Homework: The Imperative For Educational Reform

Homework is a topic that has, in some way, affected all people in the United States. Whether that be today's students, who spend hours at home working on it, their parents, who were dealt a similar hand in their time and attempt to help their children today, or even grandparents, who refer to back in the day when things were different. The amount of homework assigned over time has fluctuated, resulting in people having very different experiences with homework depending on the time. From the 1900’s to almost the 1950’s there was little to no homework assigned to students. But, after Sputnik’s launch in 1957, the American’s competitive nature resulted in more and more teachers assigning homework in order for students to become “smarter” and ultimately …show more content…
At this time when the American economy started to weaken and Americans again felt concerned. As people started to feel that there was little they were doing wrong as a country the blame, yet again, was placed on education. On April 26, 1983, President Ronald Reagan reviewed a report titled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. “A Nation at Risk lambasted the state of America’s schools and called for a host of much-needed reforms to right the alarming direction that public education was seen to be headed” (Graham 1). The report quickly gained popularity as it was soon on every form of media. Mary Hatwood Futrell remembered “it didn’t matter if you were looking at the morning news, the afternoon news, magazines, newspapers, it was everywhere” (Graham 1). Due to the popularity the public soon was aware of all the numbers surrounding the education system, including the declining test scores nationwide and the other various statistics packed into the 36 page report. The report then used these numbers to state that, “poor education was the root of our economic problems” and so, “children needed to be assigned more homework in order for our nation to rebuild its education system and give us the competitive edge over other nations” (Tokarski 11). This thought over all was supported and the reform was put into action. Homework was piled onto students more than ever and they began to feel more and more sophisticated by the increasing amounts. Students soon became very full time and were bring home as much as two hours of homework per night. Because of this report many started to think that a rigorous education would lead to economic success for the country. In order to achieve this success, parents started to aid their children with their homework. This aid soon turned to another layer of added stress for the parent. As families soon surrounded around the children's schooling and grades those who did not do well