The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning

by Kralovec, Etta; Buell, John

• ISBN13: 9780807042182
• ISBN10: 0807042188
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-07-01
• Publisher: Random House Inc

Summary

In 1901, homework was legally banned in California. By the 1990's, assigning homework to our chldren has a priority equal to national security. Today, few question the need for homework in preparing children for their future. And yet research suggests that homework probably has no helpful effect in elementary school and questionable outcomes in middle school. Our kids are overworked, tired, and robbed of their childhoods; parents are robbed of leisure with their families. How did this happen? In this, the first book to question the value of homework, Etta Karlovec and John Buell tell stories of students, who often come home to overworked parents and dometic responsibilities, with hours of homework they can't handle on their own and that would have been more effectively taught in the classroom. Arguing that in assigning massive amounts of homework to students, teachers and schools are essentially abdicating their responsibility to teach, the authors advocate forcefully for protecting the leisure time of children, who need a balance of work and play that allows them to prepare for their futures in work AND in citizenship. As an educator, Etta Kralovec examines carefully claims that homework is essential to the education of kids, and finds little or no support for the assertion. Homework is especially burdensome to disadvantaged children who may not have the luxury of free time, of books and computers in their homes, or of a 'quiet, well-lit place to study. Linking homwork for the first time with school reform, THE END OF HOMEWORK advocates for a society we'd all like to see: one that recognizes the necessity of work without forgetting the significance of society, family, and leisure.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(8)
The Kitchen Table	9	(17)
Does Homework Work?	26	(13)
Homework in Historical Perspective	39	(16)
Kids and Homework	55	(10)
Homework and the Level Playing Field	65	(16)
Homework in the Global Economy	81	(7)
What's a Mother---and a Neighborhood, and a Nation---to Do?	88	(15)
Notes	103	(9)
Acknowledgments	112	(3)
Index	115