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Heavy backpacks, light load
The general consensus behind closed doors is that Kids These Days are, well, dumber than they used to be. And yet, their backpacks all seem to be so heavy. They have all this homework, from kindergarten through graduate school. As Phi Beta Cons reports, “One of the enduring myths about education has it that students today are buckling under a massive overload of homework, drills, rote memorization, and college preparation.” But is this true? Consider the numbers.
The 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement found that 55 percent of high school students spent less than one hour per week “Reading/studying for class.” Only 10 percent exceeded ten hours per week.”
The 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement found that 18 percent of seniors in college logged only one to five hours per week “Preparing for class.” Twenty-six percent stood at six to ten hours per week. Professors estimate that 25 hours per week is the minimum for success.”
The National School Boards Association reported last year that the average time per week for social networking was nine hours.
Just because their backpacks are heavy doesn’t mean their actually doing anything with the books.
back to top28 Comments to “Heavy backpacks, light load”
That should be “they’re” in the original post, not “their.”
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Pretty sure I spent at least twenty-five hours a week on homework in college. Let’s see … about three hours on weekdays (15 hours weekly) and then another 10 hours on the weekend (five for Saturday, five for Sunday: yep, 25 hours.
And I needed every single one.
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I can’t speak for kids all over the country, but many of the public schools here in Silicon Valley have a very rigorous curriculum and the students here are every bit as busy and stressed out keeping up with their heavy homework load, their extra-curricular clubs and sports, their high-powered preparation for SATs, ACTs, and SAT II subject, etc. tests as their overachieving, workaholic parents.
When I went to high school in the seventies, it was nothing like this.
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I like the approach of having kids have a set of textbooks kept at home and another set kept at school (in either the classroom or a locker).
If we’ve “dumbed down” curricula perhaps the same subject content which was taught in one book now is spread out over three? And if you were a publisher wouldnt you rather record three sales instead of just the one??
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And if more and more stuff is accessed online, should we not expect to see less of a bookload??
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I would guess that in some places, kids have an overload of homework, and in other places they have an “underload.” Which averages out to the numbers given. The impression they have a lot of homework comes from the former, and the impression that they are “dumber” comes from a combination of the latter, plus homework that keeps them busy without really learning to think.
My younger son (2nd grade) rarely gets homework. He brings home books to read, but that’s fun as much as work so it hardly seems to count. (The work comes in when he mislays one and we have to clean under the bed to find it.)
My older son (10th grade) spends about one to two hours a night on homework, not counting “sustained silent reading.” In addition to regular classwork, his English teacher requires 600 pages of outside reading every six weeks. He can choose any books he likes, but he has to record his reading and turn in some kind of creative report on what he read. (She got tired of standard book reports and started making them choose a different way to tell about the book each time, such as create a timeline, paraphrase a passage, etc.) Most of the time he has no trouble getting his work done, but during marching band season when he’s also preparing to audition for All-State in vocal music, it gets difficult. We’ve talked sometimes about limiting his extracurricular music activities, but that is his real love, so as long as he is willing to put in the time and effort, I’ll support it.
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I teach at a rural high school. Most of the kids do their homework in other classes. I don’t know how many times I have confiscated work for some other class from a marginal student in my class. They claim there is too much to do after school– sports, jobs, etc.– to get homework done at home. Yeah, right. Let’s not forget all the video gaming I hear about as well!
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I am a college sophomore who puts in at least twenty-five hours a week doing homework, writing papers, reading assignments (that usually takes the longest) and studying for tests. Jump forward to the end of a semester and the number jumps to about thirty-five hours a week. And I am occasionally choosy about which assignments absolutely HAVE to get done. Once in a while I skimp if I’m getting overwhelmed.
During my freshman year, one advisor told me to complete three hours of homework per week per credit. Thus, if I’m carrying a twenty-one credit load (as is typical for me), I should be putting in sixty-three hours worth of homework a week. I told him that he HAD to be kidding. Remembering the fact that I do appreciate at least some time to be a social butterfly and participate in extracurricular activities, homework may consume most of my life, but not all of it.
There’s a LOT of homework in schools. But a lot of kids just don’t do it. Thus the statistical discrepancy.
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There may be a class bias at work, as well.
Stories about the over-worked student seem to come from a particular subset of the educational community, those academically elite schools, or schools from certain neighborhoods where parents prize education and good colleges.
So on one hand we get reports of over-burdened students and then we get surveys like this. The difference may be from the survey sample size.
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I think it varies from school to school (as several people have already alluded to). I personally had about three hours of homework per night in high school (private college prep) and as much as six or seven on the weekend. Since starting college, I might do school work one hour a week outside of class…maybe. Or that could just be finals week.
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I’m not under the impression that kids today are dumber. Just the opposite.
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3-
“When I went to high school in the seventies, it was nothing like this.”
Same is true in my home town.
We need to learn to discern, NOT make sweeping generalizations about how this world is going to hell in a hand basket and call it Christian news.
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Me and mine got the overloaded public schools, I guess. But that’s homework, couple of hours a night for the middle and high school kids. Sophmore sone just wrote a paper on Sudan that did his journalist mama proud. But packpacks are not a problem. The kids have their at home book and each classroom has a set so there are no lockers and no back problems (except the first and last week).
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I recently did the math and discovered I was doing over 100 hours a week quite often last summer and spring. Basically life consisted of waking up, grabbing a bite to eat, and heading over to the lab until 1-3AM. (2-semester senior electrical engineering project)
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In college, homework really varies by major. I was an art student, and my projects were never really DONE. You generally worked on something until it was time to present it. Math, on the other hand, is either done or it isn’t. Black and white.
I didn’t have tons of homework in high school. But school wasn’t especially hard for me, so what I did have didn’t take long. Each school is very different. I fail to see, however, why a kindergartner needs homework. My oldest starts K in the fall. I’m not sure what to expect in regards to homework, so it will be a learning experience for all of us!
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With all due respect, it was not like this in the late 60s either. I didn’t have to carry a briefcase full of books home ever. That was for the Catholic kids. But the pressure to beef up a resume to get into college wasn’t there either. When I hear about all the things a kid has to do to get into college, my actual teenaged life wouldn’t cut it today.
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“I was an art student, and my projects were never really DONE. You generally worked on something until it was time to present it.”
I used to paint watercolor landscapes and was pretty fair at it. You knew if it was overworked.
I now make woodturnings. You know when you are done because you can only take so much off a piece before it flies apart and hits you upside the head. Generally you are done when you get all the lumps and tearout sanded out, and put a good finish on something.
What kind of art are you doing that you can keep working on it right up until presentation?
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I never used a backpack or a briefcase (I graduated from high school in 1979), but I carried a pile of books to and from school from seventh grade on. With five academic classes, there would hardly ever be a day I didn’t have homework in at least two or three. My junior and senior years of high school, I generally had at least three hours of homework a night. But I never would have complained about it – I chose the classes myself, and I intentionally picked the most challenging ones. When I couldn’t keep it up, I dropped out of French club and National Honor Society.
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Reg,
Go take a valium, or get a life or something!
Let’s continue with sweeping generalizations, BECAUSE they actually tell you something about the overall situation, not just someone’s nerdy kid.
Most kids don’t do much homework, if any
Most kids don’t go to prestigious colleges.(if any)
Most kids don’t sweat college admission, because they can get into the local “community” college (junior college just didn’t sound important enough anymore) if they can spell their own name! And many can get into a state university with little more than that.
Most kids learn precious little in public schools.
Most of the above statements don’t bother most kids at all!
This info comes from a 3 year stint working in a non-prestigious public school.
I also hired quite a few engineering major college grads in the eighties and nineties. Most of them knew their field quite well, but couldn’t write a complete sentence or spell.
And people say we need more money for education! No we need to get the politically correct bureaucrats and union member teachers OUT of the school system.
Also, maybe we could check into firing a few parents along with some of those school employees!
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Sorry – I should have clarified. I was an art student, but my concentration was in interior design. When you make presentation boards, sample boards, sketches, etc, there is always something that can be added, tweaked or done better. Art can absolutely be overworked. Design – not so much.
Even in my professional life, there is always one more fabric to be found, one more tile that will fit the bill, one more layout that could be explored, etc. I have deadlines and fee structures that limit my work on a project, but it could go on forever!
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Oh – and my husband is not allowed to give his students homework. He teaches at a charter school, and that is one rule of his administrator. Traditionally, the kids at this school are the ones not making it in the publics school. Any homework assignments have to get done in class.
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Gee, times really have changed. Homework used to mean work one did at home.
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Most kids don’t do much homework, if any
Most kids don’t go to prestigious colleges.(if any)
Most kids don’t sweat college admission, because they can get into the local “community” college (junior college just didn’t sound important enough anymore) if they can spell their own name! And many can get into a state university with little more than that.
Most kids learn precious little in public schools.
Most of the above statements don’t bother most kids at all!
This info comes from a 3 year stint working in a non-prestigious public school.
Perhaps this is an accurate generalization of your “non-prestigious” public school, but there are plenty of public schools I’m familiar with where one could generalize that most students have piles of homework and where their worst fear is that they might not be accepted to a prestigious college. The threat of having to go to community college or a state college is equivalent in their minds to the threat other kids feel at having to flip burgers for the rest of their lives.
I also hired quite a few engineering major college grads in the eighties and nineties. Most of them knew their field quite well, but couldn’t write a complete sentence or spell.
Might that not have something to do with the fact that most engineers are foreigners for whom English is their second language?
And people say we need more money for education! No we need to get the politically correct bureaucrats and union member teachers OUT of the school system.
With this part I agree, except I would say that we should get the teachers’ unions out, not necessarily the member teachers, since all teachers are required to be members of the union, regardless of whether they agree with its politics. I don’t believe that the educrats can take any of the credit for the academic rigor of the local public schools. Rather, the parental expectations and demands are what keep the standards high. The educrats are responsible only for the political correctness.
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Well, homework was technically always work one did at home. As I recall, most of my classmates complained about homework, but I rarely had any. We had classwork and homework, and nearly always I finished classwork and moved on to homework. If I finished both, I went back to homework I hadn’t finished earlier in the day (in an earlier class). And if I was totally caught up, I read a few pages in a book until the class was over. The rare times I had homework, I tended to forget I had any, because I rarely did and my mom never bothered to ask!
I have no idea if kids have more homework today. I do know that I found school too easy, but I loved the opportunity to read when work was done. I simply had to be prepared to show my teacher my finished work if she challenged me for reading when I was supposed to be working on classwork. Once I showed her I had finished, she’d challenge me to start on my homework, and so I’d show her I’d finished that also. At the beginning of the school year, skeptical teachers would often actually grade the paper, thinking I’d rushed through it. Within a few weeks, they knew I could be trusted not to read until my work was done, and they’d leave me alone to read discreetly.
I especially loved standardized test days. We’d get a whole hour to do 20 math questions. I’d finish in five minutes or less, turn in the tests, and have most of an hour to read. To my amazement, it usually took most of the class the better part of an hour, and some groaned that they weren’t yet finished. (And these were problems like 45 plus 52 in eighth grade, or maybe 21 times 3–more often than not, only the last couple of problems would even have numbers that needed to be carried to a new column. Twenty questions and the rest of the hour free–way cool. I really don’t think schools were “too hard” in the seventies!)
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Ree,
“Might that not have something to do with the fact that most engineers are foreigners for whom English is their second language?”
Unfortunately, no. This was defense industry and many foreigners couldn’t get the necessary security clearance.
“since all teachers are required to be members of the union”
Not true where I live. Sorry about your socialist state. But I agree with your point that the individual teacher usually isn’t the problem.
“The threat of having to go to community college or a state college is equivalent in their minds to the threat other kids feel at having to flip burgers for the rest of their lives.”
That’s just not representative of the average kid. If you don’t believe me, try adding up the total student population of the Ivy League and other “prestigious” schools. Compare that with the huge student population of the average colleges. Which is more representative? Oh, don’t forget the kids that don’t go to college at all.
I mean, I’m glad there are still good public schools. I’m glad that your kid is working to get into Stanford, Yale or where ever. That’s just not what most high school seniors are dealing with.
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I see “kids these days” being filled with information, but not knowing how to think.
They know a lot and can do all sorts of things, but are often stumped when presented with new problems or have to make decisions under time pressures and on incomplete information.
I was blessed to have a few teachers and mentors that really forced me to learn to do some thinking rather than just absorbing information. That has been more valuable than any of the information I took in.
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It may well be the case, as KRM says, that kids these days have more information but less grounding in how to think. There is a lot more information out there than there used to be, simply because of advances in so many fields. It’s probably hard to choose what information to teach kids and what information to leave out, and easier to teach information than to teach how to think.
But there’s also a factor that will always tend to make those of us who have lived longer particularly notice that contrast, between information and how to think. I read somewhere, in the last couple years, I think, that studies have shown that as people age, their ability to remember raw information decreases, but their ability to synthesize different areas of knowledge into useful understanding increases. So part of learning how to think is simply getting older.
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19-
That was convincing!!
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