Oct 10, 2016 3 min read

Traditionalists who were raised on a diet of memorizing the names of presidents and sitting through a lecture on an eat-your-spinach book like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” might have been surprised by the story that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Observer-Reporter about new methods to enhance learning that are being deployed in local classrooms.

Rather than a routine of lectures, drills and homework, the story by David Singer detailed how teachers in the Avella, Burgettstown, Canon-McMillan and Carmichaels districts are trying to make learning a little bit less rote, a little bit less like breaking rocks in 99-degree heat. Students work together in groups, workshops and online. Many of these students, for better or worse, have been playing video games since shortly after they abandoned the cradle, so some lessons are also “gamified.” The story pointed out how the William Golding novel “Lord of the Flies,” a mainstay of middle school and high school curriculums, has been divided up into chapters and sections much like the objectives in role-playing video games. Jennifer Ford, a teacher at Canon-McMillan Middle School, explained it this way: “Each level is focused on a character, as ‘Lord of the Flies’ is so character-driven, and once they’ve mastered their tests and quizzes, they advance.”

No doubt there are some who look at all this with dismay, who believe the classroom has ceded too much ground to popular culture or that the grueling work of learning has been reduced to playtime. But the process of learning is not frozen in aspic. Methods evolve and no doubt will continue to evolve. Innovations like these should be embraced and applauded.

At the same time, educators are also shaking off some other timeworn assumptions about education -namely, the absolute value of homework.

While it is unlikely that students will be heading home empty-handed anytime soon, research has emerged in recent years that shows piling on more and more homework doesn’t necessarily make students smarter. A study published in 2015 by the American Journal of Family Therapy found that students in elementary school were getting as much as three times the amount of homework that is recommended by specialists in learning. The rule of thumb is that students should have 10 minutes of homework per grade level every day. For instance, a first grader should have 10 minutes, while a high school senior should have 120 minutes. But the study found that some first-graders were being saddled with up to a half-hour of homework at night, while even some kindergartners -yes, kindergartners – were getting about 25 minutes of homework when they are supposed to get none at all.

Over the summer, The Washington Post reported some parents decided the nightly slog of homework became too much, particularly for younger students who, their parents believe, should be spending more time playing with siblings or friends and cultivating their own creativity in unstructured settings.

“It’s really important, especially for young kids, to play,” Erica Reischer, a clinical psychologist, told the Post. “Playing is a cornerstone for learning. Playing is learning. That’s it. Parents need to protect that space.”

The old rule seems to apply: Too much of anything isn’t good for you. And that goes for homework, too.