Help! My Dog Won't Eat My Homework! Quiz

Answer: Most children only attended a few years of school.

Homework was uncontroversial for most of the 19th century, because students were only assigned significant amounts of it when they reached high school, and most children left school after fifth or sixth grade to enter the workforce, or to help out full time on the family farm. Even for those who attended elementary school, homework was uncommon because student attendance was typically erratic, and most classrooms were multi-age and congested. Homework only began to attract its detractors when more children started to stay in school longer, after the introduction of mandatory schooling in the latter half of the 19th century.

The end of the century also saw an increased emphasis on experiential learning and the emergence of the progressive education movement, which contributed to the attacks on homework, particularly the assignments given to younger students, which typically consisted of memorization and rote learning.

Answer: Any kind of homework.

The California Civil Code of 1901 provided that: "No pupil under the age of 15 years in any grammar or primary school shall be required to do any home study." The move by the California legislation was the result of a strong anti-homework lobby, which started in the late 19th century and persisted all the way to the 1930s. Perhaps the most aggressive opponent of homework during this period was Edward Bok, the editor of the Ladies' Home Journal.

In a 1900 article entitled "A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents", Bok called homework a "fearful evil", and claimed that its imposition on family life represented an unwarranted intrusion on the rights of both the parent and the child.

He advocated that children should only be required to perform five hours of brainwork a day, inclusive of time spent in school, and pushed for homework to be abolished for all children below the age of 15.

The lawmakers in California evidently adopted his recommendations, which just goes to show that if your dog won't eat your homework, Congress just might.

Answer: Homework was blamed for all of these

The prevailing wisdom in the early 1900s was that children should have at least five hours of sunshine and fresh air every day, and homework was seen as putting a very serious crimp in achieving that goal. Every schoolchild's hero, Edward Bok, decried homework as being responsible for nervous disorders in young children, claiming that it over-stimulated the brain, resulting in frightening nightmares.

By the 1930s, schools were likened to workplaces for children, and homework was seen as "an illicit extension of the working day".

The Society for the Abolition of Homework claimed that homework posed grave risks to the child's physical, emotional and mental well-being. Even the American Child Health Association jumped on the bandwagon in 1930, by lumping homework together with child labor as the "chief causes of the high death and morbidity rates from tuberculosis and heart disease among adolescents".

Answer: The launch of Sputnik 1.

The 1950s was a period when Russian superiority in technological and military endeavors was viewed as a threat to American democracy. The October 4, 1957 launch of Russia's Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was accompanied by pronouncements in the popular media that the Russians had beaten the Americans to space, and also sparked concerns that students in America were lagging behind their Soviet counterparts. Education reform became a goal of America's national defense policy - the National Defense Education Act was passed in 1958 to promote math and science education, and long-standing policies concerning limits on the amount of homework that could be assigned in schools were overturned.

It was suddenly unpatriotic to criticize the amount of homework being given to students, as it had become the duty of all Americans to prepare the next generation to survive the rigors of the ongoing Cold War.

Answer: Most schools had banned all the books that were worth reading.

Despite the boost given to homework and other scholarly pursuits by the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the following two decades saw a gradual but steady drop in SAT test scores in America. According to the College Entrance Examination Board, average SAT scores between 1963 and 1980 declined by 54 points for the verbal section and by 36 points for the math section. Some of this decline was attributed to the change in composition of the students taking the SATs - in the 1960s, a college education was no longer reserved for the privileged few, and greater access to higher education had resulted in increasing proportions of students from weaker scholastic backgrounds taking the SATs. However, this compositional change wasn't solely responsible for the decline in test scores - the same period saw a drop in the number of high scoring students, and scores continued their downward movement even after the composition of the SAT-taking population stabilized in the early 1970s - so there were clearly other factors at play.

Conservatives were quick to pin the blame on the changes in classroom practices and student attitudes that occurred amidst the counterculture atmosphere surrounding the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. During this period, educators advocated fewer restrictions on students in order to encourage discovery, self-expression and the development of the whole child. Many schools had allowed their students the freedom to pursue subjects which interested them, with the result that many curriculums had become inundated with "soft electives" that were undemanding. The period was also rife with anecdotal accounts of a drop in discipline in schools, and students being given fewer homework assignments. The concern over academic standards in America reached fever pitch in the mid-1970s, and was helped along by editorials like the 1975 Newsweek article entitled "Why Johnny Can't Write", which warned that the educational system was responsible for "spawning a generation of semi-literates".

Answer: High school students

By 1981, the perceived shortcomings in the nation's education system prompted the formation of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which was directed to investigate and report on the quality of education in the United States. The Commission released its findings in 1983 in a report entitled "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform", and the outlook was grim.

The report declared that the foundations of the country's educational system were "being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people". Of particular concern was the gradual lowering of standards in American high schools, many of which offered an extensive but diffuse selection of electives to students, who typically chose the most undemanding courses, like "bachelor living" or "training for adulthood and marriage".

The Commission also noted a decrease in the amount of homework given to high school seniors, with two-thirds of students surveyed having less than 1 hour of homework every night. Amongst the suggestions by the Commission to address these deficiencies was a recommendation that "students in high schools should be assigned far more homework than is now the case".

Answer: Children aged 6-8

Despite the fact that "A Nation at Risk" only called for an increase in the amount of homework given to high school students, the years following the publication of that report saw increases in the amount of time spent on homework by students even before they reached high school, according to the study conducted by the Population Studies Centre of the University of Michigan. Children aged 9-12 saw the smallest increase in the amount of time spent on homework - from 3 hours 22 minutes per week in 1981 to 3 hours 41 minutes per week in 1997. Children aged 3-5 also saw a slight increase in the same statistic - from 25 minutes to 36 minutes per week. Interestingly, this age group saw a dramatic increase in the amount of time spent reading or being read to - from 29 minutes per week in 1981 to 1 hour 24 minutes per week in 1997.

However, the biggest increase in homework was seen in children aged 6-8 - the study showed that children in this age group spent an average of 52 minutes per week doing homework in 1981, but this amount had increased to 2 hours 8 minutes per week in 1997, or more than double the time spent in 1981. Reports in the popular media began to proclaim that young children in America were being consumed by too much homework, and cited studies that indicated that homework had a greater positive impact on academic achievement for older students only. On the other hand, opponents to this viewpoint were quick to point out that 2 hours 8 minutes of homework a week amounted to a little over 25 minutes per school night, which didn't seem like that big of an imposition.

Answer: Calling 911 emergency services.

According to reports in the media, more and more pre-schools were giving out homework assignments to meet the growing concern of parents to ensure that their children were fully prepared for grade school. An article in a November 2007 issue of "Time" magazine even reported that more and more parents were getting after-school tutors for their children who were in pre-school and kindergarten. That same year on "The Tonight Show", Jay Leno played a recording of an actual 911 call placed by a 4-year old who was stumped by his arithmetic homework. He pleaded to the operator for help with his "take-aways", and proceeded to cite examples of the toughest problems, like "16 take away 8" and "5 take away 5". The operator patiently tried to help the boy with his homework, and expressed surprise when the boy told him his age. The tutoring session ended prematurely when a woman, presumably the boy's mother, interrupted the call:

Woman: Johnny, what are you doing?
Boy: The policeman is helping me with my math.
Woman: What did I tell you about playing on the phone?
Boy: You said when I need help, to call somebody.
Woman: I didn't mean the police.

You know there's a real problem when the local police needs to get involved in Johnny's homework.

Answer: Backpack-related injuries.

In 1998, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) warned of "an epidemic of back, neck and shoulder injuries" caused by the increased weight of the backpacks being carried by schoolchildren in America. According to data compiled by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), the average American student in 1999 carried a backpack weighing almost one-fourth of his or her body weight, and 30% of students reported that the weight of their bag went up to as high as one-third of their body weight at least once a week.

The recommended weight for a backpack is closer to one-tenth of a child's body weight, so it's little wonder that backpack-related incidents accounted for over 7,000 visits to American emergency rooms in 2001. AOTA took action by creating the inaugural National School Backpack Awareness Day in 2002 to promote "healthy backpack use". Since then, groups like AOTA, AAOS and the American Academy of Pediatrics have been educating the public on the dangers of improper backpack use, which can lead to injury to muscles and joints and problems with posture.

Some groups have even advocated the use of a rolling backpack (but noted that they may be difficult to transport in snow), while others have asked parents to consider purchasing a second set of textbooks for their children to keep at home.

Answer: Homework gave them a much-needed "time out" while their child was preoccupied.

A 1929 survey conducted in an elementary school in New York City found that over 90% of parents were in favor of homework. A similar survey of parents in Pennsylvania in the early 1930s revealed that 78% felt that homework should be given to their children in grades 1-8. In the post-Sputnik years of 1958 and 1959, some 51% of American adults felt that high school students weren't doing enough homework, and a nationwide poll in 2000 revealed that only 10% of parents felt that their children were getting too much homework. And despite the rise in the number of reports in the press around the turn of the 21st century about the overwhelming burden of homework, a national poll conducted in 2006 revealed that only 19% of parents thought that their children had too much homework. The majority of parents still felt otherwise - 57% of those surveyed thought that their children were given the right amount of homework, while 23% thought that the amount was too little.

So it looks like homework is here to stay, and schoolchildren may find it difficult to count their parents as allies in the battle against homework. And for those students who are thinking of recreating apocryphal excuses for not doing their homework, let me leave you with this thought: Before your dog can eat your homework, you first have to do it.