Tonight's Homework: Nothing
As the father of a high school sophomore I am familiar with heavy backpacks and late nights spent finishing up homework. While I think there are plenty of things that are easier for kids today, I am pretty sure homework is more demanding than it once was.
But I am not sure how I would feel if I had a child in Phil Lyons' class at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. Students in Lyons' economics and history classes get NO homework. That is his homework policy: NO homework.
Video: Lyons has been teaching for nine years. What he has learned, he says, is that homework doesn't teach kids very much. His goal is to have the students think for themselves and be interested in the world around them. That can be tough if a student spends all night with their heads buried in their homework.
Lyons says his students don't suffer, in fact he says test scores for his classes have risen every year. He's not alone in believing that the pressure for higher academic standards has increased the homework burden on students at all grade levels.
Still not everybody is comfortable with Lyons' approach. When some parents hear there's no homework, they pull their kids out of Lyons' class. More surprising, sometimes students themselves choose to move to another class with a more traditional approach to homework. Lyons says any vacancies in his classes are quickly filled with kids who think no homework is a great idea.
But don't imagine for a moment that Phil Lyons students avoid homework completely…they get plenty from all their other teachers.
