How much homework does a child do?

On average, daily time spent on homework in the United States increased from 16 minutes in 1981 to slightly more than 19 minutes in 1997, Brookings Institution researchers found, and little appears to have changed since then. Only 34 percent of 282,000 college freshmen surveyed nationwide last year by scholars at UCLA, for example, reported spending more than an hour each weekday on homework during their senior year of high school — the lowest percentage since the question was first asked in 1987.

A recent critique has suggested that homework disrupts families and overburdens children, to me this charge appears hard to sustain. Here is an interview with one of the authors of that charge.

Other bits: 64 percent of parents feel that the assigned amount of homework is “about right.” There was an increase in homework for high school students after the launching of Sputnik. For 9 to 12 year olds, television viewing fell by more than 20 percent from 1981 to 1997.

From today’s Washington Post.

Addendum: Comment from my (Russian) wife: “Kiska, you should have added to your entry on homework, that while 64% of American parents are satisfied with the amount of homework their children do, 100% of European parents living here think that it’s way too insufficient and ridiculous.”