The 2003 Brown Center Report on American Education included a study investigating the homework controversy. Photos of angst ridden children became a journalistic staple. TIME’s 1999 story had the most provocative title, “The Homework Ate My Family: Kids Are Dazed, Parents Are Stressed, Why Piling On Is Hurting Students.” People’s 2003 article offered a call to arms: “Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third Grader? Exhausted Kids (and Parents) Fight Back.” Feature stories about students laboring under an onerous homework burden ran in newspapers from coast to coast. From 1998 to 2003, Newsweek, TIME, and People, all major national publications at the time, ran cover stories on the evils of homework. Our own century dawned during a surge of anti-homework sentiment. As a political force, it would lie dormant for years before bubbling up to mobilize proponents of free play and “the whole child.” Advocates would, if educators did not comply, seek to impose homework restrictions through policy making.

Nevertheless, anti-homework sentiment would remain a touchstone of progressive education throughout the twentieth century. The crusade would remain powerful through 1913, before a world war and other concerns bumped it from the spotlight. School districts across the land passed restrictions on homework, culminating in a 1901 statewide prohibition of homework in California for any student under the age of 15. An anti-homework campaign burst forth that grew into a national crusade. The Journal was an influential magazine, especially with parents. Stanley Hall (who has since been largely discredited), Bok argued that study at home interfered with children’s natural inclination towards play and free movement, threatened children’s physical and mental health, and usurped the right of parents to decide activities in the home.

Drawing on the theories of his fellow educational progressive, psychologist G.

In 1900, Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies Home Journal, published an impassioned article, “A National Crime at the Feet of Parents,” accusing homework of destroying American youth. Homework! The topic, no, just the word itself, sparks controversy. Part II of the 2014 Brown Center Report on American Education

Tons of homework