Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do Mini. I'm your
Speaker 1: host Abraham, and I'm your O Shane. We are a
Speaker 1: psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans and
Speaker 1: non human animals do, and in many episodes that we
Speaker 1: release on Mondays, we do that quickly in a short
Speaker 1: format that's only like fifteen minutes or less. Our full
Speaker 1: length episodes come out on Wednesdays, so you can check
Speaker 1: out those for more in depth conversations, multiparters and all
Speaker 1: that good stuff.
Speaker 2: But let's go ahead and dive into this.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to support us, you can leave us
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Speaker 1: join us on Patreon. I'll talk more about those at
Speaker 1: the end of our discussion today. If you are joining
Speaker 1: us for the first time and welcome, I hope that
Speaker 1: you enjoy what we describe in this discussion and that
Speaker 1: appeals to you and then you're like, man, I feel
Speaker 1: so well informed that I'm just happy, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do. If you're a return to person,
Speaker 1: then welcome back. You already had that blissful euphoria and
Speaker 1: you're here for more and I applaud you being here.
Speaker 1: But either way, this is a mini so we got
Speaker 1: to get in there. Is there anything you'd like to
Speaker 1: add or that I forgot before we dive into our
Speaker 1: topic today?
Speaker 3: Nope, not today.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start big around the world and throughout human history.
Speaker 2: Is that big enough?
Speaker 3: I think that's plenty big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, perfect In that amount of time, students have
Speaker 1: been required to take work home with them from school
Speaker 1: for centuries. I mean, we haven't obviously had an education
Speaker 1: system for as long as there have been humans, But
Speaker 1: since we've had an education system, or at least for
Speaker 1: a good chunk of it, students have been required to
Speaker 1: take work home with them after their education in some capacity. However,
Speaker 1: the emphasis on this practice has also been the subject
Speaker 1: of debate for nearly as long and has ebbed and
Speaker 1: flowed in the extent to which there are requirements for
Speaker 1: things like homework.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so a new or we should really say
Speaker 3: in the currentside, guys, because we've had this conversation before,
Speaker 3: a new quote unquote discussion argues for less or no
Speaker 3: homework in school, at least in elementary schools.
Speaker 1: And while this does kind of sound like the makings
Speaker 1: of a debate. There's actual science here, so we'll just
Speaker 1: explore the arguments for and against homework and find out
Speaker 1: what is suggested by science and the data that are
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: Are you ready, yes, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Let's start by defining our terms. Homework is additional academically
Speaker 1: oriented tasks assigned to students to complete outside of the
Speaker 1: time spent in the classroom. I made up that definition
Speaker 1: and look it up. But that seems like that captured
Speaker 1: it for the most part. So if you disagree with me,
Speaker 1: go ahead and let us know. But anyway, the point
Speaker 1: is that you might have, for example, a student that
Speaker 1: solves additional math problems after having practiced similar math problems
Speaker 1: in class during the day, and they take those home
Speaker 1: and there's like a worksheet and they have to complete
Speaker 1: that worksheet, and the teachers who assign these things will
Speaker 1: enforce their policy of assigning additional work by including the
Speaker 1: completion and usually the accuracy of these assignments as a
Speaker 1: part of the students overall grade for the class. So
Speaker 1: like if they were just assign homework and the student
Speaker 1: didn't do it and there was no consequences for not
Speaker 1: doing it, then they would never do it, but because
Speaker 1: they can lump these things in with the grade for
Speaker 1: the class, they get to sort of hold the students
Speaker 1: accountable to that expectation by leveraging those contingencies.
Speaker 3: Right. However, many have pointed out that there's some problems
Speaker 3: with this. There are there are plenty of problems with us,
Speaker 3: specifically this emphasis on homework and why it's a problem.
Speaker 3: One of the things is it's stressful. Surveys and studies
Speaker 3: have found repeatedly that students and families of students that
Speaker 3: they cite homework, particularly large amounts of homework exceeding about
Speaker 3: an hour to be significant source of stress and fights
Speaker 3: at home. Actually it causes quite a few problems there.
Speaker 2: Did you have issues with homework with your kids?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean part of it was the
Speaker 3: stress of getting it done. Part of it was trying
Speaker 3: to teach when my kids didn't want to be taught.
Speaker 3: Part of it was that we were working full time
Speaker 3: and so it was an additional thing that we had
Speaker 3: to do inside of our full time schedule that was
Speaker 3: already pretty packed. So yeah, it was. It had been
Speaker 3: a historically stressful thing for us, for sure.
Speaker 1: Depending on how you slice said this, is like the
Speaker 1: number one stressor cited by a lot of students in
Speaker 1: a lot of places. So there's a legitimate argument to
Speaker 1: be made here that there is undue stress caused by
Speaker 1: the burden of homework, particularly as I said, as you said,
Speaker 1: at large amounts of homework, And relatedly, there are correlations
Speaker 1: between the amount of homework students complete and other adverse
Speaker 1: health outcomes, including things like, as you might imagine, sleep
Speaker 1: deprivation if they're staying up late to work on work,
Speaker 1: or they're getting up early, weight loss, stomach problems, headaches.
Speaker 1: In high school, some students reported that they would use
Speaker 1: drugs or alcohol to cope with the stress and just
Speaker 1: feeling like they have an excessive amount of work that
Speaker 1: they're trying to keep up with. They might be doing
Speaker 1: those things for other reasons and claiming homeworks for the reason,
Speaker 1: but like they also there are people who have legitimately
Speaker 1: used drugs or alcohol in high school, at least sometimes
Speaker 1: because of homework.
Speaker 3: It's also isolating a lot of time spent in homework
Speaker 3: means less time spent with friends and family, and the
Speaker 3: social isolation can have significant adverse impacts on students. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was in ap classes and the amount of homework
Speaker 3: that we would often have. Like I played baseball and
Speaker 3: I was in AP classes, and I almost never saw
Speaker 3: my friends during the week after school because I was
Speaker 3: so busy with those activities. I mean, baseball was not isolating,
Speaker 3: but coming home and then doing homework and then maybe
Speaker 3: even working was not great. So the homework was really
Speaker 3: a big slice of that pie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, very much.
Speaker 1: And this is actually really pointed out powerfully how significant
Speaker 1: of an impact it can have that students are just
Speaker 1: not getting like meaningful time with other relationships in their lives.
Speaker 1: Particularly as you said, like AP students are like really
Speaker 1: at the most risk for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that happens is when there's a lot of homework,
Speaker 1: students are more likely to cheat. Several teachers have reported
Speaker 1: discovering that when there are a lot of and lengthiest signs,
Speaker 1: students are more likely to plagiarize, copy from each other,
Speaker 1: try and find hacks for how they might solve their
Speaker 1: like get through the homework or find other ways to
Speaker 1: cheat to complete their homework and do so efficiently. And
Speaker 1: if they've got more homework than they've got hour, like
Speaker 1: more hours of homework than they have time between when
Speaker 1: that was assigned and when it was due, then like
Speaker 1: they're increasingly prone to find other ways to solve it.
Speaker 1: And that's part of where AI I think has become
Speaker 1: such a problem is because it's so fast at solving
Speaker 1: some of these things. So it's understandable that if there's
Speaker 1: a lot of homework that students are more likely to
Speaker 1: turn to those systems so that they have more time
Speaker 1: that is not spent doing homework.
Speaker 3: Right, And it's even worse when there's ads to the
Speaker 3: middle of the homework.
Speaker 2: So bad.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're back and we're talking about some of
Speaker 3: the problems that come up with homework. One of the
Speaker 3: things that comes up is that students are less likely
Speaker 3: to do the homework at all. Besides the fact that
Speaker 3: it's stressful, besides that it's isolating, besides that they're likely
Speaker 3: to cheat, they're just not likely to do it. So
Speaker 3: if they're defeated by spending hours doing homework, they may
Speaker 3: not even get a very good grade for having done
Speaker 3: their work. So not only did they spend allless time
Speaker 3: extra time doing it, they may not even get a
Speaker 3: good grade for it, And then they're less likely to
Speaker 3: engage at all. And small, manageable assignments that are well
Speaker 3: designed and don't feel like busy work are more likely
Speaker 3: to be completed and be helpful than these larger assignments
Speaker 3: that they may not do well on.
Speaker 1: There's also this issue that we mentioned a couple of times, now,
Speaker 1: is just this amount of work that this more is
Speaker 1: not always better. Teachers have argued that students are already
Speaker 1: spending six to eight hours per day in school doing
Speaker 1: academic work, and they pointed out that if you look
Speaker 1: at other expert performers, they tend to peak and show
Speaker 1: diminishing or even reverse gains after about four hours of work.
Speaker 1: These are professionals, experts who are very proficient at what
Speaker 1: they do, and after four hours we're starting to see
Speaker 1: their performance plateau or even decline, and we're expecting kids
Speaker 1: to do double that in some of this some of
Speaker 1: these cases, they argue that after six hours of a
Speaker 1: school day, there's a little benefit they're likely to gain
Speaker 1: from doing even more work afterward.
Speaker 3: And then you've also got disparities in inequalities. So many
Speaker 3: students from lower income families may have to go straight
Speaker 3: to work after school, or go home to take care
Speaker 3: of siblings or other family members or do chores. They're
Speaker 3: less likely to have time and space to do homework
Speaker 3: and less likely to have parents who can help or
Speaker 3: who are around or available to help, whereas more affluent
Speaker 3: students may have dedicated spaces, plenty of time for help,
Speaker 3: and more highly educated parents, or even have dedicated tutors
Speaker 3: available to support homework. So I was in ap classes,
Speaker 3: I would come home from school, get dressed for work,
Speaker 3: ride my bike to work because I didn't have a car. Yeah,
Speaker 3: bring my backpack so that when I was on my
Speaker 3: break at work, I was doing homework, and then would
Speaker 3: come home and finish whatever homework I didn't finish after
Speaker 3: working a five hour shift after school and then staying
Speaker 3: up all night and then doing it all again the
Speaker 3: next day. And that was my work routine. If I
Speaker 3: wasn't if I wasn't working my midnight shifts at the
Speaker 3: time too, and my parents were around, right, my parents
Speaker 3: were around and super supportive and helpful, and I still
Speaker 3: had to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like there are people with wayless, way less
Speaker 1: supportive situation than you had, Like maybe they have to
Speaker 1: like do chores and take care of their siblings and
Speaker 1: babysit and then they have to go to a job
Speaker 1: and they're supposed to do homework. I'm like, it really
Speaker 1: does have a disparate impact on people depending on the
Speaker 1: resources and the situation they have at home. Right, So
Speaker 1: that's some of the arguments there. There's also just like
Speaker 1: there's some general sort of research and science to unpack here,
Speaker 1: and this first one is not actually science, but there
Speaker 1: are some recommendations from professionals. So the National Education Association
Speaker 1: and the Natural Parent Teacher Association both recommend a rubric
Speaker 1: for thinking about homework that is ten minutes of homework
Speaker 1: per day per grade, which means if you're in first grade,
Speaker 1: you get ten minutes of homework per day, twenty minutes
Speaker 1: per day if you're in second grade, thirty minutes per
Speaker 1: day if you're in third grade, and so on. Like
Speaker 1: you can see how that scales up up to you
Speaker 1: would imagine that about two hours per day if you're
Speaker 1: a senior in high school. And while this isn't explicitly
Speaker 1: supported by science, the science that does exist that sort
Speaker 1: of is looking at what available or what homework guidelines
Speaker 1: might be.
Speaker 2: It is kind of close to that.
Speaker 1: So specifically, what they found is homework and elementary school
Speaker 1: has negligible benefits on students understanding of the material and
Speaker 1: subsequent performance on academic testing. So ten minutes a day
Speaker 1: might even be ten minutes more than is really worth
Speaker 1: putting anything into that in elementary school there is just
Speaker 1: not particularly those early early grades. There seems to be
Speaker 1: very very few, if any, gains to be made by
Speaker 1: assigning homework to those grade levels.
Speaker 3: Right, but small amounts of homework can have parents more
Speaker 3: well informed about what students are doing in school and
Speaker 3: provide some opportunities for support that can be valuable.
Speaker 1: And like it can be a meaningful bonding experience to
Speaker 1: like the parents who work with the kids and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So like, there's not not.
Speaker 1: Nothing there, right, the quality of the homework is sort
Speaker 1: of paramount. They found in research homework that feels like
Speaker 1: busy work does not produce meaningful gains in learning, and
Speaker 1: researchers actually show that homework should be designed to extend
Speaker 1: students thinking about a given subject, rather than simply repeating
Speaker 1: the same exercise again that they did while they were
Speaker 1: in school. So the architecture behind building these assignments is
Speaker 1: going to be one of the really important factors in
Speaker 1: determining how effective any assigned homework is going to be
Speaker 1: and accomplishing some particular goal.
Speaker 3: Sure, Now, even past elementary school, the amount of time
Speaker 3: spent has a sweet spot for impact on the students.
Speaker 3: So some studies show that by high school, after two
Speaker 3: hours of homework there's a minimal impact on performance, and
Speaker 3: after three hours of homework, performance metrics actually began to decrease,
Speaker 3: although one study found no systematically clear data signal regarding
Speaker 3: how much time spent on homework is appropriate at various grades,
Speaker 3: So like, the jury's a little bit out on that,
Speaker 3: still just a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's like they tend to find that, like
Speaker 1: for really high performing students with really high expectations, up
Speaker 1: to two hours you might see some benefits. And there
Speaker 1: was like some thing specifically showing that if you spent
Speaker 1: up to around an hour on like math, for example,
Speaker 1: then they reliably retained that better and better on academic tests.
Speaker 1: But again, you do reach a point of diminishing returns.
Speaker 1: By the time you're passing two hours, it's starting to
Speaker 1: plateau and maybe even decrease the likelihood that they'll show
Speaker 1: high levels of performance subsequently to the time spent on homework.
Speaker 1: So and even then, like the quality of the homework
Speaker 1: is so important that it's more about how what are
Speaker 1: they actually getting out of this assignment, not how much
Speaker 1: time did they spend on it, although spending too much
Speaker 1: time is pretty much always going to have adverse impact
Speaker 1: is what the science shows, right, So what do we
Speaker 1: think is the verdict here on this whole idea of
Speaker 1: homework or no homework?
Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like a little bit might be
Speaker 3: fine too much as a problem. It should be well designed.
Speaker 3: I mean it sounds like if you account for all
Speaker 3: those things and it's very intentional. I think if it's
Speaker 3: well designed and it's like and it makes sense for
Speaker 3: the student, then I think it should be considered. I
Speaker 3: don't think it should be part of a grade because
Speaker 3: I think that's unfair for those students to have those disparities.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the way that I would look at it,
Speaker 3: just to kind of like balance that playing field a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 2: That's totally fair.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, if you consider what is
Speaker 1: the point of homework, I think there are parents and
Speaker 1: administrators who think that the point of homework is to
Speaker 1: do busy work.
Speaker 2: They just want these kids to be busy all the time.
Speaker 1: But I think that if you think about the point
Speaker 1: of homework is to ensure that they get there was
Speaker 1: insufficient practice that was done in the classroom and that
Speaker 1: to be able to move at the pace that they
Speaker 1: need to move, that that requires a little bit of
Speaker 1: extra work, and therefore the work that they're given is
Speaker 1: designed to bridge that gap.
Speaker 2: Then it probably makes sense.
Speaker 1: But again it's like, can we also need to create
Speaker 1: the system so that everyone has an equal opportunity to
Speaker 1: have participated in this meaningfully right? And there might have
Speaker 1: to be either considerations around like some people just don't
Speaker 1: have the situation where they can do homework, or else
Speaker 1: we just create dedicated time in school. It is like,
Speaker 1: there's extra practice time now because we know that that
Speaker 1: way everybody has a relatively even access to this, and
Speaker 1: there should be enough extra time to bridge whatever gap
Speaker 1: we couldn't do in the time that we had, right,
Speaker 1: So that would be my thought on that.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's not that.
Speaker 1: No homework is necessarily like the gospel, we need to
Speaker 1: go that direction. But I do think that we should
Speaker 1: be mindful and intentional around the homework and consider to
Speaker 1: spare that might exist in those systems agreed, perfect, all right.
Speaker 1: If you have thoughts on homework you would like to
Speaker 1: tell us, you can email us directly, write us an
Speaker 1: info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or we just on the
Speaker 1: social media platforms and we do look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you. If you would like to support us, you
Speaker 1: can leave us a rating and a review, like subscribe
Speaker 1: or join us on Patreon, and if you do that
Speaker 1: then you get bonus content, add free episodes, early episodes,
Speaker 1: and I'll read your name in the list of names
Speaker 1: of people who support us at the end of our
Speaker 1: full length discussions which come out on Wednesdays. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for recording with me today, Shane.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you to my team of people.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that I missed or that you'd
Speaker 1: like to add before we sayah goodbyes. Nope, I think
Speaker 1: I did not also say thank you all for listening,
Speaker 1: So thank you all for listening. But otherwise, this is
Speaker 1: Abraham and this is Shane. Why we do what we
Speaker 1: do Mini is out.
Speaker 3: Bye.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Why We Do what We Do.
Speaker 3: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
Speaker 3: going to wwdwwdpodcast dot com thanks for listening, and we
Speaker 3: hope you have an awesome day.