My kid grew up in a government school district with his high-school being rated #36 in the country. The reason for this is primarily that we have 80% immigrant population (40% Asian/40% Indian) who work their kids like dogs. My son grew up with this expectation all around him. The teachers are more than happy to give 1-2 hours of home-work a night to primary education kids.
Truth be told - he had 1+ hours of homework in first grade. It was almost ALL repetitive reading assignments. He is a superb reader, having mastered Harry Potter in second grade. So I would access that as being useful.
However - in 8 grade honors, by the end of the year they were expected to read two novel’s a week. That was excessive. In Honor’s science he had to do 5 hours the first night of school - that was excessive. (We pulled him out of honors after that!)
He got to the competitive high school and pulled a 3.6 GPA. He did an average of 1-2 hours a night there. Moral of the story. Some of the stuff was nonsense, and busy work. (5 hours of science homework was stupidity - this just turns kids off of learning, same with the heavy reading requirements.) On the other hand he has wonderful study habits/discipline (which I didn’t acquire until AFTER I went to college. ) His first year as a college freshman have been a breeze for him.
Summary - some homework is busy work, some homework is useful. He survived it, and is thriving, and is probably better off having been challenged a few times along the way. So the study is hooey!
I was used to homework. I would get home from school, make a snack and get started. I was often doing homework up until bed time. I often ate dinner at my desk. I had no social life, but I thrived on that. I was then and still am an introvert.
Kids often need social interaction, so keeping them under piles of homework is not the best prescription for success. I think we agree on that point. However, I think homework is a necessity, esp. for kids looking to get into anything outside of administrative 9-5 work.
I work in IT and often have to work nights and weekends. I’m always on call. I think having that mentality drilled into you from a young age makes you better prepared for the rigors of adulthood. Life isn’t fair nor easy.
I routinely meet academically successful homeschoolers and their parents, and the reports are almost always the same. These academically successful homeschoolers rarely spend more than 2 to 3 hours a day in formal studies and almost never report doing “homework”.
What's going on? Why are academically successful children ( homeschooled or institutionalized) successful?
We spend as a nation up to a quarter of million dollars per child for K-12 education, yet we do NOT know the answers to the following questions:
1) Is the government school merely sending home a curriculum for the child and parents to follow in the home?
2) Is child acquiring his knowledge due to the afterschooling efforts of the child and the parent?
3) Where **exactly** is the child acquiring his knowledge, in the home or in the school?
4) Who is doing the real teaching? Is the parent and child by following the curriculum that is sent home, or is the teacher?
5) Is the school merely functioning as a developer of curriculum, a testing service, and an evaluator and grader of projects?
6) What are the commonalities in habits between academically successful homeschoolers and institutionalized children. Have these habits be identified, measured, timed, and tested?