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Comment by zaccus | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, parents are complaining about 10-20 min of homework a night? Kids should be spending 1-2 hrs on homework every night, and if they run out of homework they should be working on a personal project or reading. That doesn't have to encroach on their fun time; I'm talking about 2 hrs max. Every night. That's not asking a lot.

It's about learning how to manage your time and developing a productive routine. Kids will be expected to do plenty of homework once they get to college, I don't see the point in not assigning it before then.

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Let's look at my first-grader's schedule. Kids need more sleep than adults, so we aim for about 11 hours. (For teens, they recommend 10, last I checked.) School is 7 hours. 1.5 hours for gymnastics, sports, or some other extra-curricular activity. An hour of transit. Another hour for breakfast and dinner (assuming all they do is sit down and eat, and don't help prepare anything or do the dishes). An hour for a bath. About thirty minutes to get dressed, brush teeth, pack bag, etc.

    11   - sleep
     7   - school
     1.5 - gymnastics
     1   - meals
     1   - transit
     1   - bath
     0.5 - get ready

We're at 23 hours, and there has been zero unstructured time (outside of playing in the bath). This is a first-grader. When she's older she'll be in school longer, have more extra-curricular activities, and more socializing.

You're telling me two hours isn't asking a lot?

Since I appreciate seeing someone else's schedule, figured I would post ours. I have 6 and 8yo. and we live quite close to school.

  10.5 - sleep
  0.75 - morning routine (teeth, dress, find lost things)
  7    - school 
  0.5  - transit
  2.75 - free time
  0.5  - dinner
  0.5  - evening routine (pjs,teeth, don't take bath every day)
  0.5  - workbooks & parent tutoring or school homework
  0.5  - independent reading of chapter books
  0.5  - stories read to them

By time they get to workbooks, they are quite tired. But they are used to being tutored in small doses so they get through it. At this point, all structured activities outside of school are on the weekend (e.g. girl scouts, soccer). Also, ideally they would go to bed 1/2 hr earlier.

Because we personally tutor our kids, I'm sure we will resent an increased homework burden as they get older, especially as we are able to tutor to a relatively high level for most subjects. Unfortunately the school does not coordinate with us on the learning objectives, so we more or less rely on Common Core standards to know what's expected.

>Because we personally tutor our kids, I'm sure we will resent an increased homework burden as they get older, especially as we are able to tutor to a relatively high level for most subjects.

Yep, just wait a few more years and you're tutoring will consist more of helping your kids figure out the instructions for ridiculous homework assignments than actually teaching subject matter.

College kids will also typically spend a grand total of 12 hours in class in college (assuming 4 classes, each of which has three hours of in-class time).

Expecting a college student to then put in another 12-20 hours of personal work makes a ton of sense. Expecting a high schooler who already puts in 30 hours at school, to then also put in 14 hours or more of homework time seriously doesn't make sense.

It also causes teachers to have excessively long work days.

Not being a parent, I don't know what it's like now, but high school was by far the busiest and most stressful time in my life. I saw an average of 2-3 hours of homework per night, after 1.5 hours commuting, 8 hours at school, and 2-3 hours at sports practice. On an average day, that leaves an hour for breakfast/dinner and 8.5 hours for sleep; multiple nights in a row of 4-5 hours of sleep and no other breaks were not unusual.

College is completely different. You spend something like 15 hours in classes instead of 35-40; of course you get homework.

If only there was something in there that could be easily cut and is significantly less important than homework...

Assuming you mean the sports practice: I also personally value homework more than sports practice, but it seems callous and self-centred to assume that our own preferences are automatically right for others.

Sports teach kids about teamwork, working together, and how hard work pays off. I have found more use from what I learned in sports than any homework assignment.

And yet, most of the population won't end up making a living from their sporting accomplishments. However, they will get a job based on what they learned (or didn't learn) in school.

Did you not read what I wrote? The skill-set you need to succeed in the business world directly correlate with those in the sports. Homework assignments do not teach this.

Sports and athletic activities provide experiences, self awareness, entertainment, and teamwork lessons that are incredibly useful beyond academic or (pro-sports) career-centric pursuits.

Athletic activities are experiences in their own right, that can be appreciated in and of the act and experience of the moment itself, rather than the assumption that all things must be a task so in order to establish some future goal.

You think there is no value in participating in sports outside of the direct results of "sporting accomplishments"?

Broadly, I think there's a price to be paid for any given life choice. You don't get to have it all for free. In this case, the person chose to pay in sleep. I'm suggesting that they had other options on offer.

Yes, I understand it can seem callous. In this case, I honestly believe that my preferences are superior in the vast majority of instances (although demonstrably not all).

FWIW, sports was not actually my choice. My parents saw it as very important (and they had to pick me up from school after practice every day, so they thought it was worth 1.5 hours of their time in addition to my time).

Not that dropping sports typically helped, based on other students. I was really paying for sports with my GPA; people who didn't play sports typically had better grades and about the same amount of sleep (the 2-3 hour average was pure homework; I didn't learn to study until college, largely because there simply wasn't time).

Sure, commuting, but it's not always practical to move closer to school.

I agree, sleep is overrated.

Exactly! Get that caffeine addiction going early. It's good practice for when you're in YCombinator later trying to develop your hyper-bacon-geo-social-game.

Your sense of scale here is way off. My kids have 2-3 hours of homework a night 5 nights a week. Plus weekends. There have been times I've told my kids not to do the work and if their teacher asks they can take it up with me.

And don't forget a lot of kids stay home late because of extracurricular activities. Some of my friends got home at 5pm!

A healthy adult's productive routine doesn't involve taking an additional 1-2 hours of work home from their job and doing it in the evenings. Why should a child's?

I agree that 1 - 2 hours of homework may be excessive. However, 10, 20, or even 30 minutes seems reasonable to me, assuming that it reinforces what is being taught in school.

Schoolwork, yes, but it ought to be done at school, just as work is done in the workplace.

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