No discussion of student work would be complete without addressing the issue of whether or not to assign mandatory homework.  Many teachers assume this is a natural part of school and essential for learning. However, there are circumstances in which mandatory homework is truly counterproductive.  

It is important to remember that there is no sacred mandate for assigning homework.  In order to decide whether to assign mandatory homework, you must ask first whether it obeys the Prime Directive and enhances self-directed learning.  It is essential to evaluate the homework’s utility on a case-by-case basis, one class at a time.

There are strong arguments for and against.  Here are a few:

Why You Should Assign Homework

Homework is necessary to cover the required curriculum

Having students do all their individual work in class simply requires more time than having them do some of it at home.  Individual student work in class inevitably displaces some other activity, like the introduction of new material. As a result, less material can be learned.  Given the ever-increasing demands on time and the curricular pressures that are currently in vogue, homework is an essential mechanism for moving through the curriculum at an effective pace. This is particularly true for advanced placement or other content-heavy courses.

Working alone is an important part of the learning process

Part of the learning process requires individual effort.  A student must struggle with new material, making mistakes and running into roadblocks.  A student’s efforts at metacognition — identifying what she doesn’t understand yet, figuring out what to do about it — is an essential ingredient in learning.  

Of course, a student can do these things alone in a classroom (and should, if you decide not to assign homework), but sitting at home alone and facing the material without the support of peers or a teacher is a different experience than working alone in the classroom, surrounded by classmates.

Homework trains students to be responsible

The decision to do homework is made by each student alone, and thus reinforces her personal responsibility in the learning process.  If homework is designed well and students take ownership of it, it reinforces tenacity. The effort of pushing through work on her own helps train her in the ability to stay focused and motivated.

The “flipped” classroom requires regularly assigned homework

In most classes, the teacher introduces new material in class and students are assigned homework so that they can work with the new material on their own.   The flipped classroom is based on the premise that it makes more sense for students be introduced to new material at home through self-guided software, video lectures, or other means.  This, in turn, allows the student to work through those ideas in class the following day, where she can be guided by the teacher and learn through conversation with her fellow students. In this sense, the roles of classwork and homework are reversed.  Obviously, this requires assigning homework whenever new material is being introduced.

Everyone else does it

Once you decide to reconsider whether it is appropriate and useful to assign homework to your students, you will probably be confronted with the realization that you are alone in questioning this ubiquitous practice.  Deciding to forego homework in your classes may put you at odds with your colleagues. You may also feel guilty for not be able to make your students do the work, even though in reality many teachers are unsuccessful in getting all their students to do so.  

This is not a good reason to assign homework, but recognizing that it is a factor in your decision-making is important in coming to a conclusion on your own.

You are required to do it

There may be departmental or school-wide expectations about assigning homework.  In that case, any damage that can result from this practice (as described below) must be ameliorated as much as possible.  Your task is to minimize the amount of time students must spend doing your homework. This can be accomplished by reviewing the upcoming work with them in class or even giving them class time to complete the work.  

Mandatory homework systemically exacerbates the problem of the bell curve

It is critically important to set aside the idea that students should do their homework.  Instead, we must acknowledge the reality that unsuccessful students, for a wide range of reasons, often do not do their homework.  This is both a cause and a result of their lack of success. A student who doesn’t complete her homework is already a failure when she walks into the classroom.  Mandatory homework sorts students into successes and failures regardless of what happens in class. And, of course, a student who is feeling guilty or is shamed for not doing the work is less likely to learn in the classroom.

Homework can interfere with the personal growth of students

Staying focused on optimizing self-directed learning (rather than on what students should be doing) allows you to work on the underlying problems that interfere with a student’s ability to learn.  As Carol Dweck discusses in her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”,a student with a fixed mindset  believes she is incapable of change, regardless of how hard she works.  As a result, she may give up before even starting. Helping her attain a growth mindset — the belief that she is capable of effective effort — will allow her, in turn, to have successful experiences and build on that success.  Changing a student’s mentality requires support from the teacher, which can be given in class or in individual meetings with the student outside of class. It is unlikely to occur while the student is doing homework alone.

A student may also be too insecure  or shy to ask for the help she needs to even be able to start the work.  Cultivating a classroom culture where asking for help and peer tutoring are integrated into everyday experiences can make admitting a lack of understanding or making mistakes acceptable.  Again, this is a function of the classroom experience, and not likely to occur by doing assigned homework alone.

Homework rarely teaches students to be responsible

The idea that homework builds a responsible posture in students is based on the premise that they want to do the work.  If they are merely doing school, and only completing homework because they want to get good grades, then they are in essence being bribed — not a particularly responsible attitude.  If they resent the homework and do it anyway, (as many successful students do), they are being trained to be subservient, rather than responsible. 

Homework can be unfair

Some students live with circumstances that make doing homework difficult, or even impossible.  Some must put in long hours at a job outside of school or be caregivers for family members. Some are homeless.  Even in less dire circumstances, some don’t have access to computers or other technology that can preclude completing homework.

Homework can interfere with the student-teacher working relationship

In many traditional classrooms, homework has the counterproductive effect of forcing students to do something that they would not do if they had a choice.  It often leads to unnecessary power struggles and can put the teacher in the unhappy role of nagging students to do the work and criticizing them when they don’t.  It also reinforces the role of the teacher as the sole decision maker, which undermines student self-directedness.  

Homework causes widespread sleep deprivation

Ask your students how many of them got nine hours of sleep last night.  In my experience, very few do, especially students who are academically successful.  Since that is the amount of sleep that most adolescents need, they are nearly all sleep-deprived.  If, in addition to time spent socializing (which they are hardwired to do), participating in extra curricular activities, holding a part-time job, or spending time with their technology, they are required to do hours of homework, sleep deprivation is inevitable.  Combine that with the fact that the diurnal cycle for most adolescents naturally keeps them up late into the night and sleeping late into the morning, and you can see why asking them to do rigorous academic work at 8 AM or earlier is simply unrealistic.

Sleep deprivation is physically and psychologically stressful, particularly when it is chronic.  Beyond that, it is an unpleasant way to live and further erodes many students’ enthusiasm for school.  There is no question that sleep deprivation, exacerbated by excessive homework, is a major impediment to self-directed learning for many students.

There is too much school

When a student spends the whole day in school and most of the evening doing school work (as successful students often do), it creates a sense of relentless effort with little time for personal pleasure.  For such students, school work can be reduced to drudgery, and vacations and holidays feel like a major relief. If we want to cultivate self-directedness and a desire to learn for the sake of learning, this posture towards school is counterproductive.

Homework often doesn’t work

The research on the efficacy of homework is ambiguous at best. Despite the almost universal belief by teachers that homework increases learning, a number of studies indicate that in most circumstances it does not significantly enhance students’ understanding of the material.  In addition to the issues listed above, this raises a natural question — if students are not actually learning while doing homework, what purpose does it serve?