The great intractable issues of our day — Middle East peace, radical Islamic terrorism, world trade and inequality — often seem quite distant from the everyday routine of life for Canadian families, and thankfully so. But there is one perpetually controversial and apparently unsolvable topic that does play a major role in family routine. Homework.

Too much? Not enough? Should parents help? Does it improve grades? Is family time more important? There's no household issue more contentious. Last year saw the publication of several anti-homework books, such as The Homework Myth and The Case Against Homework, that gave voice to parental homework angst. And this week, a major survey on education released by the Canadian Council on Learning(CCL)revealed that nearly three-quarters of all parents see homework as a frequent source of stress in their house.

This comes as no surprise. The homework debate has never been about kids. Rather it's about parents and their inability to reconcile two competing anxieties: concern over the quality of their children's education and the availability of family time.

Homework is an obvious intrusion into the modern besieged weekday. A common rule of thumb cited by teachers is that students should get 10 minutes of homework per day for every grade attended. It seems reasonable enough for first graders, but this quickly escalates to a full hour for sixth-graders and two hours per night in Grade 12. Homework now consumes 9.2 hours per week for the average Canadian adolescent, according to Statistics Canada. Much of it requires parental participation. Add to this commute times, dinner-making, hockey and dance practices, plus some sleep, and home life has all but disappeared.

Yet these same stressed parents also see homework as tangible evidence that their kids are getting a good education. Despite the obvious tension, over 80 per cent of parents surveyed agreed that homework enhanced learning; an even greater percentage considered it a necessity for building good work habits. And a third of all parents have hired tutors for the kids, supplementing school-provided homework with the private sector variety. For parents who bring their own work home, watching their children do homework must appear validating and reassuring.

However, the case for homework's necessity is murkier than most educators will admit. The recent Trends in International Math and Science Study(TIMSS)looked at science scores for Grades 4 and 8 students in 50 countries, including Canada. It found that "on average, internationally, spending a lot of time studying was not associated with higher achievement." It was the poorest performing countries that assigned the most homework. Canada's scores were above average. Time spent on homework was below average.

Overall, there is scant evidence that elementary-level homework serves any purpose other than conditioning children for homework in high school, where it appears to play a bigger role in outcomes. This suggests schools could hold off on most homework until higher grades, with no impact on academic performances and a potentially large reduction in family stress levels. We're guessing most kids would agree with such a proposal. Too bad parents can't.

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