At Farley Elementary School in Stony Point, New York, two fifth graders recently petitioned their school district to do away with homework for reasons related to stress.ĭespite how this conversation heats up and goes away, homework continues to be ingrained in the culture of schooling, and with a few exceptions, educators and parents rarely call it into question. Instead, Maier focused on having students read for a certain period of time outside of school. In Marion County, Florida, the superintendent of schools, Heidi Maier, made the decision to ban homework for children in elementary school, citing a lack of research about any benefits. Recently, however, a number of schools and school districts have decided to take a hard look at their homework policies, particularly at the elementary level. On the flip side, with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 and the suggestion that a lack of homework was to blame for our country’s education difficulties, homework was ramped up. In the 1940s, leading education scholars, primarily progressive ones, pursued a campaign to abolish homework, maintaining that it caused more harm than good to both children and their families. During the early 1900s, the emphasis for work outside of school was placed on rote tasks such as memorization of multiplication tables. Throughout the 20th century, the debate about homework seemed to be guided by cultural and political pressures. And it’s an extremely divisive topic-homework seems to be considered either all good or all bad. Homework has been a deeply rooted feature of the primary and secondary education system for well over a century.
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