 You or your kid is spending more time on homework today than any student has in the history of ever. The average middle and high school student has about 17 hours of homework a week. That's basically a part-time job. So why are we burying our kids in homework? To answer that, we've got to take a look at the bizarre history of homework. Let's start in 1957. The space race got America's competitive juices flowing because you can't let the commies beat us, right? Truth is, they had us beat until Neil Armstrong put his foot on the moon. American pride was hurt. And instead of going to war like we usually do in that situation, we thought it better to reform education and go for a generational advantage in science and math. This thinking could be best summarized by an article published in Life Magazine in 1958. The article compared the lives of two 16-year-old boys in America and Russia. It suggested that the Russians had the upper hand in the space race because their kids spent their free time doing science experiments, playing sports and music, visiting museums, and having other intellectual pursuits. Now, what were American kids doing with their free time? Why golly gee willikers? They were drinking soda pop with their girlfriends and listening to rock and roll. The Life article seemed to suggest that more rigorous schooling, along with assigning more homework to fill a student's free time, would help America bridge the gap with Russia. And throughout the Cold War, this mindset remained the norm. But that wasn't always the case. It's the 1800s in America, and Horace Mann has created a new system of public schooling for the country. Mann traveled to Germany to learn about their revolutionary system of public schooling. Since Horace Mann basically wanted to copy and paste the German system, kids got homework and lots of it. 19th century homework comprised of rote memorization, times tables, historical facts, all to be recited from memory the next day in class. Who the hell wants to do that? So it's no surprise that an anti-homework movement springs up. Parents started to get frustrated with homework because it took time away that kids could have spent working a job or doing chores at home. The high point for the anti-homework movement came at the turn of the century with an article in the Ladies' Home Journal titled A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents. After it was published, schools received angry letters from parents supporting the viewpoint that homework was a problem. And the politicians for once listened to this uproar. By 1901, California actually banned all homework for students under 15 years of age across the entire state. In schools everywhere afterwards, it was the norm to not assign too much homework until the Russians ruined it for all of us. So here we are, having the same old debate about homework that we've always had. The pendulum of public opinion looks like it's swinging back in the direction of we should give kids less homework. And that might not be a bad thing. Kids as young as six are getting about 30 minutes of homework a night when only 10 minutes a night is recommended for that age. While it's true that homework can help students learn by reinforcing classwork, studies have found that American students have an amount that doesn't benefit them. Just because I had to do a whole part-time jobs worth of homework when I was a kid doesn't mean that we have to pass that trauma on to the next generation.