One of the things I remember about high school was having all these hardcover textbooks that I would trudge home with in my school bag. And more often than not, when I would drop my bag on the hallway floor with this loud reverberating thump, my mom would ask me why on earth was my bag so heavy. My answer to her query was always the same – I needed those heavy books to finish all the homework assignments handed out to me that day.

I’m sure this is a memory most of you have as well from the rites of passage through the hallowed halls of the high school education system and beyond. And yet, looking back on it now, I can’t help but wonder if our parents worried or obsessed over homework to the degree that parents do these days. To wit, at the school board meeting held this past week, a rather intense discussion was held among the various school representatives over a survey we were asked to fill out regarding the value of homework at the elementary school level. Although the overall issue of our children’s education is sadly one that rarely stirs up any collective emotion or drive to continually examine the system’s current efficacy, one aspect that does draw parents in like bees to a field of flowers is the subject of homework – specifically how much is enough.

Of course, the key factor to addressing this issue is to answer the question of what we expect the goal of homework to be, of what we hope our children will gain from the process of doing homework. Obviously, the first expectation behind homework is that Click here to continue reading »”What Is The Value Of Homework?”