Q&A

Questions for Alfie Kohn

The Homework Myth

Alfie Kohn is one of the most provocative people writing about education today. In his latest book, The Homework Myth (Da Capo), he takes up the cudgels against a mainstay of modern school life. Kohn recently spoke with NEA Today’s Alain Jehlen.

What is the “homework myth?”

Kohn:  Most parents are familiar with the downside of homework: the frustration and exhaustion, the family conflicts, and, most disturbing, the possibility that kids’ curiosity, their very interest in learning, is being eroded by these unending assignments. But we all assume it’s worth it. We take on faith that kids’ tears are something to overlook, because homework will raise their achievement levels, deepen their understanding, teach them good study skills.

What I found is that it just ain’t so. No research has ever demonstrated any academic benefit of giving homework in elementary schools. None. Even in high school, where there’s a correlation between standard measures of achievement and the assignment of homework, that correlation is weak, and it doesn’t prove that homework was responsible for the higher achievement. 

Finally, the idea that homework builds character, promotes self-discipline, teaches good work habits, is an urban myth. Except that it’s also accepted in the suburbs.

Many people will say, “That’s ridiculous. Practice makes perfect.”

Kohn: And that’s a very good example of how folk wisdom, rather than data, are driving our educational practices.  It’s true you need to practice a lot to be good in tennis, [but] what needs to be proved is that understanding, say, mathematical principles is analogous to tennis.

What lots of practice tends to do is produce mindless responses, sometimes, to the detriment of understanding ideas.

I would argue that, in math, as in almost all other fields, exactly the opposite is what ought to be driving our teaching. We need to help kids understand ideas from the inside out, not develop automatic responses.

But some things need to be memorized. For example, you need to understand what multiplication is all about, but you also need to know that 7 times 6 is 42.

 Kohn:   Well, first I’m struck by the fact that, having done about 50 interviews in the last month on this topic, that’s the sole example people use to make this case. So, even if it were true that kids had to memorize the multiplication table, that leaves 99.9% of math homework totally unjustified.

Secondly, you don’t tend to remember the things that you crammed into memory by rote. You tend to remember what you use. My word processing software has far more commands than I’ll ever use. But if I sat down with flash cards and tried to learn what Control+Alt+S does, it would be largely unsuccessful. But the ones that I use a lot, I’m going to keep with me.

And the same is true for math, which is why the best math teachers would never just drill [students] on what 7 times 6 equals, but, rather offer them multiplication in a context and for a purpose that requires them to have access to that fact.

Is there any kind of homework that you think is useful?

Kohn: Is some homework better than other kinds? Absolutely yes. In my book, I don’t come down ultimately on the side of saying there should never be any homework, ever. What I say is, we should change the default.

Right now, teachers are [not] saying, “once in a while, when it’s really justified, we’re going to presume to infringe on family time by making you do additional assignments.” Rather, what teachers are saying is, “We’re going to make you do something just about every night. Later on, we’ll figure out what to make you do.” That strikes me as bizarre.

What I propose is we have no homework except on those occasions when the teacher can make a good case that a given assignment is likely to be beneficial to most kids in the class. I think there are some occasions, more of them in high school than elementary school.

So, what kind of assignment would be useful?

Kohn:  It might be something that has to be done at home, like interviewing one’s parents about family history. Or, replicating a science experiment in the kitchen. Second, free reading, without having to carefully log and analyze what one has read (thereby draining all of the joy out of literature) is a terrific thing. Just read books of your own choice. We have good research on the benefits of freely chosen self-reading.  And, thinking about issues in advance of a discussion the following day.

When you taught, did you assign homework?

Kohn: I did give homework, but it was because I hadn’t thought about these issues. I hadn’t been invited to look at the research or reflect on the logic. And, most of all, I was uncertain.

There’s a high school teacher I quote in my book, who says, “I used to assign homework when I started, because I wasn’t very good.  As I got to be a better teacher, there was less and less need to make kids bear the burden of my inability to get through what needed to be done during class.”

This teacher, who teaches AP social studies courses in a public school, gives virtually no homework, and the kids are doing great.

His students are coming in now, having followed current events, and spontaneously making connections between what they read in the newspaper and what’s going on in class. They’re doing more thinking that matters now precisely because there’s no traditional homework.