the homework has been done

Is done or Has been done Grammar Lesson( Was done or Have/Has Done)

“Is Done” and “Has been done” are both passive voice verb forms. We use “is done” to show something is finished in the present simple and “has been done” for the present perfect simple tense.

We use “Is done” to show that something is completed. It is common to use this when talking about a project, task, or cooking a dish.

The shepherd’s pie is done. Take it out of the oven.

“Is done” is an example of the passive voice in English . We use the passive voice in this context because it is not important who did the task, but rather the result is more important. 

“Was done” is also a passive voice example to show that something “was completed” in the past.

We often use “was done” when a task was completed but now something needs to be done again.

Have/Has Done

“Have/Has Done” is the present perfect form of the verb “to do”.

Has been done

“Has been done” is the present perfect form in the passive voice.

“Had done” is the past perfect of the verb “to do”. We use “had done” before another past action.

Yale Grammatical Diversity Project English in North America 

Done my homework.

(Yerastov 2010b:117)

The done my homework construction involves a form of the word be , followed by the participle finished or done (or, for some speakers, started ), followed by a noun phrase. (1) and (2) show two examples of this construction:

1) I’m done my homework. 2) I’m finished my homework.

Note that the noun phrase does not have to be my homework . In fact, it can be almost any noun phrase, as shown by the following examples taken from Hinnell (2012:4):

3) a. Martin is done his bass tracks and we are ready to start vocals. b. By the time I am done dinner , I don’t want my side snack. c. So many bloggers I read are doing this. One is already done her 50,000 words ! d. This will be particularly important once you’re done the tattoo and need to leave the shop.

Who says this? Syntactic properties Recent survey results References

Who says this?

The done my homework construction is a widespread characteristic of Canadian English, and it is also found in the United States among speakers in the Philadelphia area, southern New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and the northern part of New England (Yerastov 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2012, 2016; Hinnell 2012; Fruehwald and Myler 2013, 2015; Zanuttini et al. 2016). It has not been found in the dialects of the United Kingdom or elsewhere outside of North America.

See our interactive maps below to explore some of the raw data in more detail.

Syntactic Properties

The syntax of this construction has recently been studied in some detail by Fruehwald and Myler (2013, 2015). The following description is based on their work.

Degree modification by all

The done my homework construction may seem to resemble a sentence like I have done my homework . (A sentence that, like this one, contains have plus a participle is said to be in the perfect aspect ). However, the phrase done my homework is actually more similar to adjective phrases such as ready for school because, like an adjective phrase, these phrases can be modified by the degree word all . (4a) shows a typical example of all modifying an adjective phrase (namely, ready for school ), and (4b) shows an analogous example of the done my homework construction with modification by all :

4) a. I’m all ready for school. b. I’m all done my homework.

By contrast, done my homework may not be modified by all when it is used in a sentence with the perfect aspect. Thus, (5) is not acceptable:

5) *I have all done my homework.

This is evidence that the done my homework construction is not an instance of a verb phrase in the perfect aspect but rather is more like an adjective phrase.

Co-occurrence with perfect aspect

The done my homework construction also differs from verb phrases in the perfect aspect in that done my homework can actually co-occur with the perfect aspect, as in (6):

6) I have been done my homework for a while now.

By contrast, although done my homework can co-occur with the perfect aspect as shown in (6), the perfect aspect cannot co-occur with a second instance of the perfect aspect in the same sentence. Thus, (7) would not be acceptable:

7) *I have had done my homework for a while now.

Fruehwald and Myler (2013, 2015) show several other ways in which the done my homework construction is distinct from the perfect aspect.

No leaving the object behind

At first glance, it may be tempting to think that the done my homework construction involves simply not pronouncing the word with in a sentence like (8):

8) I'm done with my homework.

Fruehwald and Myler (2013, 2015), however, present several differences between the two constructions. One such difference is the ability (shown in (9c)) to move the word done to the beginning of the sentence, similar to the movement of proud and angry in (9a) and (9b):

9) a. Proud though John is of his daughter , it won't matter. b. Angry though John is with his daughter , it won't matter. c. Done though John is with his computer , it won't matter.

This kind of movement is not possible with the done my homework construction. For example, although the entire phrase done his homework may be moved as in (10b), (10a) would be judged unacceptable because only done has moved, leaving the object his homework behind:

10) a. * Done though John may be his homework , it won't matter. b. * Done his homework though John may be, it won't matter.

In this respect, it is similar to phrases like worth the money because (11a), like (10a), is unacceptable, whereas (11b), like (10b), is acceptable:

11)  a. * Worth though this may be the money , it won't matter. b. * Worth the money though this may be, it won't matter.

Fruehwald and Myler (2013, 2015) also argue that the meaning of the construction is not what we would expect if it involved an unpronounced with .

Allowed verbs

There is variation across dialects in terms of which verbs speakers allow in this construction. According to Yerastov (e.g. 2010a, 2010b), there is a hierarchy along the lines of finished > done > started . In other words, if speakers accept started (as in I'm started my homework ), they will accept all three verbs. If speakers accept done , they will also accept finished , but not necessarily started . Finally, some speakers accept only finished . This kind of hierarchy resembles the one found in the needs washed construction with need > want > like (see here for further discussion of the needs washed construction).

Recent Survey Results

The following map shows results from a recent nationwide survey. It represents speakers' judgments of the sentence I'm done my homework . There is some description of the map on the left, as well as a legend in the upper righthand side.

This next map shows recent results of a survey regarding various iterations of the PAST-PARTICIPLE + YOUR HOMEWORK construction:

Page contributed by Jim Wood on February 28, 2014.

Updates/revisions: August 9, 2015 (Tom McCoy); June 1, 2018 (Katie Martin); July 8, 2020 (Oliver Shoulson)

Please cite this page as: Wood, Jim. 2014. Done my homework. Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America . (Available online at http://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/done-my-homework . Accessed on YYYY-MM-DD). Updated by Tom McCoy (2015), Katie Martin (2018), and Oliver Shoulson (2020).

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Present Perfect

For recently finished actions.

Table of Contents

In this grammar section we will have a look at the tense Present Perfect to talk about recently finished/completed actions.

A: How long have you worked there? B: I have worked there for 3 years.

A: How long have you been friends? B: We haven’t been friends for long. We have been friends since 2022

The video gives an overview of to Present Perfect for something recently completed/finished actions.

It shows the meaning/usage: when and why to use the Present Perfect.

For the form and the pronunciation have a look a the different webpages:

• Present perfect form
• Present perfect pronunciation

Usage/ Meaning

How and when do we use the Present Perfect?

Present Perfect is also used to talk about something recently finished.

I have just done my homework: This means not so long ago you finished your homework . It is an unspecified time in the past . We don’t know when the person did it, but it wasn’t so long ago . It is usually used to stress that you finished the action and there it no need to do it anymore or no need to worry about it anymore .

I have already done my homework: This means you finished your homework somewhere before now . It is an unspecified time in the past . We don’t know when the person did it . It is usually used to stress that you finished the action and there it no need to do it anymore or no need to worry about it anymore .

Present Perfect is also used to talk about something that is not finished.

I haven’t done my homework yet : This means you did not finished your homework somewhere before now but that you will do it later . It is usually used to stress that you did not finished the action but you will do it somewhere soon in the future.

• Just: recently finished actions. positive and questions. Between have and the main verb : I have just finished . 
• Already: finished actions. positive and questions. Between have and the main verb : I have already finished .
• Yet: not finished, but will finish it later. Negative and questions. At the end of the sentence: I haven’t finished yet .

Have a look at the questions and write your answers in the comments below . Also give us some more details about when, where, why,….

• What have you already done today?
• What haven’t you done yet today, but must still do today?
• What have you just finished before answering these questions?
• Have you just had some food?
• Have you already finished your homework?
• Have you already studied today?
• Have you just had a phone call?
• Have you already had lunch today?
• Which movie have you already seen more than 2 times?
• Which goals in your life have you already achieved?

Spread the word

Kristof Abrath Teacher, Trainer, Course Designer Teaching in English on 4 different continents since 2006.

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‘Make homework’ vs. ‘do homework’ in English

First, let me note that “homework” is an uncountable (mass) noun in English. It is a common mistake, even among some non-native teachers of English as a foreign language, to say things like, “Hand in your homeworks, please.” The word “homework”, being uncountable, does not have a plural form. If you really must refer to several separate “pieces” of homework, the word you are looking for is “assignment”:

It is also not possible to use “homework” with “a”:

Let’s move on to the main topic of this article. Without further ado, the correct verb to use with “homework” is “do”, not “make”:

“Homework” is not in any way special in this respect. We always use “do” with activities and “make” with objects that are being made. Just like we “do work”, not “make work”, we also “do homework”, meaning the activity.

The confusion arises from the fact that the most direct translation of “homework” into other languages often refers to the sheets of paper on which the assignments are written, hence it would make sense to “make it”. For the very same reason, we wouldn’t usually speak about “writing homework”:

By the way, have you already seen my brand new web app for non-native speakers of English ? It's based on reading texts and learning by having all meanings, pronunciations, grammar forms etc. easily accessible. It looks like this:

Use the image

Sentence examples for homework has already been done from inspiring English sources

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"A lot of the homework has already been done , a lot of the answers are out there, a lot of the questions have been answered about what's wrong and what's causing these kinds of problems," she said.

"We looked at the Ulster team expecting them to be playing most of their big names so a lot of the homework has already been done " .

It has already been done .

This has already been done .

A: No because I think the homework has been done .

Hauntings homework has been done .

High school language teachers, for example, now have to worry about Google doing French or Spanish homework the way Wikipedia has long been doing history homework .

"He has n't been doing his homework to find the right contractor to do the job".

Somebody has been doing their homework !

"It shows that Mexico has been doing its homework .

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth has been doing our homework too.

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"I had been done that" Is this correct?

I teach freshmen English in inner-city Baltimore, and I often get the following:

Teacher : Did you complete the homework? Student : I had been done that!

I have not been able to give a straight answer as to why this student response is odd for formal English. My students are very interested in the breakdown of English, formal or colloquial.

What is the breakdown of "I had been done that"? Is this grammatically correct?

Addendum Most of my students are African American (mostly low-income) and speak in their community dialect, and we emphasize balancing that with Standard English (SE). The question is coming from a grammatical standpoint. To clarify, we are also diagramming sentences, which helps to see the underlying structure of sentences. My students are curious as to how you structure "had been done that" and why it's not standard English. link

• syntactic-analysis
• non-standard
• african-american-vernacular-english

• When a student says this to you, what does he mean by it? Is it just a long winded way of saying "yes", as in "yes, I did my homework"? –  Dan Bron Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 12:28
• I think a better response would be "I have done that", or simply "yes". Or is the student trying to say been there, done that ? –  NVZ ♦ Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 12:29
• 3 I am a bit confused by the fact that an English teacher has to ask about the correctness of a phrase like this. Several fora found via Google suggest that this phrase is not grammatically correct , with this one giving examples on the idea behind 'had done'. –  Terah Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 12:32
• 1 @Terah Someone posted an answer that this phrase is grammatical in AAVE (African American Vernacular English). This explains why the OP, an English teacher, is asking about the seemingly ungrammatical phrase. Unfortunately, that answer has now been removed. –  Lawrence Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 15:04
• 1 @Lawrence - Correct, but I feel that the entire 'it must be AAVE' has been an assumption. Without further details, the students who use the phrase might simply be under the impression that it is correct Standard English. A change in root cause usually results in a different solution (or answer, in this case). –  Terah Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 16:59

2 Answers 2

Google search results for 'I had been done that'

An Internet-wide Google search finds four instances of "I had been done that" that aren't references to this EL&U question. One is from Vicky Laurentina, " I Quit " (February 7, 2015), on her A La Laurentina blog:

I used to be addicted on sugar. I had habit having a cup of milk each morning. I served myself a mealspoon of milk powder in a cup of water, added with a mealspoon of sugar. I had been done that ever since when my mom taught me to serve my own milk. When I was grown up, I could not enjoy my milk without sugar.

Laurentina seems to live in Indonesia—but I didn't find a post saying whether she is originally from there or from somewhere else. Her English is idiomatically unusual, so I'm not sure what to make of her having used the precise phrase that the OP asks about.

From a response by Aris Batam to " Can I get a KITAS without going out of Indonesia? " (January 14, 2015) on the Living in Indonesia Forum:

For the 1st KITAS need to collect the VISA from Indonesian Embassy. I had been done that 3 times in past 15+ years working in Indonesia. If can, my ex-company will have let agent to do that too.

So that's two of the four posts with a strong connection to Indonesia.

From " Things That You "Shouldn't" Speak Out Loud " (January 24, 2016), on the author's thislittlebirddecidedtofly blog:

Those years when I was supposed to grow as a woman and me, were the worst because I was broken to pieces and didn’t even realize that I had been done that . I thought that it was something that I did, or at least was made to feel like that. When I was already feeling super insecure with myself, and didn’t believe that I deserve only the best, like anyone else.

This author appears to be Danish. She doesn't generally use African American Vernacular English.

And finally in a comment dated November 30, 2013) by Pyuuni regarding a drawing (by Pyuuni) titled " Ouh Souda " on Deviant Art:

kldksjhkafjukl tis true, tis true, we all forget a lil somethin somethin- BUT I COULDVE SWORN I HAD BEEN DONE THAT GOSH. my mem sucks just arghh and yeeeey there's so much rabu right there hgnhhh i rabu u just like i rabu my..food and cats and that's some serious love man eheeheh u b u

That's not much of a database to go on.

Google search results for 'I been done that'

Things change considerably when you run a Google search not for "I had been done that," but for "I been done that." In the first place, Google finds upwards of 30 matches for "I been done that"—and the matches show up not in the midst of lengthy complex sentences, but as a standalone expression. One intriguing match comes from Evan Jacobson, " Adverbs: Are They "Gradually" Becoming Extinct? " (April 18, 2010):

Inner City children have a unique language. “Brick” actually means “cold.” “Brolic” is a term suggesting how muscular (Buff) a person is. Their subject verb agreement usage would make you cringe: “ I been done that cause we was finished like yesterday…” Make no mistake, I have become very fond of my 7th Grade Angels. I have a love and hate relationship with them, but I never actually get to the point of hating them. Even the terrorists have carved a likeable niche in my dendrites.

Jacobson says that he teaches English in a New York City public school at the secondary level.

And from Zachary Hoskins, " Education, civic empowerment, and race: Commentary on Meira Levinson’s No Citizen Left Behind " (2015) (a PDF file):

Why, then, should we think it fair to ask non-White, low-income students to master the skill of codeswitching? It might be fair to ask this if the dominant group’s patterns of speech, dress, or behavior were somehow inherently superior. But as Levinson contends, this is not the case. In discussing the “cultural and hence civic and political bias toward White middle-class norms” (75), she writes: “There is no inherent superiority in wearing pants that have narrow, straight legs rather than legs that bag and bunch. ... No more information is conveyed by explaining ‘I did that already’ in Standard American English than by explaining ‘ I been done that ’ in Black English, assuming the listener understands both” (ibid.). I would add that the unfairness of privileging White patterns of dress or cultural referents seems especially unfair given the often egregious history of how White culture became dominant in the United States.

And from bosni_fox, " I'm a 21 year old white girl with black parents. AMA " (April 28, 2014) in a Reddit thread:

[deleted] Would you understand the difference in meaning between "He done been work" and "He been done work", for example? bosni_fox Yep, the first one means he just got off work and the second means he's been out of work for a length of time. But it's weird, seeing it written it took me a second because I only hear it. ... cbryantl120 You've never heard anyone say " I been done that ?" Meaning, I completed that a while ago. This is very common but maybe it's just weird seeing it written out.

And then there are the posts that don't talk about what the phrase means, but just use it. For example, from " Homeless Children Living On The Highway To Disney World " (April 19, 2012) in the Huffington Post:

He [Bobby] didn’t care. He figured there’d be plenty of time for studying when he got to college. “All my friends will be like, ‘Bobby, let’s party,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Nah, I been done that . Now I’m all about the books.’ For now, the plan was to have as much fun as possible. He knew his carefree days were numbered. Earlier that week, he found out he’s going to be a father.

From " Vogue approves big butts; black people already did: Jarvis DeBerry " in the New Orleans [Louisiana] Times-Picayune (September 12, 2014) [page no longer appears when linked to]:

Metaphorically speaking, Vogue's article is praising the skill of Paul Mares. And Louis Armstrong is reading it and thinking, " I been done that !"

And from comments associated with music charts posted by Tree Cecil B on SoundCloud (2014):

Yo lil bro i been done that song ima send you that jawn tomar afternoon. Btw this track hot. Ya best jawn. Keep up the good work

Conclusions

It appears that some strains of Black English have a standard phrase rendered as "I been done that," whose meaning is equivalent to "I already did that." There does not, however, appear to be a widely used Black English expression of the form "I had been done that."

It occurs to me that the phrase may have passed through an intermediate phase along the lines of "I have been and done that," analogously to "I went and did that" (or perhaps, more closely, to "I have gone and done that"). But I have no evidence that any such thing happened. Clarence Major, Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (1994) offers a very different etymological account in this relevant entry for "[been] done":

[Been] Done v. (1920s–1990s) past complete marker; doon (Wolof). The African origin of "done" converging with the English "done" may help to explain the black American particular use of the word. (H[olloway] & V[ass], [The] A[frican] H[eritage of] A[merican] E[nglish] (1993), p. 140.) Example: "I don't know what you talking about, I been done finished the dishes." S[outhern and] N[orthern] U[se]

The idea that Black English use of done in an expression like "I been done that" is a survival of a Wolof (West African) word used to signify completion is certainly intriguing; I'm not qualified to pass judgment on its linguistic merits.

I have undeleted this post, the original part of which begins in what is now the fourth paragraph. I was very taken aback by the sharp rebuke I received, but upon further consideration (and the fact that Rathony asked for the question to be answered and that no one else has), I have decided that the answer should stand for itself.

I also got the very strong feeling that the questioner did not realize that African-American Vernacular English was a legitimately accepted variety of English within linguistic circles. I felt that perhaps he was dealing with a phenomenon that he (I'm assuming "he" for John) didn't thoroughly recognize for what it was: a variation treated as an equal by linguists, but as substandard by most everyone else.

If the original poster works in inner-city Baltimore, he unquestionable teaches minority students. This is not an assumption. Just in case the particular student who asked the question was the one white student in the class, you'll see that the answer below states that others who come in contact with African-American Vernacular English and are not Black themselves do absorb the grammar of AAVE (which draws in part on the African languages of the speakers' ancestors, even though those languages have long been lost to them) into their own speech.

African-American Vernacular English, or Black English, is a distinct variety of English commonly spoken by Black Americans, generally of lower socioeconomic status, and those who grow up in close contact with those Blacks, in the United States. Linguists overwhelmingly consider it to be a legitimate variety of American English, but detractors often call it Ebonics and deny it legitimacy.

Many of those who grew up speaking AAVE are bi-dialectical with Standard American English; in other words, they can move back and forth from one to the other with ease, depending on the situation.

Although linguists consider Black English to be as legitimate a form of English as Standard English, many people of influence, including teachers and employers, do not. Fair or unfair, those who speak AAVE as their dominant dialect often benefit by learning to be equally conversant in Standard English. Some AAVE speakers chafe at this perceived inequity, but others accept it as part of being a minority in today's America.

Your best response to your student who uses Black English to the exclusion of Standard English is to recognize the legitimacy of his dialect within the contexts in which it is commonly favored. At the same time, you should insist that Standard English, which is the most commonly accepted form of the language, be the default language of the classroom. Point out that speaking Standard English may benefit him or her economically. If your student counters that Standard English is "talking white," remind him that many prominent and successful Blacks, including President Obama, Oprah Winfrey and the Williams sisters, are fine with Standard English. However, I would not make a major issue over conversational use of AAVE; Standard English should be the dialect used in your students' written work, including the homework that they "had been done."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English#Tense_and_aspect

• 3 This is a generic answer about the difference between AAVE and General American. As such, it's a bit misplaced on a question asking for an analysis and explanation of a specific construction. –  Dan Bron Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 14:16
• 1 @StevenLittman That's still a generic, and therefore unhelpful, comment. The students want to know specifically which rules [or expectations] of Standard American grammar are being violated by this construction, and what accounts for -- in the systematic sense -- its presence in AAVE. In other words, this question is seeking a grammatical analysis and answer, not political or social one (which accords better with the charter of our little site here, as well). –  Dan Bron Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 14:27
• 2 @StevenLittman You're not either listening to me, or not hearing me. No one is talking about mistakes or correcting students. It is the students themselves who take an interest in English grammar and want to know the details of what you describe as the "wholly different sentence structure". We should not stifle that curiosity by merely waving our hands and saying "there's more than one way to say it", we should encourage the in interest in grammatical analysis by showing them how to do it . I expect that if you were equipped to do here, you would, rather than falling back on generalities. –  Dan Bron Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 14:36
• 1 @everyone Thank you for the timely answers! Yes, most of my students are African American (mostly low-income) and speak in their community dialect, and we emphasize balancing that with Standard English (SE). The question was coming from a grammatical standpoint. To clarify, we are also diagramming sentences, which helps to see the underlying structure of sentences. My students are curious as to how you structure "had been done that" and why it's not standard English. –  John Around Him Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 22:19
• 1 I want my students to be hyper aware of the distinction between their community dialect and Standard English. I am not sure how to clarify the structure of "had been done that," which is why I posted it here. Is it just the fact that "had been done that" is using two past participles in "been" and "done"? Too many verbs? –  John Around Him Commented Feb 27, 2016 at 22:23

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Is Homework Beneficial: Exploring the Pros, Cons, and Current Debates

Homework has been a cornerstone of education for generations. It has sparked endless debates among educators, parents, and students. Some see it as a vital tool for children’s learning. Others view it as an unnecessary burden that can cause stress and burnout. Still, most teachers assign homework. They believe additional tasks improve student achievement. As educational methods evolve, we must ask: does homework help students? Does it assist in learning and good study habits? Or does it just add to the pressures of a demanding school establishment? Let’s delve into the pros and cons of homework students receive daily to understand its role in modern education.

Table of Content

Tracing the Roots: A Historical Perspective on Homework

Homework has a long, varied history. It goes back centuries to the start of formal education. In ancient civilizations, only the upper classes received an education. Learning often took place at home, under a tutor or family member. In the 19th century, public education systems developed. Then, homework became a standard practice. It aimed to reinforce school lessons and instill discipline in students.

In the early 20th century, homework faced backlash in the U.S. Some educators and parents argued it stressed kids and cut into family time. During this time, progressive education movements gained momentum. They advocated for less rote memorization and more hands-on learning. However, the Cold War changed views on homework. The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik spurred the U.S. to prioritize math and science education. Homework was then seen as essential for academic competitiveness and national security. Indeed, teachers see till now how homework improves student achievement.

Today, the debate continues. We are reassessing homework’s role in a changing education system. We must balance academic rigor with students’ well-being. Understanding the history of homework helps us see its deep roots. It also explains why it is a contentious issue in education. The National Parent-Teacher Association oversees the quality of the educational process.

Homework has long been a staple in education. It bridges school and home, reinforcing learning and building skills. However, homework’s role in education is more complex than just extra student practice.

Psychological Impacts

One often overlooked aspect of homework is its influence on students’ psychics. Moderate homework can build discipline and responsibility. However, too much of it can cause stress and anxiety. Younger students may lack the skills to handle heavy homework, which can harm their mental health and love of learning. Educators and parents must recognize these stressors. They should adjust homework policies to support, not hinder, a child’s education.

The Role of Socioeconomic Status

Socioeconomic status plays a crucial role in how homework affects students. For affluent families, homework may be easy. They have a good environment and access to resources like books, the Internet, and quiet study spaces. In contrast, lower-income students might face challenges. They may lack access to the necessary resources. They might live in a noisy, crowded home. They may also have to work part-time or care for siblings. These disparities can make homework harder and widen the achievement gap. For this reason, schools must consider these factors when assigning homework. They should also support students to ensure a fair chance to succeed.

The Influence of Technology on Homework

Technology has significantly changed how homework is assigned and completed in today’s digital age. Many educators use online platforms to assign, collect, and grade homework, which can make learning more interactive and engaging. However, this shift also raises concerns about digital equity. Some students lack access to computers or reliable Internet at home, hindering their ability to complete home tasks. Additionally, there is a debate about screen time’s impact on students’ health. It suggests that digital homework should be balanced with offline assignments.

Cultural Perspectives on Homework

Cultural attitudes towards homework vary significantly around the world. In some countries, homework is vital to education. It shows a strong focus on academic success and discipline. Otherwise, some nations want to reduce homework. They seek a better balance with time for play, creativity, and family. Educators in diverse communities must understand these cultural differences. It’s key to developing homework policies that respect all students and families.

Strengthening Learning and Developing Skills

Homework has various benefits:

• It can greatly improve a student’s education and growth.
• It helps students retain skills, build life skills, and boost parental involvement.
• One of the most notable advantages is its role in reinforcing classroom learning.
• Homework helps students remember what they learned in school by revisiting those concepts.

Repeated exposure is crucial for mastering subjects. It’s especially true in math and language arts, where skills are built incrementally if you attend college. As a result, HW tasks help to develop children’s academic strengths.

Moreover, homework fosters essential skills that extend beyond academics. Students develop many skills by completing assignments outside of class. These include time management, self-discipline, and responsibility. Students learn to organize, prioritize, and work independently by dedicating time to study and homework. These skills are vital for academic success in school and work.

Also, homework lets parents engage with their child’s education. When parents help with assignments to high school boys and girls, they learn what their kids are studying. This can improve communication and collaboration with teachers. This helps create a supportive home learning environment. It reinforces that education is a shared responsibility among students, teachers, and families.

When students feel confident, they have good college attendance. Together, these create a better education. If you need help with HW assignments, feel free to address Edubrain for homework answers .

The Drawbacks of Homework

Homework aims to benefit students. However, it has downsides, and some teachers prefer to eliminate homework. This has sparked debate among educators, parents, and students. One of the most significant concerns is the stress and burnout that homework can cause. As academic demands rise, students feel overwhelmed by too many assignments and marks in a high school journal.

This causes anxiety and harms their mental health. This stress can hinder their ability to socialize, relax, and join activities. All are crucial for healthy development and well-being.

Another major drawback is the role homework can play in exacerbating educational inequalities. Not all students have the same access to resources and support outside of school. For instance, low-income students may lack a quiet space to study, have limited access to educational materials for homework, or face extra responsibilities at home. These factors can make it hard to complete homework. This gap can widen the academic achievement gap, hurting struggling students. These students need to finish homework fast, so they need help.

Also, there is debate about homework’s effectiveness in improving learning. Some research suggests that too much homework can backfire. This is especially true for elementary school students.

They may lack the skills or attention span to benefit from long study sessions during the school day and outside of school. In such cases, homework may not help learning. It can instead cause frustration and disengagement. Homework and academic success influence attending college.

Here’s a comparative table outlining the pros and cons of homework:

This table shows the pros and cons of schoolwork. It shows the need for a balanced approach to HW tasks, weighing its benefits and drawbacks.

The Complex Homework’s Impact on Learning

Research on the effectiveness of homework reveals a complex and often contradictory picture. Many studies have explored how homework affects students. Results vary by age, subject, and assignment quality.

Homework for the Youngest

Research generally suggests that homework has limited benefits for younger students. It reveals no academic gains for elementary students. Too much homework now can hurt kids’ love of learning, raise stress, and lower their enthusiasm for school. Experts agree that homework should be minimal for young kids. It should foster a love of learning, not drill-specific skills.

Homework in Middle and High School Periods

As students move to middle and high school, additional homework helps improve their grades. Research shows that moderate homework can boost learning and grades. This is especially true for math and science. However, this positive correlation plateaus when the amount of homework is excessive. Studies show that high school students swamped with homework may suffer. The stress can harm their mental health and well-being.

Homework Develops Kid as a Person

Research also shows that homework helps develop skills beyond academics. It improves time management, self-discipline, and independent problem-solving, which are crucial for success in higher education and the workforce. However, the effectiveness of homework in fostering these skills depends on the nature of the assignments. Homework that is meaningful and well-designed is better than busywork. It is more likely to help students if it aligns with classroom instruction. Busy work just wastes time and adds no value.

Overall, research findings underscore the importance of a balanced approach to homework. Homework can help learn and build skills. Still, its benefits depend on its quality and quantity. It also helps prepare for standardized tests. Finding the right balance is key to maximizing its positive impact on students’ education and well-being. Students can use different resources for assignments.

For example, they can Google “ how to use AI for homework ” and use AI to improve academic achievement.

Rethinking the Role of Homework in Modern Education

Homework’s role in education is a hot debate. Views and practices are shifting, reflecting changes in educational philosophies and priorities. A recent movement is growing among educators, parents, and policymakers. They want to reassess the traditional approach to completing homework. Concerns over student well-being and homework’s effectiveness in promoting learning drive this.

One major trend is the push toward a more personalized approach to homework. Some schools are testing differentiated homework policies. They know each student has unique needs, abilities, and home environments. This approach tailors homework to each student’s learning style and pace. It aims to make it more relevant and manageable. Personalized homework wants to engage middle school students and encourage ownership of their learning. Still, it should not overwhelm them with tasks that may not suit their needs.

Another trend is to assign less homework, particularly in elementary schools. Some educators and schools are adopting a “no homework” policy for young students, and others are reducing homework. This shift is based on research. It suggests that less excessive homework in the early years can foster a positive attitude towards school and prevent burnout. It also allows time for play, family, and activities, essential for holistic development.

In addition, there is a growing emphasis on the quality rather than the quantity of homework. Educators are urged to assign meaningful homework. It should reinforce learning and promote critical thinking, not memorization or busy work. Pupils should not just finish homework fast ; they should understand what and why they did it. This trend supports many education goals, including building problem-solving skills and a love of learning.

Technological advancements are also influencing current debates about homework. Digital tools and online resources offer new opportunities for engaging, interactive assignments. They let high school students access a wealth of information and learn in more dynamic ways. However, this shift raises concerns about screen time and access to technology. It also highlights the need for guidance on using digital resources effectively.

Overall, the current debates and trends in homework reflect a broader reevaluation of its role in education. Excessive homework will be a hot topic as schools adapt to students’ diverse needs. Discussions will focus on best supporting elementary school students’ learning and well-being.

Conclusion: Striking the Right Balance in Homework Practices

The debate over homework’s value is ongoing. It reflects varying views on its effect on student learning, social skills and well-being. Homework can reinforce learning and build life skills. However, it can also cause stress, increase inequality, and fail to boost grades. As education changes, we must rethink the role of homework. It should support, not hinder, student success.

Recommendations for Effective Homework Practices:

• Quality over Quantity: Focus on the quality of assignments rather than the amount. Homework should be meaningful, purposeful, and aligned with what elementary school students are learning in the classroom. It should promote critical thinking and problem-solving, not just drill facts or practice repetitive tasks.
• Age-Appropriate Assignments: Tailor homework to the student’s developmental stage. Younger children should have little homework. It should foster a love of learning. Older students can handle increased homework and can take home assignments. Homework should build on classroom lessons and prepare them for college and jobs.
• Personalized Homework: Consider each student’s unique needs, abilities, and circumstances. Personalized homework can help here. It can engage all students, no matter their background, with the material in a meaningful, manageable way.
• Encourage a Balanced Approach: Recognize the importance of balance in students’ lives. Homework should not overwhelm elementary students. It should not cut into family time, extracurriculars, or rest. These are critical for their development.
• Utilize Technology Wisely: Use digital tools to create engaging, interactive assignments and effective homework, such as AI science solver . But limit screen time. Ensure all students have equal access to the needed resources.

References:

For a deeper look at the research on homework, see these sources:

• Cooper, H. (2006). The Battle Over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents. Corwin Press.
• Kohn, A. (2006). The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. Da Capo Press.
• OECD (2014). PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can Do. Volume I, Revised edition, February 2014.
• Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (2007). The Case For and Against Homework. Educational Leadership, 64(6), 74-79.

By carefully considering these recommendations and drawing from a wide range of research, educators and parents can work together to create homework practices that enhance learning, support well-being, and foster a positive educational experience for all students.

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Rethinking Homework for This Year—and Beyond

A schoolwide effort to reduce homework has led to a renewed focus on ensuring that all work assigned really aids students’ learning.

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I used to pride myself on my high expectations, including my firm commitment to accountability for regular homework completion among my students. But the trauma of Covid-19 has prompted me to both reflect and adapt. Now when I think about the purpose and practice of homework, two key concepts guide me: depth over breadth, and student well-being.

Homework has long been the subject of intense debate, and there’s no easy answer with respect to its value. Teachers assign homework for any number of reasons: It’s traditional to do so, it makes students practice their skills and solidify learning, it offers the opportunity for formative assessment, and it creates good study habits and discipline. Then there’s the issue of pace. Throughout my career, I’ve assigned homework largely because there just isn’t enough time to get everything done in class.

A Different Approach

Since classes have gone online, the school where I teach has made a conscious effort as a teaching community to reduce, refine, and distill our curriculum. We have applied guiding questions like: What is most important? What is most transferable? What is most relevant? Refocusing on what matters most has inevitably made us rethink homework.

We have approached both asking and answering these questions through a science of learning lens. In Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning , the authors maintain that deep learning is slow learning. Deep learning requires time for retrieval, practice, feedback, reflection, and revisiting content; ultimately it requires struggle, and there is no struggle without time.

As someone who has mastered the curriculum mapping style of “get it done to move on to get that next thing done,” using an approach of “slow down and reduce” has been quite a shift for me. However, the shift has been necessary: What matters most is what’s best for my students, as opposed to my own plans or mandates imposed by others.

Listening to Students

To implement this shift, my high school English department has reduced content and texts both in terms of the amount of units and the content within each unit. We’re more flexible with dates and deadlines. We spend our energy planning the current unit instead of the year’s units. In true partnership with my students, I’m constantly checking in with them via Google forms, Zoom chats, conferences, and Padlet activities. In these check-ins, I specifically ask students how they’re managing the workload for my class and their other classes. I ask them how much homework they’re doing. And I adjust what I do and expect based on what they tell me. For example, when I find out a week is heavy with work in other classes, I make sure to allot more time during class for my tasks. At times I have even delayed or altered one of my assignments.

To be completely transparent, the “old” me is sheepish in admitting that I’ve so dramatically changed my thinking with respect to homework. However, both my students and I have reaped numerous benefits. I’m now laser-focused when designing every minute of my lessons to maximize teaching and learning. Every decision I make is now scrutinized through the lens of absolute worth for my students’ growth: If it doesn’t make the cut, it’s cut. I also take into account what is most relevant to my students.

For example, our 10th-grade English team has redesigned a unit that explores current manifestations of systemic oppression. This unit is new in approach and longer in duration than it was pre-Covid, and it has resulted in some of the deepest and hardest learning, as well as the richest conversations, that I have seen among students in my career. Part of this improved quality comes from the frequent and intentional pauses that I instruct students to take in order to reflect on the content and on the arc of their own learning. The reduction in content that we need to get through in online learning has given me more time to assign reflective prompts, and to let students process their thoughts, whether that’s at the end of a lesson as an exit slip or as an assignment.

Joining Forces to Be Consistent

There’s no doubt this reduction in homework has been a team effort. Within the English department, we have all agreed to allot reading time during class; across each grade level, we’re monitoring the amount of homework our students have collectively; and across the whole high school, we have adopted a framework to help us think through assigning homework.

Within that framework, teachers at the school agree that the best option is for students to complete all work during class. The next best option is for students to finish uncompleted class work at home as a homework assignment of less than 30 minutes. The last option—the one we try to avoid as much as possible—is for students to be assigned and complete new work at home (still less than 30 minutes). I set a maximum time limit for students’ homework tasks (e.g., 30 minutes) and make that clear at the top of every assignment.

This schoolwide approach has increased my humility as a teacher. In the past, I tended to think my subject was more important than everyone else’s, which gave me license to assign more homework. But now I view my students’ experience more holistically: All of their classes and the associated work must be considered, and respected.

As always, I ground this new pedagogical approach not just in what’s best for students’ academic learning, but also what’s best for them socially and emotionally. 2020 has been traumatic for educators, parents, and students. There is no doubt the level of trauma varies greatly ; however, one can’t argue with the fact that homework typically means more screen time when students are already spending most of the day on their devices. They need to rest their eyes. They need to not be sitting at their desks. They need physical activity. They need time to do nothing at all.

Eliminating or reducing homework is a social and emotional intervention, which brings me to the greatest benefit of reducing the homework load: Students are more invested in their relationship with me now that they have less homework. When students trust me to take their time seriously, when they trust me to listen to them and adjust accordingly, when they trust me to care for them... they trust more in general.

And what a beautiful world of learning can be built on trust.

The Cult of Homework

America’s devotion to the practice stems in part from the fact that it’s what today’s parents and teachers grew up with themselves.

America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed , which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.

The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s . Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study , for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.

But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.

Read: My daughter’s homework is killing me

Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.

“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”

Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.

Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.

Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”

Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their school community, this benefit of homework can seem redundant. “They don’t need it,” Schneider says, “so they’re not advocating for it.”

That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that homework is more vital in low-income districts. In fact, there are different, but just as compelling, reasons it can be burdensome in these communities as well. Allison Wienhold, who teaches high-school Spanish in the small town of Dunkerton, Iowa, has phased out homework assignments over the past three years. Her thinking: Some of her students, she says, have little time for homework because they’re working 30 hours a week or responsible for looking after younger siblings.

As educators reduce or eliminate the homework they assign, it’s worth asking what amount and what kind of homework is best for students. It turns out that there’s some disagreement about this among researchers, who tend to fall in one of two camps.

In the first camp is Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s , and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on in-class tests. This correlation, the review found, was stronger for older students than for younger ones.

This conclusion is generally accepted among educators, in part because it’s compatible with “the 10-minute rule,” a rule of thumb popular among teachers suggesting that the proper amount of homework is approximately 10 minutes per night, per grade level—that is, 10 minutes a night for first graders, 20 minutes a night for second graders, and so on, up to two hours a night for high schoolers.

In Cooper’s eyes, homework isn’t overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He points to a 2014 Brookings Institution report that found “little evidence that the homework load has increased for the average student”; onerous amounts of homework, it determined, are indeed out there, but relatively rare. Moreover, the report noted that most parents think their children get the right amount of homework, and that parents who are worried about under-assigning outnumber those who are worried about over-assigning. Cooper says that those latter worries tend to come from a small number of communities with “concerns about being competitive for the most selective colleges and universities.”

According to Alfie Kohn, squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , considers homework to be a “reliable extinguisher of curiosity,” and has several complaints with the evidence that Cooper and others cite in favor of it. Kohn notes, among other things, that Cooper’s 2006 meta-analysis doesn’t establish causation, and that its central correlation is based on children’s (potentially unreliable) self-reporting of how much time they spend doing homework. (Kohn’s prolific writing on the subject alleges numerous other methodological faults.)

In fact, other correlations make a compelling case that homework doesn’t help. Some countries whose students regularly outperform American kids on standardized tests, such as Japan and Denmark, send their kids home with less schoolwork , while students from some countries with higher homework loads than the U.S., such as Thailand and Greece, fare worse on tests. (Of course, international comparisons can be fraught because so many factors, in education systems and in societies at large, might shape students’ success.)

Kohn also takes issue with the way achievement is commonly assessed. “If all you want is to cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week, yeah, if you give them more time and make them do the cramming at night, that could raise the scores,” he says. “But if you’re interested in kids who know how to think or enjoy learning, then homework isn’t merely ineffective, but counterproductive.”

His concern is, in a way, a philosophical one. “The practice of homework assumes that only academic growth matters, to the point that having kids work on that most of the school day isn’t enough,” Kohn says. What about homework’s effect on quality time spent with family? On long-term information retention? On critical-thinking skills? On social development? On success later in life? On happiness? The research is quiet on these questions.

Another problem is that research tends to focus on homework’s quantity rather than its quality, because the former is much easier to measure than the latter. While experts generally agree that the substance of an assignment matters greatly (and that a lot of homework is uninspiring busywork), there isn’t a catchall rule for what’s best—the answer is often specific to a certain curriculum or even an individual student.

Given that homework’s benefits are so narrowly defined (and even then, contested), it’s a bit surprising that assigning so much of it is often a classroom default, and that more isn’t done to make the homework that is assigned more enriching. A number of things are preserving this state of affairs—things that have little to do with whether homework helps students learn.

Jack Schneider, the Massachusetts parent and professor, thinks it’s important to consider the generational inertia of the practice. “The vast majority of parents of public-school students themselves are graduates of the public education system,” he says. “Therefore, their views of what is legitimate have been shaped already by the system that they would ostensibly be critiquing.” In other words, many parents’ own history with homework might lead them to expect the same for their children, and anything less is often taken as an indicator that a school or a teacher isn’t rigorous enough. (This dovetails with—and complicates—the finding that most parents think their children have the right amount of homework.)

Barbara Stengel, an education professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, brought up two developments in the educational system that might be keeping homework rote and unexciting. The first is the importance placed in the past few decades on standardized testing, which looms over many public-school classroom decisions and frequently discourages teachers from trying out more creative homework assignments. “They could do it, but they’re afraid to do it, because they’re getting pressure every day about test scores,” Stengel says.

Second, she notes that the profession of teaching, with its relatively low wages and lack of autonomy, struggles to attract and support some of the people who might reimagine homework, as well as other aspects of education. “Part of why we get less interesting homework is because some of the people who would really have pushed the limits of that are no longer in teaching,” she says.

“In general, we have no imagination when it comes to homework,” Stengel says. She wishes teachers had the time and resources to remake homework into something that actually engages students. “If we had kids reading—anything, the sports page, anything that they’re able to read—that’s the best single thing. If we had kids going to the zoo, if we had kids going to parks after school, if we had them doing all of those things, their test scores would improve. But they’re not. They’re going home and doing homework that is not expanding what they think about.”

“Exploratory” is one word Mike Simpson used when describing the types of homework he’d like his students to undertake. Simpson is the head of the Stone Independent School, a tiny private high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that opened in 2017. “We were lucky to start a school a year and a half ago,” Simpson says, “so it’s been easy to say we aren’t going to assign worksheets, we aren’t going assign regurgitative problem sets.” For instance, a half-dozen students recently built a 25-foot trebuchet on campus.

Simpson says he thinks it’s a shame that the things students have to do at home are often the least fulfilling parts of schooling: “When our students can’t make the connection between the work they’re doing at 11 o’clock at night on a Tuesday to the way they want their lives to be, I think we begin to lose the plot.”

When I talked with other teachers who did homework makeovers in their classrooms, I heard few regrets. Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Joshua, Texas, stopped assigning take-home packets of worksheets three years ago, and instead started asking her students to do 20 minutes of pleasure reading a night. She says she’s pleased with the results, but she’s noticed something funny. “Some kids,” she says, “really do like homework.” She’s started putting out a bucket of it for students to draw from voluntarily—whether because they want an additional challenge or something to pass the time at home.

Chris Bronke, a high-school English teacher in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, told me something similar. This school year, he eliminated homework for his class of freshmen, and now mostly lets students study on their own or in small groups during class time. It’s usually up to them what they work on each day, and Bronke has been impressed by how they’ve managed their time.

In fact, some of them willingly spend time on assignments at home, whether because they’re particularly engaged, because they prefer to do some deeper thinking outside school, or because they needed to spend time in class that day preparing for, say, a biology test the following period. “They’re making meaningful decisions about their time that I don’t think education really ever gives students the experience, nor the practice, of doing,” Bronke said.

The typical prescription offered by those overwhelmed with homework is to assign less of it—to subtract. But perhaps a more useful approach, for many classrooms, would be to create homework only when teachers and students believe it’s actually needed to further the learning that takes place in class—to start with nothing, and add as necessary.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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A homework ban law has been passed in America – we need the same here

One child every three minutes is referred to mental health services and a third of secondary school pupils avoid classes due to anxiety. it is time the government declared a national emergency and started introducing some radical solutions, says mental health expert horatio clare, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

E very morning you see them now, walking, riding, or waiting for the bus – the next generation of our children are back at school . Some like Shakespeare’s “creeping like a snail unwillingly”, others horsing happily about, many on their phones .

The sight of jolly schoolkids lifts the spirits, just as an unhappy face or a lonely figure makes you quail inside. But the ones we really worry about are the ones we do not see. Although many are a-bounce with the joys of the start of a new term and seeing all their friends, a truly alarming number of children are refusing school altogether.

Earlier this year, a survey found that almost three in 10 secondary pupils are avoiding going to school because doing so would make them anxious, missing 10 per cent of school. It’s a doubling, post-pandemic, reflected in the same increase, to 17 per cent of pupils in primaries.

More than 93,000 pupils lose more than half of their education through absence. They face their days dark with resistance or fraught with misery. They plead, yell or vanish. They refuse to go. A report last month showed that 500 children a day in England are being referred to NHS mental health services for anxiety , more than double the rate before the pandemic began. To put this into perspective, this means one child every three minutes is being referred to mental health services in England, almost 4,000 a week.

And that is when they can get access to those services. NHS figures show that 28 per cent were still waiting for support from mental services months after trying to access it, while 39 per cent had their referral closed before accessing support.

Over 1.6 million school days begin with disputes and stand-offs, with beseeching, insisting and rowing, and all for nothing. In many cases, children’s life chances start to die right there.

Our children’s wellbeing elucidates serious problems with how we live and what we teach. While the reasons for the current distress of our young are wide and varied, there are core themes experts keep pointing to that include intensifying academic pressures and stresses related to the influence of social media and the cost of living crisis.

Our children require immediate action in how we understand and educate them. We know that teaching towards testing, rather than for the sake of fascination and discovery, has taken the life and vim out of classes and schools. Even worse, this is delivering poorer educational results.

In effective systems, like Finland’s, mothers are better supported by the state and are given a choice between work and early years childcare. Finns also have the world’s happiest and least-stressed children because they are assessed by teachers over a number of years, rather than drilled towards our hopelessly limited SATs at the end of year 6 when physical and mental development can still vary hugely.

“Reforms” to the national curriculum and ideological meddling by successive secretaries of state for education (there have been five in the last two years) have forced teachers to fill children like buckets with facts to be tested. The solution to falling standards in recent years has been to add more work but this has simply increased anxiety and stress for everyone.

Increasingly unmanageable levels of admin and box ticking have beaten freedom and joy out of teaching. Hardly surprising, then, that a quarter of all teachers quit within the first three years of qualifying, a third after five. The pressure is pushing children and their parents and teachers to breaking point. Interestingly, California has just passed the Healthy Homework Act which we would do well to copy here.

Aimed at reducing homework and cutting ill-designed assignments and excessive testing, the law is a reaction to 52 per cent of Californian parents and children reporting that much of the homework being set was doing more harm than good. It increases anxiety which throttles learning and, in many cases, it simply backfires. These American parents have had enough.

Anxiety is a ghastly condition. There is no inherent reason for it to be widespread among our young but the foundations of good mental health have been internationally established by researchers at the University of Nottingham, summarised in the Chime framework. It stands for Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment.

Worryingly, so many of these core pillars for good mental health are becoming increasingly fragile for our young.

We have not shown them how many paths there are to making their ways in this world, and just how imaginative, creative and brilliant they can be. No wonder so many refuse school

Too much of a focus on communications technology has damaged their connection with each other, overloading them with distractions and social media, pushing them down algorithm-led wormholes; introducing them to pornography and violence while their brains are still developing.

If comparison is the thief of joy, the key years to establishing an adult personality are now being spent in environments of performative one-upmanship where self-worth is driven by likes and other spurious forms of affirmation. The result is a generation of children growing up insecure about their looks and spending their most vulnerable years in a world where cyberbullying is rife.

Schools in France, Hungary, Holland and parts of Belgium have banned smartphones. Many British private schools already confiscate them for the duration of the school day . Smartphone-free schools should be national policy for the state sector and the change should happen now. The evidence from Dutch children and teachers is unambiguous, yet Britain could still take years to make a simple improvement that could be enacted tomorrow.

Defeating anxiety means giving children hope. Our post-Victorian education system, designed to turn out factory workers, labourers and administrators, robs many children of hope before they finish school.

Our creative industry is one of Britain’s global strengths. But decades of hostility towards the arts, music and drama in schools and beyond means funding has been cut and provision for creativity which can bring so much joy – as well as money to the economy – is on life support.

I struggle to explain to my boy why he should spend weeks doing fractions that a calculator will do for him in seconds, while lessons on Shakespeare are reduced to confusing “bitesize” encounters designed as test material, rather than the reading and performance of the world’s greatest plays.

Why drill our children in tasks that AI will do for them while stunting their creativity, their imaginations and their senses of possibility? By doing so, we are simply robbing them and society of hope for a successful future.

The other foundations for strong mental health, as researchers at Nottingham found, are identity, meaning and empowerment – the very gifts that painting a picture, acting in a play, banging drums, throwing pots or singing in a band guarantee you. Being creative requires you to have a sense of curiosity, insight and self.

The upcoming reform of the Mental Health Act is a chance for Sir Keir Starmer, Bridget Phillipson and Wes Streeting to take out a national insurance on our children’s wellbeing. This should be treated as a national emergency and they can start tackling these problems in a very real way. Not only can fundamental reforms around school testing and smartphone use be introduced, we can develop a wider understanding of neurodiversity, and how this affects a child’s needs.

We have also known for decades how well vocational and practical education works in Europe, since well before those EU influxes of Polish builders, Slovak electricians, Bulgarian plumbers and Romanian mechanics apparently “stole” the jobs we could not do.

For decades, we have failed to explain to our young who they are or where they come from. We have not shown them how many paths there are to making their way in this world, and just how imaginative, creative and brilliant they can be. No wonder so many refuse school.

The government is bound to increase funding for child and adult mental health services (Camhs), which are in dire trouble, and for more special educational needs and disabilities (Send) support in schools. However, it needs to recognise that most distress, anxiety and depression are not markers of fundamental damage or difference but rather normal signs of sensitivity to a mentally challenging world.

If our children are to face their schools and the worlds beyond them with their heads high and hearts hopeful, they need to know and feel that we understand them, that we are making changes, and that in times of trouble, our systems can and will help them through.

Horatio Clare is a mental health campaigner and the author of the recently published ‘ Your Journey, Your Way: How to Make the Mental Health System Work For You’

What do you think would remedy the mental health crisis affecting our young?

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We Are All Cafeteria Originalists Now (and We Always Have Been)

Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper (forthcoming)

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (forthcoming 2024)

35 Pages Posted: 17 Sep 2024

Jack M. Balkin

Yale University - Law School

Date Written: September 15, 2024

Americans are “cafeteria originalists." They pick and choose when to follow the views of the founders, framers, or adopters (as they understand them) and often artfully re-characterize these views to support contemporary political and legal arguments. Even self-described originalist judges are originalist only when they want to be. Cafeteria originalism is not a pathology or a falling away from a pure or correct version of constitutional interpretation. Instead, the persistence of cafeteria originalism in American constitutional culture reveals the deep rhetorical structure of American constitutional law. That is why non-originalists make originalist arguments all the time without thereby being converted to the originalist creed. And that is why conservative originalists have always had to leaven their theories with qualifications, exceptions, and epicycles.  Cafeteria originalism is our law. The most plausible versions of interpretive theory — including the most plausible versions of originalism — make their peace with cafeteria originalism; indeed, they enjoy the smorgasbord. Cafeteria originalism has multiple uses in American legal thought. It offers a powerful rhetoric for legal reform. It clears the ground for new doctrinal development. And it helps people express their contemporary values through appeals to constitutional memory. Interpretive theories lie downstream from constitutional culture. Within that culture, originalist arguments are simply one element of a larger collection of rhetorical strategies. This produces the effect called cafeteria originalism. From the standpoint of conservative originalism, this fact is a problem. But from the standpoint of American constitutional culture, it is perfectly normal. It is just what we do around here.

Keywords: constitutional interpretation, originalism, rhetoric, constitutional culture, interpretation, cafeteria originalism

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Jack M. Balkin (Contact Author)

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She does homework every day vs She does her homework every day vs She does the homework every day

Can I use the first example?

She does homework every day She does her homework every day She does the homework every day

Or is the object her required?

• determiners

• 1 This is actually a good question (+1) though it seems pretty simple. As I think many examples, the pronouns before the word seem to be quite natural (and so mandatory?). –  Maulik V Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 11:21
• Something to think about (I think these examples may help you to think of your example sentences differently because you may have acquired homework when you were younger and may conceptualize it more or less the way you conceptualize it in your first language, which may be the cause of your confusion): I drink water every day. I drink my water every day. I think the water every day. –  Damkerng T. Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 13:50

5 Answers 5

All your examples are grammatically correct.

I haven't collected statistics but I'd guess "her homework" is most commonly used. You could certainly say that "her" is not required, as the reader is unlikely to suppose that she does someone else's homework.

I have an intuitive feel that "she does homework every day" sounds like it's saying that she has a lot of homework, that the emphasis is on the idea that she's doing it every day. But "she does her homework every day" sounds more like it's emphasizing that she is living up to her responsibilities. But I'd be hard-pressed to give a logical argument for that interpretation. Maybe "her" makes it more personal, she's doing the homework assigned to her? While simply "homework" puts the emphasis on the work itself?

"The homework" would indicate that it is some specific homework. You wouldn't use it to refer to homework in general. Like you mean say, "She does the homework from her biology class". Or, "Did you do the homework the teacher assigned yesterday?" But you wouldn't say, "She does the homework every day" to refer to doing homework in general.

• Thank you. But what if the sentences are in Present Continuous so it wouldn't be general. What if mum asks a child, for example: Mary, what are you doing? Mary: I'm doing homework. Mary: I'm doing my homework. Mary: I'm doing the homework. Are all sentences correct? –  masterkomp Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 14:12
• 10 @masterkomp The first two would be correct and mean pretty much the same thing. "The homework" would be very unlikely, unless some specific homework had previously ben discussed. –  Jay Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 14:46
• I think this answer completely nailed it. –  shawnt00 Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 19:26
• I respectfully disagree about “the homework”; it makes sense if she's in a class that assigns a predictable dose of homework every day. –  Anton Sherwood Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 10:02
• @AntonSherwood But then you'd be talking about specific homework and not general homework, the homework for that one class. –  Jay Commented Aug 23, 2016 at 13:18

or is the object her required?

I wouldn't call her an object, but rather a pronoun that modifies the object homework . It's not required for grammatical correctness, but in practice the version with the pronoun has a connotation of all of the subject's homework, while the version without is more indefinite.

She does homework every day.

At least in American usage, one would generally take this to mean that she spends time working on homework, but doesn't necessarily complete all the work.

She does her homework every day.

This generally means that she does all the homework assigned to her, or at least everything she needs to have done for the next day. The possessive pronoun "her" specifies which homework you're talking about, and the implication is that you mean all of it. If your mother asks you if you've done your homework and you say "yes," you'll be in trouble if she finds out later that you only completed half of it.

She does the homework every day.

The article the here makes this version relate to some specific homework, like that for a specific class. For example: She succeeds in math class because she does the homework every day.

It's worth pointing out that doing your homework often relates to being prepared even for people who aren't students, and in that case you generally mean that the subject is (or isn't) fully prepared, so the possessive pronoun is often used, or an adjective is used to clarify the meaning. Some examples:

To avoid losing money, do your homework before investing in a new company.

She knew he was lying because she did her homework before the deposition.

Do some homework before buying a house: check prices of recent sales, school quality, etc.

They have different meanings.

This means that every day she does at least some homework. It neither says nor implies that she completes her homework (because it doesn't specify what homework it's talking about). It's also perfectly consistent with her doing other people's homework. (For example, she might be a nanny who, among other tasks, helps with homework every day.)

This means she does the homework that has been assigned to her, as opposed to doing other people's homework or helping others with their homework. It also strongly implies that she completes her assignments, and doesn't just work on them for a bit. (Because "does" implies completing and "her homework" implies all of her homework.)

This means there's some homework that both the speaker and listener are referring to, and she does that particular homework. For example, "Mary is assigned math homework regularly. She does the homework every day." Which would mean she does that math homework. It would be confusing to use this when the listener would not know what homework you are talking about.

They are all correct but can create slightly different implications. Some examples:

She does homework every day, can't the teacher give them a break?

She does her homework every day, she's such a great student.

She does the homework every day while her sister writes the book reports.

• What if mum asks a child, for example: Mary, what are you doing? Mary: I'm doing homework. Mary: I'm doing my homework. Mary: I'm doing the homework. Are all sentences correct? –  masterkomp Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 13:47
• Sure, Mary's answer is fine. –  DTRT Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 13:48
• Are all sentences correct? Is there any difference between these sentences, especially between two first sentences? I mean Mary's sentences. –  masterkomp Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 13:50
• Sorry, I don't understand the question. My answer is about the differences. –  DTRT Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 13:51
• I'm asking about my sentences about Mary :) –  masterkomp Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 13:53

Both sentences are correct, I personally like more the first one "She does homework everyday" - the shorter the better. Nonetheless if what you are looking for is to be more precise, the second one would be more detailed but in any case both are clear.

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Sean 'Diddy' Combs arrested by federal agents in New York

Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City said.

Combs was arrested at the Park Hyatt hotel on West 57th Street, a representative said. He was caught off-guard by the apprehension, according to a person familiar with the situation, who added he had been living at the hotel for several weeks.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams confirmed in a statement that on Monday evening, federal agents arrested Combs based on a sealed indictment filed by the Southern District of New York.  

Follow along for live coverage

“We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time,” Williams said.

Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo expressed disappointment in a statement. He said Combs, 54, had been cooperative with the investigation and “voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges.”

“Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the Black community,” the statement said. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal.”

“These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court,” it added.

It was not immediately clear on what charges Combs, the rapper-turned-music mogul, was arrested.

Combs has faced a wave of lawsuits — one as recent as last week — accusing him of sexual assault and misconduct since November, when former girlfriend Casandra Ventura sued him in federal court, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse.

Ventura, who is best known by her stage name, Cassie, was once signed to Combs’ Bad Boy record label. The two settled her lawsuit a day after it was filed, without disclosing the terms of the settlement. An attorney for Combs said the settlement was not an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. He previously denied the allegations.

Since then, a number of others have sued, in cluding Dawn Richard , who alleged that he groped and threatened her when he employed her from 2005 to 2012 and that she witnessed him brutally beat Ventura. Combs has vehemently denied the accusations in the lawsuits, saying they were “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.”

But in May, after CNN released hotel video of Combs kicking, punching and throwing Ventura on the floor in a hallway in Los Angeles in 2016, he apologized in a video on Instagram in which he said that his behavior was “inexcusable” and that he had sought therapy. The video was later removed from his page.

Richard, who was a member of the girl group Danity Kane, which Combs formed on the MTV reality competition “Making the Band,” and later the group Diddy — Dirty Money, sued Combs last week.

An attorney said Combs was “shocked and disappointed” by Richard’s lawsuit, which, like Ventura’s complaint, depicts him as controlling and violent.

Ventura’s lawsuit included allegations of sex trafficking. She alleged that he frequently beat her, that he forced her to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes — drug-fueled encounters Combs referred to as “freak offs” and sometimes recorded — and that in 2018, as she was trying to end their relationship, he forced his way into her home and raped her.

Richard said in her suit that she attended “drug-fueled parties,” where guests were required to surrender their phones. She also said she witnessed what she believed were inebriated underage girls being sexually violated by Combs and his guests.

In March, federal investigators searched Combs’ homes in Miami and Los Angeles.

Investigators interviewed several people in relation to allegations of sex trafficking, sexual assault and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms, a source familiar with the investigation told NBC News in March.

The warrant to search Combs’ properties came from the Southern District of New York, NBC News has reported. 

Combs, who has also gone by such names as Puffy, Puff Daddy and Love, founded Bad Boy in the early 1990s. He is regarded as a trailblazer of hip-hop, fashion and media, having created the Sean John clothing line and launched the Revolt TV channel, which he sold his stake in over the summer .

Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, a producer on Combs’ most recent album, alleged in a lawsuit in February that Combs made unwanted sexual contact, forced him to hire prostitutes and pressured him to participate in sex acts with them. Jones said he lived and traveled with Combs from September 2022 to November 2023, during which time he recorded hours of video and audio of Combs, his staff and others “engaging in serious illegal activity.”

His attorneys, Rodney S. Diggs and Tyrone Blackburn, who are also representing other Combs accusers, said Combs’ “long awaited arrest” was “an important step towards justice for all of Mr. Combs’ victims.”

“We leave the criminal aspect of this case in the hands of the people and justice system,” they said Monday night. “As for the civil cases, we await our time for the facts to reveal themselves and seek the justice our clients deserve. We also anticipate more victims coming forward. We knew this was coming. The evidence is very clear and it was only a matter of time.”

After the hotel video of Combs assaulting Ventura was published, Howard University cut ties with him . In June, the school rescinded an honorary degree it awarded him and disbanded a scholarship program in his name. The same month, Combs honored a request from New York Mayor Eric Adams and returned h is key to the city .

This month, Combs listed his home in Los Angeles that was raided in March for $61.5 million.

Chloe Melas is an entertainment correspondent for NBC News. 

Julia Ainsley is the homeland security correspondent for NBC News and covers the Department of Homeland Security for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Janelle Griffith is a national reporter for NBC News focusing on issues of race and policing.

Doha Madani is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News. Pronouns: she/her.