Choice book blog: Rethinking Homework

Rethinking Homework by Cathy Vatterott begins just as I would expect from a book with such an impartial title, with the history of homework. Vatterott belabors the point that teachers and the public have long vacillated between believing that homework is inherently good and that it must be eradicated. She does offer an interesting anecdote from 100 years ago, a time when labor laws were being developed for adults and children were thought to need plenty of fresh air and exercise. “Rather than diagnosing children with attention deficit disorder,” Vatterott writes, “pediatricians simply prescribed more outdoor exercise” (4). I believe that today’s students would benefit from hopping aboard a time machine for a visit to a clinic of yesteryear.

Vatterott’s chapter on homework in the context of the new family touched on many of the themes Dr. Parks explored in her social justice course. Kids from low income families tend to have many responsibilities around the house such as cooking or babysitting. Furthermore, parental involvement in homework ranges from non-existent to overbearing, with low income parents working multiple jobs or odd hours least able to support their children’s studies. Vatterott reiterates that teachers should not assume students have “a quiet place to do homework,” “a parent home in the evening,” “money for school supplies,” or parents who “speak and read English” (40). These seem like obvious assumptions to avoid, but they are worth reiterating because, in my opinion, they offer the strongest support for Vatterott’s call to decriminalize the grading of homework (96). Students neglect homework for a myriad of reasons, many of which are out of their control.

To grade homework, one must assume that all students are capable of doing the work and that all students have time to do the work. Vatterott refers to Ken Goldberg’s idea of the “homework trap,” where “incomplete homeworkàpoor gradesàpoor attitudesàa predictable avoidance of homework and resentment toward the systemàmore failing grades” (92). I have seen many students in my freshman language arts classes fall into the homework trap, and at one point of my high school career, I fell into the trap myself. For me, junior year of high school was the year my focus in the classroom waned and I began to neglect school. I often skipped classes, and the class I skipped most of all was Accounting 1. I don’t why I took an accounting class: I did not enjoy math and had little patience for mundane, repetitive tasks. This combined with the fact that the class immediately followed my lunch period made it easy to avoid. I kept up for a while, but between missing classes and neglecting the homework, I soon fell into the homework trap big time. Luckily, I had parents who were involved, and once they found out about my delinquency, they pushed me until I earned a passing grade in the class. When a student whose parents are uninvolved for whatever reason falls into the homework trap, they will not be lucky enough to escape it. Unlike me, many low income students fall into the homework trap through no fault of their own, and criminalizing their inability to complete homework only makes a bad situation worse.

Citing many research studies, Vatterott comes to the conclusion that “a small amount of homework may be good for learning, but too much homework can actually be bad for learning” (62). She uses a list of common sense things teachers know about learning to argue that homework should be purposeful and personalized. She suggests ways to differentiate homework according to difficulty, amount, structure, learning style, or interest. Finally, she makes a case that anyone teaching in the Howard-Suamico School District should be familiar with. She argues that “homework’s role is not assessment of learning; therefore, it should not be graded” (112). She also provides support from people like W. James Popham, author of Transformative Assessment, who has found that when teachers stop grading homework, students “feel a sense of empowerment over their own learning” (115). After a long indoctrination into this mindset, I did not find Vatterott’s ideas to be groundbreaking, but I did appreciate her perspective. An idea that once seemed foreign to me, that homework should not count toward a student’s grade, has come to make more and more sense. Much of the content of Vatterott’s book regarding effective homework practices seems like common sense, but by walking readers through the process of rethinking homework, she successfully leads readers to accept her conclusions about best homework practices.