Teachers seem to be under the belief that you must give homework. You do NOT have to give homework at all, in fact, I’d beg you not to.
Homework can actually be a miserable detriment to both teachers and students… and have no purpose to either, other than to torture both.
How many teachers do you know who have complained about having to take work home to mark it? Probably all of them right? No one wants to take work home. When you have a job in nearly any other profession – you do not take work home because you are not paid for that – you need downtime, you need rest, and you need regulation time. Taking your work home with you has been proven to cause mental health illness that can even develop into physical health problems.
The same has been proven for students. This is why universities have a ratio rule for different courses. Have you been in a one-to-one course?; where you are expected to do one hour of homework or study/assignments for every hour of contact with lectures and tutorials at university? This is usually the base for highly mathematical courses – where you need to learn a lot in class, but you don’t need to do much out of the classroom.
Or you may have been in a one-to-four hour course structure where you do four hours of homework, because the course work/contact hours is very minimal – because there’s a lot of theory or reading to do outside of contact hours. In these cases – the university sets a very limited amount of contact hours – so you have time to do the reading and other work…. Where it’s one-to-one – there’s usually more contact hours than for a one-to-four hour set up. In other words: a one-to-one course might have around 20 - 22 contact hours, but a one-to-four type hour course will only have 8 to 12 contact hours – some classes won’t give homework, and others will – it’s supposed to equal out for both courses so that all students only ever do 40 hours a week (hope that makes sense).
Primary and secondary schools don’t seem to have understood that methodology and science, or they think that it should work the same way, eg: if kids only do 6 hours at school a day – they should be doing the other 10 hours at home. NO! kids aren’t able to do a full-time job – that’s why working before 15 is illegal in western countries. They are not capable of a 40-hour week, they need more rest time.
Primary and secondary school are considered full time learning just like a degree is – but it is 100% full time contact hours – and should be 0% outside of contact hours imo (until they reach that age where they are able – whatever age that is for the individual) Here’s why…..
This following quote shows the “diminishing returns rule” for studying – which is the base for understanding how many hours an adult person can learn per day without losing knowledge or burning out (for younger students – it’s less, they cannot concentrate for that long):
“The Diminishing Returns Rule: Research on study duration often breaks down efficiency as follows:
- Hours 1–4: 100% effective (high concentration)
- Hours 5–6: ~50% effective
- Hours 7-8: ~25% effective
- Hours 9+: ~1% effective (risk of losing knowledge due to fatigue)
Why Less is More:
- Memory Consolidation: Adequate sleep is more critical for memory retention than excessive study time.
- Brain Rest: Over-studying can cause "study paralysis" and fatigue, making information harder to retain.
- Quality Factors: The effectiveness of study depends more on consistency, taking breaks (e.g., every 50 minutes), and active learning techniques than the total hours spent”
Looking at this – some teachers will see the 7-8 hours as still being 25 % effective and argue that if school is 6 hours long – then the child still has 1 to 2 hours left in the day for study. NO – F NO!!!!! Go back and read it again. If a child is not taking in at 100% - then it’s not worth it… all it is doing after the 4-hour mark is causing overload/ overwhelm/ mental health issues and causing the student to hate studying/ learning.
Taking work home (homework) is not necessary because it is actually harming the child, not helping them. After a strenuous day at school, we are all exhausted. But for an ND child they are ready for meltdown/shutdown etc – which is about 50 steps passed exhausted. I was that child. Every day after school, if anyone spoke to me, looked at me or necessitated anything from me at all – I’d go into shutdown or meltdown. It’s more exhausting for ND kids.
We spend all day masking, translating NT speak (from teachers and peers) into ND speak and back into NT speak so we can be understood by others. We are like a continual never ending beginning speaker of English that will never learn English fluently and struggles daily to understand others and to be understood – it’s more than just exhausting. We also struggle every second of every day to fit in, we are ostracised, segregated bullied and treated poorly. We are struggling to simply listen, let alone learn and then being forced to do more in our rest time…. It’s not just a request that is hard to do – it’s an impossibility that is actually discriminatory to ask more of us.
Discriminatory because you are asking NTs to do the same, but they don’t have the same struggles. And then when the homework is returned – NT’s are marked on that ability, whereas ND’s are marked badly because they are unable to – they are marked on disability – not on knowledge. Teachers even give rewards to those who do, and by comparison (by giving one group rewards and not the others) – the ND kids are punished for being unable. If the playing field was equal in the first place – then the reward may not be discriminatory. But when you are starting from a position of inequity – you end up with a bigger inequity.
Imagine a football match. Team One has played the game before they play naturally because they’ve been taught all the rules and played previously – they all remember all the rules and how to play, and they all like playing, and they all fit in and everyone gets along and speaks the same language (English) and have the exact same abilities (no disabilities).
Team Two is made up of a whole team of people who all have different abilities (many have disabilities), none speak English and none have ever played before.
The coach explains the rules – but team 2 don’t understand and have to “guess” and muddle through. The coach also demands “no talking” – so they can’t try to talk to each other to figure out how to play.
The game is played. Team one wins and team two played and maybe had a bit of fun, but are exhausted and are wondering if they ever even want to return to the field ever again because of how unfair it all was. They were given no accommodations, no instructions that made sense to them, they were picked on by the other team for “not getting it”. The coach rewarded team one – team 2 saw no point in ever playing again – except maybe playing on their own, away from team 1 and the coach, but not today – they are exhausted – mentally and physically. The coach tells team 2 – you must go home and practice at home and read the rules again for homework.
If you are in Team 1 – how do you feel? I bet you feel pretty good about yourself and your team. I bet you’re not as tired as team 2. The coach gave you a prize and praise for being able, and didn’t give you homework, because you were able in class… you go home happy and healthy and willing to come back and do it all tomorrow.
If you are in team 2 – how do you feel? I bet you’re a little frustrated, maybe upset and/ or angry/depressed. I bet you’re exhausted and wondering what the point of it all was. The coach punished you for not understanding them and for not doing as well as others – because they base their prizes/praise on able kids and able abilities, not getting praise or rewards feels like a slap in the face to you.
The coach also gave you homework to repeat exactly what happened at school – at home… even though they didn’t explain it in a different way, or use your language, or try different ways to explain – they just expect you to read and read and read until it ‘clicks’ (which is the definition of stupidity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome). Your team mates are also feeling like crap, but you’re all too embarrassed and deflated to say or do anything about it.
You are now at home, exhausted and defeated (literally and figuratively). You look at the homework and cry. You still don’t understand it because it’s still in English, you could practice all you want, but you’ll just be doing exactly what you did in class – and apparently that was ‘wrong’ according to the coach and team 1… so what’s the point. You ask your parents, but they also don’t speak English (eg: ND kids spawn from ND parents) – and they weren’t present in class either - and have no idea what the teacher said or explained, so they have no idea either. Both parent and child are now upset and feel hopeless… but also enraged at the coach and the system that continues this BS.
The parent tells their team 2 child – don’t do it, just go rest – because there is nothing either can do. The parent tries to contact the school and the coach – but the coach says “but team 1 had no problem, so there’s nothing wrong with my teaching”. Other parents from team 2 don’t bother contacting the coach or the school, because they know the drill of being ignored or gaslit in these situations…. So, the school thinks it’s only a problem for one student – not 13.
At the end of the year – 13 kids still can’t play football. The coach blames the parents for not forcing the kid to do the homework, the parents blame the school for their child’s needs not being met. Noone is wiser – but the child is stuck. The child is detrimented and this continues for years. The children act out and start displaying “challenging behaviours” in class. Again – the teachers blame the parents for permissive parenting, and not doing homework, and the parents blame the teachers for not meeting the child’s needs….. and again – the child is the one who suffers.
This goes into an idiocracy loop until teachers strike in order to get better help and support, and parents start homeschooling their children (which forces them out of the workforce and creates more inequity for these families). And the child still loses… they don’t lose from homeschooling btw – they lose because their families can’t afford as much things as they used to, and their parents might be stressed about finances – and the child sometimes feels broken because the school system failed them – but they blame themselves for that failure instead. (Homeschooling kids often thrive way better when homeschooling than in school).
Homework doesn’t ever help. Unless the work is explained in a different way and the child is able and has time /ability at home. Some kids have terrible home lives and can only work at school, others have abusive parents/family, others need rest and no work in order to survive. Everyone is different, but when you set homework to everyone – you ignore all these facts and predicaments.
When you set homework for kids who don’t do it in class you are missing the point… the point that the child was unable in the first place – sending it home doesn’t change a bloody thing, all it does is frustrate everyone: teachers, parents and especially the children.
Instead – try to figure out the why! Why they can’t during class, why they can’t at home, why they can’t full stop.
Homework without context of ‘why’ is literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever experienced or heard.
So…. Why are you setting homework? And why are your students not doing it, or not able?