November 1, 2025

Making Kids Work a Second Shift

Too often the debate over homework is restricted to its quantity -- or, at best, its quality. But such discussions take for granted the need for some homework, as if it were impossible to question that premise. It may come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that research generally fails to support the value of, let alone the need for, requiring children to complete more academic tasks when they get home from school. (For elementary and middle school students, no controlled studies have found a meaningful benefit to assigning any type or amount of homework.) So why is the practice still so pervasive and widely accepted? Perhaps the answer lies in mistaken beliefs about learning and cynical beliefs about children.

RESOURCES:

Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It (Crown, 2006)

John Buell, Closing the Book on Homework: Enhancing Public Education and Freeing Family Time (Temple University Press, 2004)

Alfie Kohn, The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (Da Capo Press, 2006) (https://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-myth/).  Read chapter 2 ("Does Homework Improve Learning?") here: https://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-improve-learning/

Alfie Kohn, "Homework: An Unnecessary Evil? Surprising Findings from New Research," 2012 (https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/homework-unnecessary-evil-surprising-findings-new-research/)

Etta Kralovec and John Buell, The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning (Beacon Press, 2000)

 

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ART: Abi Kohn