How Much Homework Do Your Kids Have?

[jyl]

I'm thinking specifically of grade school and middle school.

My daughter is in 6th grade, and must have 3+ hours of homework every night. She is diligent about it - comes home from school, plays around for an hour or so, and then gets to work, interrupts for dinner, then resumes work. Often she doesn't finish until 9 or 10 PM. Tonight she had some English homework, then science homework, then math homework which was algebra and beginning statistics. She was tired by the time she got to the math, and wasn't "getting it" at all. (We made a new rule, that she always has to do her math homework first.) She usually has a couple hours of homework for Friday night/the weekend, too.

All told, it must come to 15 hours of homework a week. Does that seem excessive to you? I don't remember having anywhere near that much homework as a little kid. Heck, I'm not sure I had 15 hours/wk of homework in college.

What is it like in your kids' schools?

[ckissick]

My 5th grader has about 2 hours a night.

When I was in 5th grade I don't think I had any homework. I just remember playing sports until it got dark every day. The workoad nowadays is nuts. There's no time to be a kid anymore, but she is learning to work hard. Maybe that's good?

[M.D. Holloway]

Our 3rd grader has about 10 to 20 minutes a night assigned but we spend an additional hour plus on reading and spelling.

[rattlsnak]

Does she have any study hall/ or such during the day? My kids usually do most of their homework then, but yes, they still seem to have alot.

[gchappel]

This is a delicate question. Been there, done that.
Ask other parents in her classes how much time their children spend as well. Is your daughter having a difficult time keeping up? Is work somehow expanding to fill all available time- are there other issues here? Or it everyone working 15 hrs a week on homework. You may also need to have a meeting with the teacher- is this a new teacher with high expectations, is your daughter having problems in class, etc. 15hrs a week in 6th grade sounds unusual. My son took advanced classes, AP, IB, etc. In highschool he essentially did no homework at home, usually finished it on the bus. Others spent 3-5 hours a night on homework. Son was 3rd in his class.
There are a lot of variables here- but first find out what others in the class are doing.

[Jims5543]

jyl - you just described my son when he was in public school. He easily had 3 hours a night of homework right up to 7th grade when we switched him over to private Montessori School, now if he has homework it was because he did not have enough time in class or in studyhall to complete it.

When he does have homework now its about 15 minutes to 45 minutes worth. With a few projects thrown in here and there that have to be completed at home or in study hall.

When he was in Public School, we would be at it from 7 to 10 at night, he would get home at 4:30 play for about an hour, eat dinner and do homework until it was bedtime. I have a thread on here somewhere about it I was frustrated like you. The worst part was if he had a problem learning something the teachers did not care nor would they bother to take the time to try to help him, it was up to me.

I still work with him if he has a problem but its rare now, his teachers are the best now and really care about whether or not he is getting the lesson.

[pmajka]

Excessive? Finally a child who is not being left behind and getting a quality education and you are worried about excessive homework.

Short answer: No, its not too much, skip to the bottom.
Long answer: No, but keep reading

I had a similar homework load as your daughter from 7 - 12 in a private christian academy (we were on the poorer side of that slide rule). It is this kind of education that makes great people.

All my friends that went to public schools or vocational schools had 15min - 1 hour of home work, if they even did it. I'd always be stuck inside while they were outside playing. As we got into our teenage yrs, I'd be inside, and they would be drinking, smoking, driving, necking and generally still having a good time. (Not all public schools are bad but we had a few in our area.)

Weekends, well there was continued homework on the weekends 4-6 hours. Now, i wasn't the most motivated student, so add 20% for me dragging my shebs to complete a project.

How did it all turn out? Those who slacked in HS are working harder now than I am for less. Mind you I can barely afford the upkeep on the 911 but, I do have one.

So your child has 3 hours of homework and you are being a responsible parent and making sure she does it.
I say "Good for you, Cheers!"

Originally Posted by jyl

I'm thinking specifically of grade school and middle school.

My daughter is in 6th grade, and must have 3+ hours of homework every night. She is diligent about it - comes home from school, plays around for an hour or so, and then gets to work, interrupts for dinner, then resumes work. Often she doesn't finish until 9 or 10 PM. Tonight she had some English homework, then science homework, then math homework which was algebra and beginning statistics. She was tired by the time she got to the math, and wasn't "getting it" at all. (We made a new rule, that she always has to do her math homework first.) She usually has a couple hours of homework for Friday night/the weekend, too.

All told, it must come to 15 hours of homework a week. Does that seem excessive to you? I don't remember having anywhere near that much homework as a little kid. Heck, I'm not sure I had 15 hours/wk of homework in college.

What is it like in your kids' schools?

[The Gaijin]

Don't worry - the day is not wasted in the modern school! They are learing about "diversity" and how to be at peace with their inner child. So then all of the learning that should go on is turned into mind numbing drills and passed off to the home and the parents.

Just the kind of training needed for future corporate jobs where they will waste the day in meetings and HR training - and then work late in the cube or bring work home...

[mschuep]

That seems excessive. I never had that much homework until college, but in college it is expected since you don't spend all day in classes (even if you go to all of them )

Lets see here, school from ~8 to ~3 is seven hours, then another three a night for homework M-F...Your 6th grader is working 50 hour weeks, plus whatever overtime she is putting in on the weekend !

[legion]

I had 5+ hours of homework every night in middle school. It increased in high school. I would do the math homework and blow the rest of it off. I did this for three years of middle school and the first three years of high school. The homework was all rote repitition, and I got bored with it. I still aced all of my tests--so not doing the homework wasn't detracting from my learning. It was detracting from my grades, as I had a lot of teachers who put effort above results--they would give more emphasis on grades to homework (right or wrong) over tests.

Sophomore year of high school, I got a job washing dishes at the local pizza place. Working 15 hours a week all but made completing all of the homework I was assigned impossible. Finally, senior year I was able get all of my homework done, but 4 periods out of 8 were in classes that assigned no homework. (Working in the bank two periods + gym + early dismissal.)

In college I did fine because the tests were the grades. I could do the homework if I felt it helped me, and blew it off if it didn't.

[Rot 911]

3 hours sure seems excessive. Although it appears your daughter is in some advanced placement classes (algebra in the 6th grade). My daughter is in the 2nd grade and has about 30 minutes of homework, but like Lube we spend extra time on reading and spelling.

[LeeH]

We're in a Montessori school also... the general policy is that unless the kids didn't use their time well in class, there is no homework.

[JavaBrewer]

My son is in 5th grade and has 1.5 hours of homework nightly. Daughter is in 3rd grade and has 1 hr nightly. We also enforce a mandatory 1 hr reading period each night before dinner.

I agree that the pressure is on for little kids these days. I don't recall ever doing homework in elementary/middle school. We just played till dusk and went home for dinner. I know folks are panicking that the Asian kids are passing us by but I'm wondering how many of them are going to flame out really early in life.

A strong work ethic is important but they will only be kids for a while. Once they reach H.S. the pressure really builds and never goes away. Balance is key...

[tc-sacto]

Bingo,
The real learning is left to the parents to teach. During school hours the overcrowded school waste the day trying to get the lowest level student up to speed. Probably having to teach in three different languages as well.

Originally Posted by The Gaijin

Don't worry - the day is not wasted in the modern school! They are learing about "diversity" and how to be at peace with their inner child. So then all of the learning that should go on is turned into mind numbing drills and passed off to the home and the parents.

Just the kind of training needed for future corporate jobs where they will waste the day in meetings and HR training - and then work late in the cube or bring work home...

[the]

Hard to know if it is excessive or not. The amount of time she is spending on it is, though.

My neighbor has 2 kids, both are smart (tested into the gifted program) and very diligent. They are 1 year apart. In fourth grade, the boy (the older one) would spend around an hour per day on homework. When the girl reached fourth grade, she had the same teacher, doing the same homework. It would take her 3+ hours to do the same. Sometimes she simply could not get it done at all, because of the time.

It doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, in fact the girl tested slightly higher than the boy (these are IQ style tests for the gifted program). She just, for reasons which aren't really clear, takes 3-4 times longer than most kids to do homework.

How much time do the other kids in her class spend on homework? You should talk to her teacher and see what's going on.

[kstar]

Daughter's in 3rd grade; has 20 minutes of reading a night and about 40 minutes combined for writing and math. She's in advanced math, FWIW. There is sometimes extra time if she needs to study for a test or is working on something like learning the multiplication tables.

Seems like a reasonable load for a kid her age and she is doing very well. As far as curriculum, she is way ahead of what I was being "learned" when I was 9.

[Komenda Fan]

The rule with our board - I'm an elementary school teacher, not sure if this applies to middle and highschool - is 10 minutes per grade, so grade 1 should have 10 minutes, grade 5 should have 50 minutes, etc. This really depends, of course, on students working at the average rate, which varies depending on ability level and how thorough a job they want to do. Students are also expected to read independently for at least 20 minutes each night.

As for whether this is too much or too little, every year at parent teacher interviews, you can count on some parents being upset about too much homework, while others are upset that there isn't enough homework...

[nostatic]

son is in 5th grade. How long hw takes depends on how stubborn he wants to be. He usually finishes in 15 minutes but half of it will be wrong and all of it will be sloppy. Then I'll make him do it again, and he'll mope and play the piano and pet the cats, then finally redo it.

All in all I don't think that any kind should have more than about an hour of homework, and none on the weekends. I'd rather have them creating things than doing rote work. Calvin has screen time limits, and ends up drawing and playing the piano a lot. I think those are more important to his future than doing yet another page of math drills.

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by legion

I had 5+ hours of homework every night in middle school. It increased in high school. I would do the math homework and blow the rest of it off. I did this for three years of middle school and the first three years of high school. The homework was all rote repitition, and I got bored with it. I still aced all of my tests--so not doing the homework wasn't detracting from my learning. It was detracting from my grades, as I had a lot of teachers who put effort above results--they would give more emphasis on grades to homework (right or wrong) over tests.

Sophomore year of high school, I got a job washing dishes at the local pizza place. Working 15 hours a week all but made completing all of the homework I was assigned impossible. Finally, senior year I was able get all of my homework done, but 4 periods out of 8 were in classes that assigned no homework. (Working in the bank two periods + gym + early dismissal.)

In college I did fine because the tests were the grades. I could do the homework if I felt it helped me, and blew it off if it didn't.

lol sounds like me, all i do is my math then ditch all the other stuff.

[Zef]

My two daughters got about 20 minutes each...in 3rd grade. My wife is a teacher of 4rd grade.
She try not to overload the students (so the parents) with homework...She's in the middle of the chair..so she understand well the fact.