more learning.

But just such misconceptions are pervasive in all sorts of neighborhoods, and they’re held by parents, teachers, and researchers alike.  It’s these beliefs that make it so hard even to question the policy of assigning regular homework.  We can be shown the paucity of supporting evidence and it won’t have any impact if we’re wedded to folk wisdom (“practice makes perfect”; more time equals better results). 

On the other hand, the more we learn about learning, the more willing we may be to challenge the idea that homework has to be part of schooling. 

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“When we drill ourselves in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature,” we may come to perform that skill “mindlessly,”  locking us into patterns and procedures that are less than ideal. 

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