I recently received an e-mail from a tenth grader who needed assistance with an essay assignment. I thought it would be interesting to share our correspondence.
-----Original Message-----
From: tony r.
To: judifenton@aol.com
Sent: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 9:53 pm
Subject: Homework Essay
Hello Ms. Fenton,
My name is Anthony and I am in grade 10. I recently read your article about homework. I am doing research for a controversial essay I am writing at school and I was wondering if you had any information you could send me to help with my research. My main subject is the advantages and disadvantages of homework. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
Sincerely,
Anthony R.
My response:
Hi Anthony,
It's great that you are researching homework--I think that many of us just accept that it's a fact of life that all students have to deal with. I'm sending a bunch of links for you--you may have already found some of them.
There's recently been a lot of anti-homework sentiment and several books have been published. The first is by Alfie Kohn called The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.
Another book that came out around the same time is by Bennett, Sara and Nancy Kalish, The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It.