Debates about homework are nothing new, but the ability of parents to find support for homework woes from thousands of other parents is a fairly recent phenomenon. A mom named Cassi Nelson shared a post about her first grader’s homework and it quickly went viral. Nelson shared that her son had come home from his second day of school with four pages of homework, which she showed him tearfully working on at their kitchen counter.
“He already doesn’t get home from school until 4 pm,” she wrote. “Then he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work. I had to clear out the kitchen so he could focus. His little legs kept bouncing up and down, he was bursting with so much energy just wanting to go play. Then he broke my heart when he looked up at me with his big teary doe eyes and asked…. ‘Mommy when you were little did you get distracted a lot too?!’ Yes sweet baby, mommy sure did too! I don’t know how ppl expect little children to sit at school all day long and then ALSO come home to sit and do MORE work too….”
Nelson tells Upworthy that she felt “shocked” that kindergarteners and first graders have homework, much less the amount expected of them. “We didn’t have homework like this when we were in these younger grades.”
What the experts say about homework
Expert opinion and research is somewhat mixed on the homework front, and there is no conclusive evidence that homework is universally beneficial for students. Duke psychologist Harris Cooper’s reviews found homework was linked to better test scores in high school and, to a lesser degree, middle school, with little benefit in the early elementary years, and that too much can do more harm than good. As a standard, the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Parent Teacher Association (National PTA) support the “10-minute rule”: a limit of about 10 minutes of homework per grade level per night.
With that as a guide, a first grader shouldn’t have more than about 10 minutes of homework on any given school day (the rule doesn’t call for any in kindergarten), but it’s not unusual for young kids to have two or three times the recommended limit. A 2015 study of more than 1,100 Rhode Island parents found primary school children received about three times the recommended load, with first and second graders at nearly 30 minutes a night.
As Nelson concluded, “It’s breaking their spirit and it robs them of what little fun and family time they have when they come home after a long day of school.”
Parents and teachers weigh in
Most parents and even most teachers in the comments agreed with her that four pages of homework is too much for a first grader, especially on only the second day of school:
“Poor little man. Children below a certain grade should not be given homework! Small children have a hard time sitting still for a long period of time yet alone expected to sit and do hours of homework, for what??? They are SMALL CHILDREN! Let them snack, play, laugh and all the other fun things when they get home. You are only a child once, they don’t need that taken away from them. Let them embrace their inner creativity, imagination, recipes, etc.”
“This breaks my spirit. Our schools are huge scams. You’re exactly right Cassi. Homework is ridiculous. Kids til the age of 10 primarily learn through real life situations and play scenarios.”
“I hate that for him! My little one has ADHD and doing homework after sitting in class all day is very stressful to him and makes him hate school. They are in school for 7 hours they shouldn’t have homework. That definitely takes away any kind of family time and that’s why kids never spend time with parents anymore because they have all this homework to do after being gone all day. I feel that if it can’t be done in the 7 hours they have the kids then it should wait until the next school day.”
“I don’t make them do homework at home when they are that little. It’s not fair! They are at school allllll day! And it’s already sooooo much for their little bodies and brains! I’ve never had a teacher upset about it either.. and even if I did oh well!”
“That breaks my heart. 4 pages is absolutely ridiculous for young kids. My daughter is going into 2nd grade next month, the 2 years in school it was always 1 page of homework sometimes back and front if it was math. And to read.”
“I don’t send homework home with my students , 8 hours a day is enough for little minds to be going . They need and deserve a break,” a teacher wrote. “As a second grade teacher, I don’t believe in sending homework home. I do send a reading log home and ask that they complete an hour of reading for the entire month, but I understand they are just kids and need to be kids!” another added.
“I was in this boat with my son…conversation with the principal and teachers helped dramatically!! It’s too much and we have to advocate for them.”
The response to her post, which Facebook users shared over 90,000 times, blew Nelson away. “I NEVER thought me sharing my thoughts openly about how my heart hurt watching my little guy struggle would connect to so many others worldwide going through the same thing,” she says.
One family’s homeschool leap
Many parents shared that excessive homework led them to the decision to homeschool their children, which Nelson took to heart. The week after sharing her viral homework post, she shared that they had had their first day of homeschooling. It was “A HUGE SUCCESS!!!!” she wrote, with her son getting far more work done in a far shorter amount of time, sitting for classes for just 1 hour and 45 minutes total.
Nelson tells Upworthy she felt totally intimidated to try homeschooling. “I seriously thought there was no way,” she says. “But I knew I had to set my fear aside and just take the leap for my kids. I told myself I’d figure it out one way or another. And here we are three days in and it’s been the easiest and best choice I’ve ever made.”
Homeschooling is not the right solution for every family, however. It has grown since the pandemic, though: Johns Hopkins’ Homeschool Hub estimates that about 5.9% of U.S. school-age children were homeschooled in 2023-24, based on Census Household Pulse Survey data. So the question of homework remains an important issue for kids, parents, teachers, and schools to work out.
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
