SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
If you're a parent with kids in school, you may have noticed they might be getting less homework than they used to or maybe none at all. That's a relief for some families and dismaying to others. We wanted to know what's behind this controversial trend. So we invited education reporter Holly Korbey and writer and former university administrator Elizabeth Matthew to discuss this with us.
Elizabeth, I understand that you're pretty firmly in the pro-homework camp. Why do you think that not giving homework is a bad idea?
ELIZABETH MATTHEW: I'm sort of in the camp that as kids get older, homework is a good idea for both academic and also even perhaps primarily executive function reasons, of having a deliverable. But I think that higher ed, in terms of eliminating homework, is, in many respects, the culprit here because the research coming out - recreating equality as equity - right? - making everyone perform less well in order to make everyone perform more the same, is where this idea of eliminating homework, I believe, is coming from.
I understand it's come from other places in times past, and also I do believe that, the mid-2000s and into the early 2010s, there was too much homework and emphasis on ridiculous things like preschool homework in this sort of - let's, you know, optimize every moment of a 4-year-old's life. That was not good, and then it led to the pendulum swinging in the other direction. But I think the reasons it has swung in the other direction are, in many respects, more ideological and less parent-driven.
HOLLY KORBEY: That's so interesting. Can I hop in here? - because I also think that there is a public perception that's happening right now that learning should be fun and creative. And, you know, I think that people do not have this perception when they talk about other activities that kids do, like sports or music, you know? For those things, like, practice is key to getting good at it, you know? And I just think that, like, there's this perception in the public about academic skills that, like - oh it's drill and kill. And like Elizabeth was saying, there is such a thing as bad homework.
But I think that we have moved away from this idea of homework as practice at getting good at, like, core academic skills. You know, my kids - they have all these posters and all these T-shirts about sports that say things like, you know, iron sharpens iron and stuff like that, you know, this idea that getting good at an athletic activity is actually hard. And academics are the same, you know, but there's a different perception of how we should go about doing that for kids.
PFEIFFER: What does the research tell us about the value of homework?
KORBEY: So research shows that homework is especially valuable for academic gains in middle and high school students. And the homework research on elementary school students is more mixed. And, you know, I kind of want to go back to this idea of framing homework as practice. And here's something that I think that most teachers have said to me - a really good elementary school homework practice is multiplication tables. So learning math...
PFEIFFER: Just drilling.
KORBEY: Yes, right. Math is a ladder of skills, and you can't do the harder math - you can't do fractions and decimals and all that stuff - if you don't have your multiplication tables memorized.
PFEIFFER: Elizabeth, many moms and dads complain that their kids' homework is a burden on them. They have to help them do it at night. And with kids' busy schedules - sports and other activities - how much should those noneducational considerations be a factor when homework is assigned?
MATTHEW: Yeah, no, I really appreciate that question. I have four kids of my own, and they range from middle school down to toddlerhood, so I'm well in the trenches here in terms of managing homework and babyhood-dom and sports and all the things. It's about the amount of homework, and it's about the practicability of homework in relation to some of those other things. You know, a lot of upper-middle-class parents are the ones making these complaints, even though it is lower-income parents, maybe parents working multiple jobs and who have difficulty carving out the time because they are so busy, or they're single parents, et cetera, helping their children with homework.
We have seen over the past several decades that sports participation among families who are not upper-middle-class, who are middle- and lower-middle-class and working-class, has declined. And so a lot of these kids in those families - homework may be one of the few constructive opportunities they have in the after-school hours 'cause there's a lot of talk now about getting children off of screens. And drilling your multiplication tables, in addition to providing you the executive function of turning it in the next day, in addition to actually helping you with your multiplication tables, will also help to give you something constructive that you're doing that isn't screen-based.
PFEIFFER: Are there socioeconomic factors or learning differences or maybe gender differences that need - that factor into the homework debate that need to be considered? Holly, you want to take that one?
KORBEY: I, first of all, think that homework itself needs a makeover. I think that if more families understood homework as meaningful practice, they might be more inclined to make time for it in the evenings. I've done years of reporting on how the brain learns, and I think this is just, like, a big misconception in our society that all this information lives on Google and that you - everyone has equal access to it. And that's not exactly how learning works.
You want information to actually be stored inside your brain, in your long-term memory. And the more information you have stored in your brain, the more cool and creative things you can do with it. And I think if we can do a better job of explaining to schools and to families, like, that value, which is like, you want the knowledge to live in your head, then homework kind of - you look at it in a different light.
PFEIFFER: Are there some schools that, rather than distinguishing between valuable and nonvaluable homework, are just not giving homework at all, period, it's their philosophy?
KORBEY: Yes. I think that we have seen a bigger move towards that.
PFEIFFER: And do you feel any sense of alarm about that?
KORBEY: I do because we're watching our national reading and math scores decline, but these declines started way before the pandemic. This has been going on for a decade. So I am alarmed. I think that reframing homework as practice and giving kids a little homework is actually going to help those reading and math scores come back up.
PFEIFFER: So it sounds like, if I could summarize what you've both said, that it's not so much about homework versus no homework. It's about trying to make sure that the homework given is valuable and useful and kids actually learn from it.
MATTHEW: The deliverable and executive function aspect of having to turn something in at all is an enormous part of the childhood responsibility and independence.
PFEIFFER: Meaning learning rigor and routines and just getting used to...
MATTHEW: Rigor, routine and responsibility to someone who is not your parent, right? One of the things we talk about a lot in terms of helicopter parenting and gentle parenting and these ways that parents are intervening for their kids emotionally and logistically, I think homework cuts against some of that in giving the child responsibility. Now obviously, this lack of homework in many schools is not only alarming, but it is prevalent and it's been significantly more prevalent since the pandemic because of the ways in which the achievement gap opened up further during the pandemic after some of the gains we had made to begin to close it. And one of our ways of dealing with that, which was ideologically motivated, was to eliminate the gap by eliminating achievement.
PFEIFFER: That is Holly Korbey and Elizabeth Matthew, who both write about education. Thank you.
KORBEY: Thank you for having me.
MATTHEW: Thank you for having us. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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