Down with homework

Teacher Magazine letter: 2009 April

Regarding “Down with Homework!” (Teacher, Jan./Feb. 2008).

As a teacher of senior English, I have gradually moved to a no-homework policy (the only exception being the reading of novels, for which there is simply not enough class time). Senior students have athletics, hobbies, social lives, and jobs, all of which are inescapable if not essential parts of modern life. I want to respect students’ needs to become fully rounded individuals rather than being overstressed, always-studying educational automata. Students are given enough class time to do the work, resulting in much more work being done, skills being developed, and attitudes toward school being improved.

There has been no loss of skill or marks as nearly as I can tell, on both in-school assessment and on provincial exams. We have also moved into fully student-directed literature studies,
where students choose the novels and stories they read. We have our students doing 15 minutes of nonschool-related (but for-credit, if students so choose) silent reading daily. The result? Kids are reading more, enjoying reading, and in a school of 1,300, we have 1,200 books signed out of the library at any given time. You know you are doing something right when the librarian has waiting lists for novels and buys more books because the kids have so many signed out—this
in a school with a high ESL population.

The upshot of all this is that giving students less homework and more choice seems to be paying off.

Chris Stolz
Surrey