A Nation at Rest: The American Way of Homework

Abstract

We use several national surveys to provide a 50-year perspective on time spent on homework. The great majority of American children at all grade levels now spend less than one hour studying on a typical day—an amount that has not changed substantially in at least 20 years. Moreover, high school students in the late 1940s and early 1950s studied no more than their counterparts did in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Changes in educational opinion on homework over the last half century have had little effect on student behavior, with only two notable exceptions: a temporary increase in homework time in the decade following Sputnik, and a new willingness in the last two decades to assign small amounts to primary-grade students.