Ī 2014 study found kindergarteners to fifth graders averaged 2.9 hours of homework per week, sixth to eighth graders 3.2 hours per teacher, and ninth to twelfth graders 3.5 hours per teacher. And, in 1986, the US government included homework as an educational quality boosting tool. Public opinion swayed again in favor of homework in the 1950s due to concerns about keeping up with the Soviet Union’s technological advances during the Cold War. In the 1930s, homework was portrayed as child labor, which was newly illegal, but the prevailing argument was that kids needed time to do household chores. In the early 1900s, progressive education theorists, championed by the magazine Ladies’ Home Journal, decried homework’s negative impact on children’s physical and mental health, leading California to ban homework for students under 15 from 1901 until 1917. This concept of homework quickly spread across Europe and was brought to the United States by Horace Mann, who encountered the idea in Prussia. In the 19th century, German students of the Volksschulen or “People’s Schools” were given assignments to complete outside of the school day. Memorization exercises as homework continued through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment by monks and other scholars.

Pliny the Younger asked his followers to practice their speeches at home. While we are unsure who invented homework, we do know that the word “homework” dates back to ancient Rome. Source: lourdesnique,, May 25, 2016įrom dioramas to book reports, from algebraic word problems to research projects, whether students should be given homework, as well as the type and amount of homework, has been debated for over a century.

Students should have less homework