Kid Has Too Much Homework? Think Again

We've all heard the complaints. Kids are stressed out between extracurricular activities and an ever growing homework load. Turns out new research says it's not true. According to the Brown Center Report on American Education, the percentage of 17 year olds who said they typically had between 1 to 2 hours of homework was 27% in 1984. Today it is 23%.

The percentage who had more than 2 hours a night remained unchanged. Then there's a separate study by University of California-Los Angeles that surveyed college freshmen. In 1986 50% of them recalled having more than 6 hours of homework in their senior year of high school. In 2012 it was 38%. So what's going on? Is it a false perception based on too much coddling of children these days? I remember a kindergarten mom who's son was in my son's class telling me how she flat out told the teacher the 10 minutes of homework she assigned 4 days a week to our kids was ridiculous and she wasn't going to have her son participate. She seemed rather proud of the defiance as if it was unthinkable to assign even 10 minutes of homework to a 5 year old. I thought it was unthinkable to complain about it.

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