Homework - can I judge?

In another post I commented implied that homework was a waste of time. To be fair, I was referring to a student who has already mastered the material and is now failing because he cannot force himself to do work that he has already surpassed. It would be like taking an advanced mathematics student and failing him for refusing to do 100 problems of single digit multiplication, simply because all the other students were doing the multiplication problems. But, if this kid can do trigonometry, why are we failing him because he got bored of problems that read 4x2=? Come on, sure it’s easy for him, but how intellectually challenging is it?




Be that as it may, I was reminded that it is not fair to judge another teacher’s assignments as being a waste of time. It’s true I do not want others to judge me harshly, and there have been times over this past year that I have worried my teaching style is being judged by many. But, I *do* think that most of the homework assignments are worthless, and not just for my brilliant yet autistic student.



There is a lot of research out there right now that shows most homework has little to no bearing on a student’s actual success in acquiring the desired information. Little to no bearing. If I have 86 minutes approximately 3 days a weeks in which to teach as much Spanish as I can, why am I going to waste precious minutes of that time with work research, supported by my personal experience, will have little to no impact on the actual learning of my students?