- [Blair] Hello everybody and
welcome back to the channel. My name is Blair or the Illuminati. And today we're talking about homework. Specifically, why it was invented, does it even serve a purpose and why the hell does no one wanna do it? I know my last educational video was a bit controversial for a few of you. And I wanna make it clear that I'm not a teacher
educator, et cetera, and not at least in the classical sense. And I don't have the
benefit of an inside look at the school system. I do think the school
system needs changing. I don't think many people would really argue with me on that, but I don't really blame the teachers. In fact, I'm quite far from it. Teachers generally speaking,
want their students to succeed and this call to just teach for the test or for funding mindset isn't really their choice, it's just something that exists and it's a necessary evil because of the system that's created. So I just wanna make that super clear before we get into anything else today. But with that said, homework, I'm pretty sure we've all had it. I definitely hated it. And I had to do it out
of obligation, so why? Through education says
that in one century AD, Pliny the Younger and Oratory teachers supposedly invented homework
by asking his followers to practice public speaking at home. It was to help them become more confident and fluent in their speeches. Other sources say Roberto
Novelis of Venice, Italy is often credited with
having invented homework in 1095 or 1905,
depending on your sources. Upon further inspection however, he seems to be more of an internet myth than a historical personage. There are some sources out there that say he used homework in 1905 as
a punishment for students, but not a single credible website or news article actually talks about him. In fact, the true individual responsible for inventing
homework as we know today is Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
which good Lord, what a name? And I butchered that, and that's fine. Johann was a German philosopher and known to be the founding
father of German Nationalism. In the year 1814, the people of Prussia had lost their sense of nationalism. They're choosing to go
back to their livelihood instead of serving the country after war. Johann came up with the concept of Volksshule and Realsshule. Volksshule was a mandatory
education system of nine years which was similar to primary
and lower secondary school. Realsshule was a secondary
school system reserved for the aristocrats. Aristocats, god, I've been watching way too much Disney, aristocrats. Homework was part of Volksshule to demonstrate the nation's
power on common people and stir up a sense of nationalism. This system was slowly
adopted all over Europe although some countries like Finland continued with their system of education and refused to impose
homework on the students. In 1843, Horace Mann, the secretary of the Massachusetts
Board of Education then went to Europe and visited
the schools and Prussia. On his return, he presented his findings in the seventh annual
reports of the board. These reports were reprinted
all over the United States and led to the reform of the
American education system. And again, for those of you
who have seen my other video about why the school system
is trashed the way it is, you most certainly have
heard the name Horace Mann. So I'm not entirely surprised to see that he makes a reappearance in today's video as well. However, it's not as if Horace Mann brought homework to the States and everyone instantly
accepted and adopted the idea. Homework actually has quite a history of being controversial. Most of this controversy arose after laws in the late 19th
and early 20th century passed mandating school attendance
for children and teenagers, at least here in the US anyway. Parents started to experience and we're still trying to figure out what family life would look like with so much of their child's time gone. Parents argued that
kids should be outdoors and that their bodies
were at risk of damage if they were stressed by overwork. Change doesn't come easy after all. And this was clearly a large adjustment for many American families. One man known for being one
of homework's biggest critics was Edward Bok. In January, 1900, Edward Bok
wrote a scathing editorial on Ladies' Home Journal
about homework in America with a headline, "A National Crime "At The Feet of American Parents." "The child is made to study far, "far beyond his physical strength "and consequently his mental
good." Bok pronounced. "The elementary and
junior high school student "shouldn't even need to
tote books home from school "because he should be
outside with his friends "between dismissal and dinner. "And after that, he should sleep. "To Rob a child of a
playtime which belongs to him "is a rank injustice." Bok argued. No child under 15 years of age should be given any home study,
whatever by his teachers. Bok continued to write
articles along this vein for some time, even
stating that the problems were worse than he thought when more parents and teachers
wrote into the journal, telling him about the
stress and heavy workload put on their children. By 1901, the year after box
articles ran in the journal, "two thirds of American
urban school districts "had restricted homework." Peter Stearns writes in his "History of Parental Anxiety". In testimony he gave
before Congress in 1900, William Torrey Harris, the
US Commissioner of Education said that homework was a
prolific source of abuse and ought to be rigidly limited so that the child does not study more than two hours per day out of school after he is 12 years old and not any out of
school before that time. These anti homework efforts were most effective in California, where the state legislature
mandated in 1901 that no child under 15 should
have any homework at all. For decades this opinion
was pretty much the norm. Homework was too stressful,
children went to bed with it on their minds at night and children with large
homework burdens were miserable. Obviously I can't vouch for every parent in the early 20th century, but the anti homework
movement was going strong. Although very few districts
abolished homework completely many abolished it in grades K to eight. It was practically universal that no child in third grade
or lower should have homework. And for elementary and secondary schools, it was typically given in small amounts. So what changed? Homework was atypical
throughout the 30s and 40s. Why did opinions reverse? Simple, competition. After
the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik One satellite in 1957, everything became about progress. The trend towards less
homework was quickly reversed as the United States became obsessed with competing with the Russians, fearful that children were
unprepared to compete in a future that would be increasingly
dominated by technology, school officials, teachers and parents saw homework as a means for accelerating children's
acquisition of knowledge. The homework problem was reconceived as part of a national crisis. The US was losing the cold war because Russian children were smarter. That is they were working harder and achieving more in school. The new discourse pronounced
too little homework and indicator of the dismal
state of American schooling, a commitment to heavy homework loads was alleged to reveal seriousness
of purpose and education. Homework became an instrument
of national defense policy. And people began to feel that
the US was falling behind. Within just a few years, pro
homework opinions dominated, schools reverse their
anti homework policies and the social activities
dominating children's lives were seen as unacceptable. Life magazine ran a competitive article, showing an American teenager, dancing, smiling out with friends and a Russian teenager
doing science experiments in a quiet parlor. The public response was clear, if the US was going to win the cold war then American children needed to keep up. However, the us mindset
didn't stay this way either. By the late 1960s and early 1970s in the midst of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, a counter-culture emerged
that questioned the status quo in literally every aspect of
personal and political life. A popular book teaching as a subversive activity
attacked traditional methods of what was labeled the
educational establishment. Indicative of the times
a new debate emerged over homework and other
educational activities. The anti homework
arguments were reminiscent of the progressive arguments
of the early 20th century. Again, homework was seen as a symptom of too much pressure
on students to achieve. In 1966, the National
Education Association issued a statement advocating for not more than an
hour of homework a day, and that homework be limited
to four nights a week. Personally, I'm more in line with this middle ground mindset. The anti homework mindset
isn't completely healthy because practicing what a
student's learned in class can be helpful. We'll get into how homework is used today and the pros and cons in just a moment like I won't pretend that
homework has zero merit, but I agree that there
should be practical limits. A kid should have time to be a kid, to meet with friends and
to pursue and practice and learn their own hobbies and interests. Of course, there's the argument to be made that many kids are overstated these days with sports, cheer practice, swimming, music lessons, dance lessons, you name it. And I'm not a parent obviously, unless we're counting Casper. But I think that there's
got to be a balance, a balance of education
after school activities and free time for a child
to choose what it is that they want to be doing. If homework is so overwhelming that it regularly cuts into
family time or a hobby, then I agree that it's probably too much. Anyway, that love hate
relationship with homework began to shift once again in the 1980s. In 1983, a study a nation at risk became the first major
report by the government attempting to prove that
the purported inadequacies of our schools and our students were responsible for the
troubles of the US economy. The report claimed that there was a rising tide
of mediocrity in schools and that eye movement for
academic excellence was needed. A nation at risk planted
the seed of the idea that school success was
responsible for economic success. Anti homework and pro homework views have shifted over the
years to say the least. The standards are raised and lowered as parents see their kids
need more time to be children then raised when we're
competing with other nations or an economy, you get the picture. The pro homework trend
continued until the 90s, then in the late nineties, the
tide turned against it again. Now the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards the pro side. According to ascd.org. Again, I'm not saying eliminate homework, there needs to be a balance, but some of the reasoning
behind pro homework beliefs doesn't always stack up. Homework isn't the only way to teach a student responsibility, and more homework doesn't
equal a better curriculum. Research seems to answer that question. Does homework help children
learn? with it depends. So an all or nothing approach
hardly seems to be the answer, but then what does it depend on? What are the pros and cons? Let's get into that now and
try to tackle the question, does homework even work? Obviously this is a really,
really broad question. So bear with me here. My answer is still, it depends. I'm sure homework works for
some people and not for others. We all learn differently and that's fine. But I want to talk about
who homework works for and a bit about why. In one Atlantic article
called "The Cult of Homework", they state that a 2015 study
found that kindergartners who researches agree
shouldn't do any homework, spend an average of 25
minutes a night on it. Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes
three elementary schools and a middle school worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students
more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August, 2017, it rolled
out an updated policy which emphasized that
homework should be meaningful and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break. "The first year was a bit
bumpy." says Louann Carlomagno the district superintendent. She says the adjustment was at
times hard for the teachers, some of whom who had been doing their job in a similar fashion for
a quarter of a century. Parents expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they
took the time to realize that it was okay to not
have an hour of homework for a second grader. That was new. This seems like the opposite problem we've seen in the past. Before parents were worried about their children
having too much homework and we saw articles
advocating for its ban. Now, on the other hand,
parents weren't familiar with their young children
spending so little time on it. Researchers also tend to
fall in one or two camps when it comes to homework. Some like Harris Cooper,
a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University say that homework isn't overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He references a 2014
Bookings Institution Report that found little
evidence the homework load had increased and that
honourous amounts are rare. According to Alfie Kohn
squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three
paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of "The Homework Myth", why our kids get too much of
a bad thing considers homework to be a reliable extinguisher of curiosity and has several complaints
with the evidence that Cooper and other site in favor of it. Khon notes among other things that Cooper's 2006 meta analysis
doesn't establish causation and that its central correlation is based on children's potentially
unreliable self-reporting of how much time they
spend doing homework. Khon also takes issue
with the way achievement is commonly assessed. "If all you want is to cram kids' heads "with facts for tomorrow's test "that they're going to
forget by next week, "yeah, if you give them more time "to make them do the cramming at night, "that could raise the scores." He says. But if you're interested in
kids who know how to think or enjoy learning then homework isn't merely ineffective
but counterproductive. I do disagree with this
teaching for the test idea as I've already made pretty clear, but is all homework related to tests? Well, not necessarily, some homework like Mike Simpson Head of
the Stone Independent School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
believes should be exploratory. In other words, worksheets,
repetitive math homework, the type of homework I
remember doing and hating has been done away with at their school. Teachers say that when they asked students to take 20 minutes for pleasure reading or if they put out a bucket for kids to draw their assignments
for them in some variety, or even if they allow their students to manage their own class time, that's shown the best results. Some students, one teacher says, "Will willingly spend time
on assignments at home. "Whether because they're
particularly engaged "because they prefer "to do some deeper
thinking outside of school "or because they needed
to spend time in class "that day preparing for a
test the following period." "They're making meaningful
decisions about their time "that I don't think education "really ever gives students to experience "nor the practice of doing."
The teacher concluded. And time management is
such an important task. If students are overworked with
hours and hours of homework, then I'm not really sure they'd be learning time management either. They would just be surviving
overly difficult workloads. Seeing how these different
teachers say they adapt and the results gathered from it, it really is interesting to me. Based on this article alone, I'd say homework works
depending on how it's given, but what about the other sources and other research articles? One Forbes article states that research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance and goes into further depth
about why it doesn't work. They say there's something
called retrieval practice, which means trying to recall information you've already learned. The optimal time to engage
in retrieval practice is not immediately after
you've acquired information but after you've forgotten it a bit, like perhaps after school. A homework assignment
could require students to answer questions about what
was covered in class that day without consulting their notes. Research has found that retrieval practice and similar learning strategies are far more powerful
than simply rereading or reviewing material. It's not so much homework
in general not working but the types of homework that are given. Another objection Forbes brings up is that some children
have greater advantages. Whether that's internet access, well-educated parents, parents
that can afford tutors, their own space to work, the list goes on. If homework isn't
reliant on these factors, but the simpler 20
minutes pleasure reading that we've seen implemented, this could help level out the
playing field, so to speak. The National Education Association advocates for the 10 minute rule, 10 minutes for first graders,
20 minutes for second graders, all the way up to 120 minutes
a night for 12th graders. Some teachers advocate
for no homework whatsoever because as they say, it doesn't tell them what
their students are learning. Again, I feel that this
depends on the teacher, the subject and the student. There's too many variables at play here to give a one size fits all type answer. And again, this is a very
emotionally charged topic which can make finding middle ground that much more difficult. And again, it doesn't help when
even the research has mixed as so much as it depends
on where the study is done, which communities, et cetera. A Stanford researcher found
that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school or family, friends, and activities matter. "Our findings on the effects of homework "challenge the traditional assumption "that a homework is inherently good." Wrote Dennis Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate
School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education. The researchers use survey data to examine perceptions about
homework, student wellbeing and behavioral engagement in
a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high performing high schools in upper middle-class
California communities. Along with the survey data
Pope and her colleagues used open-ended questions to explore the students'
views on homework. Median household exceeds
90,000 in these communities and 93% of students went onto college either two year or four year. Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours
of homework each night. "These findings address how
current homework practices "in privileged high-performing schools "sustain students' advantage
in competitive climates "yet hinder learning a full engagement "and wellbeing." Pope said. Pope and her colleagues
found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. This study reports great stress with less than 1% of students saying homework wasn't a stressor, reductions in health
like sleep deprivation, less time for friends, family,
and extracurricular pursuits. But what the times call the
most comprehensive research on homework to date as of 2016 when the article was written anyway has found evidence of
a positive correlation between homework and student achievement. Students who did homework
performed better in school according to Harris Cooper study. The same Harris Cooper
we mentioned earlier, who Kohn the author of "The Homework Myth" has argued against. May yet another source as utopia says that the problem can be a number of
subjects a student has too. Teachers in middle and high school should be aware of how much homework other teachers are assigning. It may seem reasonable to assign 30 minutes of daily homework, but across six subjects,
that's three hours far above a reasonable amount for even a high school senior. Psychologist Maurice Elias has
also seen a common mistake. Individual teachers
create homework policies that in aggregate can overwhelm students. He suggests that teachers work together to develop a school-wide homework policy and make it a key topic
of back to school night and the first parent teacher
conferences of the school year. And again, other articles argue that it should be abolished completely and it is the greatest extinguisher of curiosity ever invented. Needless to say, no two
sources I found were the same. No one agreed. I can't deny that homework
plays a stressful part in a student's life. Let alone when personal issues
come up for said student, but at the same time, I'm not sure I'm in the get rid of homework
completely camp either. Some say that it's the
2006 study from Cooper that it's old and outdated, but there is still some
merit in learning at home. Even if a child or young adult isn't doing a worksheet, blending learning and fun as cheesy as
it sounds is important. And I think we can all at
least agree there a little bit. Personally, I really liked the idea of more open-ended assignments or more flexible worksheets, applying math problems to daily life, writing a short story, maybe rebuilding a trebuchet for physics, you get the point. On a little bit of a personal note here, when I was learning percentages as a kid, I remember my mom would
make me calculate the tip whenever we would go out to eat, and I'm not gonna lie tipping is probably the most I use percentages
for in my adult life now. So long as there isn't a little like recommended
amount slip on the receipt, but that's honestly the most
I've ever really used it, IRL. The reality is because I
definitely suck at math, that's why my major was not
anything to do with math, and that's why in some of my videos, you'll probably see math mistakes because I do try my darnedest
but this was never my thing. But anyways guys, I know black
and white answer to this, and usually I can provide
you some kind of conclusion by the end of each of my videos. But today that just isn't the case. The topic of homework
is a controversial one and I'm not exaggerating when I say that literally
no two sources of mine were in complete and total agreement with any other source that I had. And I often find a variety
of perspectives and sources when I'm doing my research
for a particular topic. If you guys have ever
looked at my sourcing list in any of my videos, it's usually
like a minimum of sources. And I think we've gone as
high as maybe 60 to 80 sources for some videos, but you guys know that there's
a lot of work and research that go into these videos. And I couldn't really
find two like sources that agreed on anything like to a T, it was the weirdest thing ever. So I'm sure if I were a teacher or had a child that this would
definitely affect my opinion as an outsider looking in depending on what I was
reading, especially. But I think a middle ground
is most in order here. Seniors, especially those
that are stressed enough with college applications and AP tests shouldn't really have more than three hours of homework a night. And again, I don't blame the teachers here because many of them are required to follow a teaching
for the test curriculum, which isn't necessarily
going to work for everyone and it gives teachers less
freedom in the classroom. More on that in my previous
education video though. So with all of that being said, that's where I'm going
to end today's video. And I really hope you guys enjoyed it. So let me know what you learned
down in the comment section. And if you like the video, make sure to hit that like button. If you guys are new to the channel, make sure to hit that subscribe button. If you want even more content from me, you can pop open my description box again. You'll see my sourcing,
all of my social media, second channels that I work with and all of the wonderful creative people that also work with me to help make these videos come to life. So thank you all for
watching today's video. Love you guys, and I'll see you in the next one, bye. (upbeat music)
