Would you have a problem with your child having a teacher who never assigned homework? How important do you think homework is?

Very unimportant on average. Most of the homework I got in grade school was a bunch of stupid made-up work that didn't serve any purpose but to keep me from enjoying life at home.

It's one thing if you gotta read something, or do research for an actual project. But the typical everyday homework, lame.

Well, since most of my homework was done in study hall, or in a few minutes on the way to school or between classes, I would have no problem getting rid of that bother.

But I was the kid who did extra-credit work in classes that had my interest, like Biology, Art & sometimes English or History. (In Biology I was already getting maximum high grades so extra credit was not even necessary)

Yes. All teachers should assign homework.

I don't think it's too important but you MUST be consistent, I get sick of the teachers here, this day there is no homework, that day there will be, or even if it is it doesn't matter if it's done or not, what the hell?

A reasonable amount is appropriate. It helps good teachers gauge if the students understand the material.

I think homework is largely useless, obsolete, and ultimately more detrimental than beneficial. I do understand the importance of "out of school" projects like book reports and science projects, but just "homework" for the sake of homework is often a waste of time. Kids are in school 7-8 hours a day already. They can only take so much "learning" before their brain starts to shut down. If a teacher can't teach a topic well enough for the kid to be able to grasp the concept in the time allotted, then the fault lies with them, not the kid. If a student can pass the midterm and final exams without doing homework, then what benefit did the homework provide? None!

captainbryce wrote:

I think homework is largely useless, obsolete, and ultimately more detrimental than beneficial. I do understand the importance of "out of school" projects like book reports and science projects, but just "homework" for the sake of homework is often a waste of time. Kids are in school 7-8 hours a day already. They can only take so much "learning" before their brain starts to shut down. If a teacher can't teach a topic well enough for the kid to be able to grasp the concept in the time allotted, then the fault lies with them, not the kid. If a student can pass the midterm and final exams without doing homework, then what benefit did the homework provide? None!

Well said. That was one large reason homeschooling was a good choice for us, we put in the 8-3 schedule like everyone else, and then we were DONE for the day, no homework, no nothing, and we always got it.

Supernova wrote:

Well said. That was one large reason homeschooling was a good choice for us, we put in the 8-3 schedule like everyone else, and then we were DONE for the day, no homework, no nothing, and we always got it.

How many kids in your home school class?

I can remember when a term paper took me a LOT of hours to finish. Are these even done anymore?

This thread surprised me, because just a few years ago there was a lot of hoopla here in the Portland-Metro area of kids having up to three hours worth of homework regularly. Which I thought was stupid.

It was just me at home, so doing a little homework was more peaceful and less distracting than doing in a classroom. In fact, study hall was usually a failure for me because I couldn't stay on task with all the distractions.

Alan Smithee wrote:

How many kids in your home school class?

Two.

Supernova wrote:

Two.

Yeah. I wonder how well your teacher would have done with 30+ students that she(?) only had contact with for about 40 min. a day. My initial comment stated "a reasonable" amount of homework. I would agree that some kids are being overloaded but one work sheet of homework per class isn't, make that shouldn't be a problem.

Rarely is a maybe, never is a problem. It's easy to forget what the teacher was talking about in class, half the time the students are only halfway listening anyway. Homework is important because it forces the students to independently reinforce what they learned. Makes them think and problem solve on their own. A teacher who never gives out homework is doing her students a disservice IMO.

AtownPeep wrote:

Rarely is a maybe, never is a problem. It's easy to forget what the teacher was talking about in class, half the time the students are only halfway listening anyway. Homework is important because it forces the students to independently reinforce what they learned. Makes them think and problem solve on their own. A teacher who never gives out homework is doing her students a disservice IMO.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. I had to help the 2 neighbor boys with their social studies homework on American Indians because they couldn't find the answers in their textbooks. One of the boys was told if he didn't get the right answers, he would be flunked for the whole class, so he wrote down the right answers, which came straight out of the book, and they STILL said he got it wrong, without bothering to answer how then their textbooks could all be wrong since that's the source of all the answers.

Alan Smithee wrote:

Yeah. I wonder how well your teacher would have done with 30+ students that she(?) only had contact with for about 40 min. a day. My initial comment stated "a reasonable" amount of homework. I would agree that some kids are being overloaded but one work sheet of homework per class isn't, make that shouldn't be a problem.

Thank you. I would be skeptical if a teacher didn't assign any homework whatsoever. Nobody's asking them to do a textbook, but refreshing the information you got in class at home isn't a detriment.

I think they should assign homework, but as someone said they need to be consistent. When my son was younger, the years he had a teacher that would once in a while assign homework, was very frustrating. I would forget to ask him if he had any, and he would forget. Not to say it wasn't our responsibility to remember, but as creatures of habit so as soon as I got used to him never having any, a work sheet would pop up.