Poor Students Need Homework

If affluent kids stopped doing homework, they'd be fine. But also for students who are struggling to catch up, it remains indispensable.
Of all the well-intentioned but unhelpful things folk have ever said about education, perhaps the least helpful was from your father of progressive education himself. “Exactly what the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that has got to you want for all you children of the city,” wrote John Dewey.  “Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

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Karl Taro Greenfeld, a superb and wise parent, wants less homework for his daughter.  He laments that she is becoming “a sleep-deprived teen zombie.” My daughter, too.  It’s a fashionable complaint, nearly a cliché among those whose children attend top schools: Do our kids should really work this hard?

Truth to share with, young Esmee Greenfeld’s educational opportunities and life chances would possibly be undiminished if her teachers limited homework to some humane 30 to hr every night.  Her gifted and talented middle school may even ban homework altogether with little to no ill effect. I’m more concerned, however, about homework falling broadly from favor weight loss affluent families rollback against it.  Per Dewey’s maxim, education “guidelines,” fads, and trends tend to roll downhill from what ostensibly works in well-funded, affluent schools to prospects serving low-income kids of color.  After all, whether or not this’s what the best and wisest parent wants, it has to do well for all those children, right?

Not necessarily.

Complaints about homework usually miss the mark twice. First, the pushback does focus on quantity, not quality.  Also, those who complain probably the most are generally the education equivalent of the worried well.  With all respect to Dewey, I wish we would regard somewhat less the best and wisest parents want, and consider instead the pernicious “Matthew Effect.”  Coined from the cognitive scientist Keith Stanovich, it will require its name coming from a passage inside New Testament: "For unto all that hath will likely be given, and that he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not will be removed even whatever he hath."  In clear language this means “the rich get richer plus the poor get poorer.”  In education, those who are rich in language and knowledge get richer; those people who are poor fall further behind.  It’s a useful frame compared to the achievement gap, which suggests that low-income kids of color merely have any making up ground to accomplish.  The Matthew Effect causes it to become clear the best way hard which is to complete.

I don’t know Greenfeld, nonetheless it’s a safe bet that he and his wife, an internationally trained architect, have filled their daughters’ lives with books, travel, engaging dining room table conversation, and also the style of enrichment that University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau dubbed “concerted cultivation.” His students are squarely within the rich-get-richer side with the Matthew Effect.  The nature of language acquisition means that children like Greenfeld’s have a very much easier time learning new words and gaining new knowledge going to school.  To amass, children born into poverty often mature with few enrichment opportunities.  They come to high school having heard millions fewer words,  and enrichment opportunities are rare.  The dreaded Matthew Effect ensures that they fall even more behind.  Consider these children as school-dependent learners: As long as they don’t obtain it at school, they don’t have it in any respect.

Thats liable to bring us to homework.  Affluent parents whose kids attend great schools see only the “work” component of homework.  Individuals concerned with disadvantaged children worry a little more about the “home.”  The cognitive great things about “becoming an adult Greenfeld” arguably make everything extra work redundant.  The absence of that enrichment causes it to be indispensable.

For your low-income kids of color that I have worked with homework remains a necessary gap-closing tool.
Time is easily the most precious asset in addressing the Matthew Effect.  A loss of homework has to be minor inconvenience at the worst for Greenfeld’s children, whose path through the American education system has largely been turned straight by happy accident of birth (it’s heresy in education to say “demographics is destiny” however it continues to be the solution to bet).  For that low-income kids of color which i been employed by with, thoughtful, well-crafted homework, particularly in reading, remains a vital gap-closing tool.

Parents that are concerned about an excessive amount of homework would also be on firmer ground as long as they questioned the validity, not simply the amount of homework.  The appropriate debate about homework – now and always – mustn't be “simply how much” but “the kind” and “what for?”  Using homework merely to cover material there was insufficient time for in class is less helpful, as an example, than “distributed practice”: reinforcing and reviewing essential skills and knowledge teachers want students to make their own or keep in long-term memory.  Independent reading is additionally important.  There are numerous more rare and unique words even just in not too difficult texts compared to the conversation of school graduates.  Reading widely and with stamina is a approach to build verbal proficiency and background knowledge, important secrets of mature reading comprehension.  Causing all of this is a great deal more of importance to disadvantaged kids compared to Greenfeld’s children, already big winners inside Cognitive Dream House Sweepstakes.

The very best and wisest parents might have a good grasp of what their children want.  But they may not be the top judges of how many other people’s children need.