Every child’s dream is, it turns out, many New York parents’ nightmare. A public school for primary-aged children in New York has decided to end all homework assignments, but angry parents have responded by threatening to pull their kids out of the school.
Teachers at P.S. 116 on East 33rd Street, Manhattan, have stopped asking children to work on maths problems and English essays at home, and are instead telling kids to play outside.
The head teacher, Jane Hsu, wrote to parents telling them that studies on the effects of homework in primary school “could not provide any evidence that directly links traditional homework practices with current, or even future, academic success.”
She told parents that the negative effects of homework at a young age include: “children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities and family time and, sadly for many, loss of interest in learning.”
But instead of celebrating the free time with their kids, many parents have responded with frustration of their own, and some have even begun setting their own homework assignments.
“This is their time to learn now, when they have good memory,” says Stanley, a 33, whose son studies at the school.
There’s little data on how much time primary school students spend working on homework, but studies have failed to find any relationship between time spent of homework during primary school and academic achievement.