I’m at a gathering in Los Angeles and sharing that I’m the new principal at Irvine Hebrew Day School. People are quizzing me about the school – what makes your school unique? (I tell them all of the reasons). What’s the population like ? (Wonderfully diverse in their Jewish journeys). What grades are taught there? (TK-5th grade). And so on.
After explaining why IHDS is so special, I almost always get two questions asked, both with equal shock and amazement. The first is always, “Do you commute all the way to Irvine every day from Los Angeles?” To which I reply, “Well, technically our school is located in Santa Ana, so that’s where I commute everyday.”
The second question is usually, “What do you mean that your school doesn’t give homework?” To this, I calmly explained the reasons that IHDS has our “no homework” policy. This always seems to lead into a longer conversation.
We are so conditioned to believe that homework equals a more rigorous education, that for most people it’s a challenging paradigm shift to imagine that learning can be deeper without it, especially in the younger grades.
In fact, a couple of years ago, on my podcast (Overthrowing Education, episode 88), I interviewed the two educational experts who co-authored the book, “Hacking Homework”, Star Sackstein and Connie Hamilton. In their book, they explore research that extols the benefits of not giving homework, and how to create more meaningful homework when giving it is unavoidable. It’s worth listening to if you want to know more about the “whys” of not giving homework.
In preparation for the interview, I asked parents and teachers on Twitter, “How do you feel about homework?” I received almost 500 answers, along with a healthy discussion. And while people had a variety of passionate opinions, most were respectful of each other.
There are a lot of reasons schools, or individual teachers might refrain from giving homework – it often promotes stress and anxiety, takes away from important family time, causes students to dread school instead of finding joy in learning, potentially leads to cheating and more. The 2009 documentary, “The Race to Nowhere”, takes a critical look at what the constant pressures of school, including huge amounts of homework, are doing to our youth. The film, as with much research, shows that giving children below middle school age more than 20 minutes of homework a night does nothing to add to their achievement scores or performance. That potential 20 minutes of homework might include reading or optional enrichment activities, but much beyond that isn’t actually beneficial.
What if a student wants to do more? Enjoys doing more? Then, of course, we differentiate to help each student reach their full potential. But for the most part, young children learn through play (see Dr. Lindsay Portnoy’s excellent book, “Game On? Brain On! The Surprising Relationship Between Play and Gray (Matter)” ) and benefit tremendously from spending time with their families.
So as I’m talking to a group of people who are just learning about IHDS, I notice that when I explain the educational philosophy and research that steers our “no-homework” policy, I see a lot of heads nodding in understanding. I can feel the traditional school paradigms shifting. And that leads to the last question I ask them, “What good podcasts and audiobooks can you recommend for my commute?!”
Batsheva Frankel is the Principal of Irvine Hebrew Day School.