EdLevity: Uncle Curmudgeon Gives Aspiring Teachers The Lowdown on Homework

Mike Anderson wrote this letter in 2016, in the voice of a retired teacher called Uncle Curmudgeon, to argue that common kinds of homework fall short. A new section below sets that argument beside a major research review and a 2026 teacher survey.

Every now and then, I come across a letter from Uncle Curmudgeon, an old retired teacher, to his niece, Kennari, an aspiring new one. I’m happy to pass another along!

Dear Kennari-

It was another interesting week here at Sweet Meadow Acres for Retired Teachers. Last Tuesday’s dinner was fun. A bunch of us had a chocolate milk bubble blowing contest. Mr. Keene (a former physics teacher) tried to pass it off as an experiment in surface tension, but the dining hall attendants weren’t amused. While we were being reprimanded, several compatriots at a nearby table created a diversion, and I sneaked some tater tots into my day jacket pocket. I’ll find something creative to do with those later.

Now, on to business. In your last letter you asked for my thoughts on homework. Are schools still doing that? I thought that’s a practice that would have died out by now, but I suppose expecting something in education to fade just because it has little value displays my developing senility.

Common Kinds of Homework and Why They Fall Short

First, let’s explore why it’s so ineffective by considering a few typical kinds of homework and why they don’t work.

Drill and Kill: (Complete problems 1-30 on page 35. Memorize the conjugations of these these five verbs. Practice these 15 spelling words.)

Deliver me from the 1950s. Are we still mushing mind-numbing rote content into kids’ heads? A third of your class can already do these tasks independently and a third need help to be successful, so right off the bat, two-thirds of the class is out of luck. I know, I know. You don’t want to waste precious class time on low-level content, but is students’ after-school time worth wasting?

Projects: (Be ready for the science project at the end of the month. Study a country and prepare a presentation.)

While more valuable than rote work, projects require coaching. How will you support students if the work happens when you’re not around? You’re not counting on parents to help are you? Though some will be delighted (and take over) others don’t have the time or skills to help. It’s the kids who most struggle with school work who fail when it comes to at-home projects. Keep projects in school where you can model, teach, and help students practice skills of time management, complex thinking, and creativity that great projects require.

Finish Classwork: (You didn’t have time to finish your work in school? Then finish it for homework!)

Ask yourself, why did the student not finish the work in class? Did she not understand the task? Did she need help with skills or content? Does she struggle with attention and time management? None of these things will be any better at home—they’ll likely be worse. Let’s be clear, “giving” students more time (especially away from the teacher) is not differentiating or personalizing, it’s simply weak management.

Flipped Learning: (Read Chapter 5 and be ready for tomorrow’s discussion. Watch this video and write a summary, so you’re ready to go deeper in class.)

I get the gist of this newfangled flipped learning thing. Teaching shouldn’t be all about lecturing, and kids should more actively explore content. Great. I love it. Just don’t require that work to happen at home. Like project work, it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not kids can get the help they need away from school. More importantly though, what about students who work after school? Or babysit their three younger cousins? Or are homeless and don’t even have a place to work? What happens when these kids can’t/don’t do their homework? Now they’re even more lost at school—unable to participate fully in the day’s work! Let’s set all kids up for success each day, not just the ones who are already responsible or come from stable homes.

Read and Report: (Read each night, and in your reading journal, write the title, author, three new vocabulary words, the number of pages, and a brief summary of what you read.)

Now we’re getting close. Reading at home is something we should encourage all kids to do. Whether it’s a novel, magazines, the backs of baseball cards, or anything else, let’s help kids discover (and deepen!) their passion for reading. But for Pete’s sake, let’s not beat the joy out of it by attaching clerical work to it. Imagine snuggling up in bed with a favorite book only to remember that once you’re finished you have to do all of that other malarkey. Yuck! Try it yourself for a few weeks and see whether you want to read more or less.

Alternatives to Traditional Homework

So what should you do, you ask? Here are a few ideas.

Stop giving homework. Can you get away with this? Your students (and 75% of their parents) would likely breathe a sigh of relief. Just think of all of the time you would be able to devote to more energizing and worthwhile aspects of your work!

Minimize the damage. Can’t just quit cold turkey? Send home 5-10 minutes of work instead of an hour. Remember that even the simplest task will take some students a surprising amount of time, especially after a long day at school, when their energy is low. No more reading logs! No more complex projects!

Educate parents. Be proactive. Tell parents what you know about homework and why you do what you do. Help them learn about the research that shows that homework doesn’t amount to a hill of achievement beans. Help them understand that volume does not equal challenge. Offer fun ideas for ways they might extend learning at home.

Don’t cave to colleagues. Sometimes, it’s other teachers who cling to the myth that homework builds responsibility and skills. (I once taught in a school where the teachers who gave the most homework—and did so with much chest-thumping about being rigorous and challenging—were the first to file a grievance if asked to do anything outside of contract time!) Stand up for what you know is right and what is best for your kids!

Give optional extensions. For kids who are interested in extending classwork outside of school, give some ideas for ways to do so that are fun, independent, and optional: games, cool websites to explore, and (yes, now’s the time) projects! Keep these invitational and don’t incentivize them (or they become mandatory for some).

Homework and Family Time

It’s easy for an old codger like me to scream about homework from my safe rocking chair here at Sweet Meadow Acres. I don’t envy your struggle.

That being said, I have just one more thought. As I watched my own kids and grandkids suffer through tears at the counter, family fights, meltdowns and mayhem, and feelings of failure—all over multiplication facts, verb conjugations and the capital of Mexico—I have wondered. Do schools even have the right to dictate what families do after school? Why do teachers get to commandeer evenings and weekends, doling out required assignments? And as a society, is this really what we want? Are we intentionally casting the next generation of workaholics who will take work home on the weekends, neglecting their friends and families, trading a fulfilling life for a life simply filled?

All right, all right. I’m off my soap box. It’s time for me to call it a day as well. Besides, Mr. Keene and I need to hatch a plan for those tater tots. I think Betty Ann (a former health teacher) might find a surprise in her shower cap later!

Yours truly,

Uncle Curmudgeon

Mike Anderson is an educational consultant who leads great learning throughout the United States and beyond. He is an award winning teacher and the author of many books. You can follow him on Twitter at @balancedteacher. To explore more resources about homework, explore Mike’s Pinterest board, Rethinking Homework.

Is homework effective? What research and teacher surveys say

Is homework effective? The honest answer depends on the age of the student and on what the homework asks of them. Mike Anderson’s letter above, written in the voice of the retired teacher Uncle Curmudgeon in 2016, argues that common kinds of homework fall short and that teachers should give less of it. This section sets that argument beside a major research review and a recent survey of teachers, so that a new teacher deciding whether to assign homework has more than one source to weigh.

What the best-known research review found

The most cited review is by Harris Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson and Erika Patall, who examined more than 60 studies published between 1987 and 2003. The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Education and appeared in 2006 in Review of Educational Research. According to Duke University’s account of the study, the link between homework and achievement was much stronger in grades 7 through 12 than in elementary school. For high school students, more homework beyond about two hours a night was not associated with higher achievement. The authors offered possible reasons for the difference, such as younger children having weaker focus and study habits, and these are proposed explanations, not tested causes.

The review has important limits. Duke’s account describes a positive, statistically significant link between homework and achievement, which is a correlation, and a link of that kind does not by itself show that homework caused better results. The study is also two decades old and covers research from before smartphones and online homework help. The “10-minute rule,” which adds about ten minutes of homework for each grade level, is described in the Duke account as a commonly accepted teacher practice, and Cooper says the research is consistent with it. On that rule a fourth grader would have about 40 minutes and a high school senior about two hours.

Read next to Anderson’s letter, the review supports one part of the letter’s case strongly and another part only partly. Anderson’s concern about elementary homework, and about long assignments, matches the weak link the review found for young children and the drop-off after two hours in high school. Anderson’s statement that research shows homework does not amount to much achievement is closer to the elementary finding than to the secondary one, where the review found a clearer association. A teacher of older students may reasonably take from both sources that short, purposeful homework is defensible while long, routine assignments are hard to justify.

What teachers report now

In February 2026, Education Week reported on an EdWeek Research Center survey of 279 teachers, a nationally representative online sample collected in December and January. Asked how the amount of homework they assign had changed over the past two years, 41 percent said it had decreased, 33 percent said it had stayed the same and 3 percent said it had increased. Among teachers who reported assigning less, 47 percent said students refused to do it, 29 percent said students’ use of technology such as artificial intelligence lessens its value, and 28 percent cited equity concerns, since some students have more access to help at home. The sample is small and the answers are self-reported, but they show that the questions Anderson raised about fairness and value are now being raised in many classrooms.

Education Week has also cautioned readers about homework statistics generally. In 2015 it reported that a widely quoted study of homework time, which estimated about 45 minutes a night across K-12, drew criticism because it relied on a voluntary survey of about 1,100 people in Rhode Island pediatric offices, as Maggie DeBlasis reported, with Brookings Institution researcher Tom Loveless advising readers to question any self-selected sample. Numbers on how much homework students do, or how much it helps, are worth checking for their source before they are repeated to parents.

Deciding whether to assign homework

For teachers who ask whether they should assign homework at all, and especially new teachers who inherit a school’s habits, the sources above suggest a few practical steps. These are suggestions, not findings from a study.

• Learn the school or district homework policy before deciding anything, because many have time guidelines by grade.
• Ask what each assignment is for. Practice a student can already do alone, and tasks that need a teacher’s coaching, are the kinds Anderson argues should stay in class.
• Keep it short, and check how long it takes real students, since a task that takes one student ten minutes can take another an hour.
• Offer optional extensions that are not graded, as Anderson suggests, and tell families why.
• Consider who can get help at home, and who cannot, before assigning anything that depends on adult support or a computer.

Anderson wrote a companion letter on grading, which is available as Uncle Curmudgeon Grumps about “Exceeds the Standard”. How homework counts in a grade is part of that conversation, and edCircuit’s assessment guide covers grading and assessment more widely.

Related reading

• EdLevity: Uncle Curmudgeon Grumps about “Exceeds the Standard”

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