i hate online homework

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in.

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas about workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework. 

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says, he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy workloads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold , says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace , says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression. 

And for all the distress homework  can cause, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says, homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night. 

"Most students, especially at these high achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends, from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no-homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely but to be more mindful of the type of work students take home, suggests Kang, who was a high school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial 

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the past two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic , making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized. ... Sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking up assignments can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

More: Some teachers let their students sleep in class. Here's what mental health experts say.

More: Some parents are slipping young kids in for the COVID-19 vaccine, but doctors discourage the move as 'risky'

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Why I Dislike Homework and How the Research Backs Me Up

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Do your kids spend hours a night doing homework?

And I hate it– maybe even more than they do.

Seriously, I’d much rather that my kids get much needed down-time to: play, nap, read, run, swing, dance, twirl, build, create, draw, invent, or design.

Yet I sit inside with them, trying to pretend that I’m enthusiastic and supportive, helping them to stay focused, answering questions that come up. Ugh. (And don’t get me started trying to describe the melt-downs when you have a child with Sensory Processing Disorder and ADHD. Homework is that much more of a nightmare.)

Remember when I asked you on Facebook about homework? Most of you didn’t support homework either.

And to be clear, I didn’t care for homework as a fifth grade teacher either. My students rarely had homework unless they didn’t finish something in class. (Lesson to use your time wisely.) No homework meant that they could read, play, do sports, have family time . . .

The majority of research supports no homework. (So does common sense, one could argue, . . . at least, I’d argue anyway.)

Homework Research

1. There is no evidence showing that early elementary homework is beneficial  (Cooper, 1989 a; Cooper, Robinson & Patall, 2006) ASCD  with the exception of  some studies showing correlation on math tests. ( NCTM, 2008 )

2. Too much homework affects a child’s sleep. Lack of sleep negatively impacts brain function. ( Wolfson, 1998 )

3. Homework is detrimental to student achievement and makes children depressed. ( Australian Institute of Family Studies following 10,000 students )

4. Too much homework is not helpful to student achievement. ( Cooper, Civey, and Patall, 2006 .)

5. Mixed research showing homework developing good study habits – some research shows yes, some no.  (Cooper, 1989a, Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006) ASCD  (Kohn, 2006 The Homework Myth.)

6. Time spent on homework for secondary students sometimes correlates to achievement but not with elementary students and not consistently for secondary. (Plude, Enns, and Broudeur 1994) NCTM  and ( Maltese, and Fan, 2012 )

7. Many countries (Japan, Denmark and Czech Republic) with high test scores have instructors who assign no or little homework. (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, Kelly and Smith, 1998.)

You’ll find more research on two articles from which I learned the most and synthesize the homework research: Jane Bluestein’s blog and on ASCD .

Recommendations for Homework (if given)

While I’ll always believe that homework should be little to none, IF homework is assigned here are my recommendations.

Homework should:

– be able to be completed independently, without the help of an adult

– have been well-covered in class and is an opportunity to deepen knowledge

– promote mastery of a skill the student hasn’t yet mastered with an engaging task

– be clear and purposeful to the learner

– give students autonomy to learn a topic interesting to them

– be coordinated with other teachers so there isn’t an overwhelming amount

– be differentiated (considering different abilities of the learners, different modalities of learning, etc.)

I think less homework just makes sense. 

But there’s the rub. What’s up with all the homework our kids are assigned?

What do you think?

Have you advocated for less homework in your child’s life? Or would you do so now that you know the research and know you’re not alone? Please elaborate in the comments. 

Melissa Taylor, MA, is the creator of Imagination Soup. She's a mother, former teacher & literacy trainer, and freelance education writer. She writes Imagination Soup and freelances for publications online and in print, including Penguin Random House's Brightly website, USA Today Health, Adobe Education, Colorado Parent, and Parenting. She is passionate about matching kids with books that they'll love.

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40 Comments

[…] by Melissa Taylor, Imagination Soup Do your students spend hours a night doing homework? Mine do. And I hate it- maybe even more than they do. Most of the time they just do it and don’t complain. But I’m complaining! […]

I completely agree with your position about homework. I believe that this is a waste of time that children could spend with profit. After all, a person will become successful only if he do what he likes. Why should a child spend his childhood on stupid homework? Is it not better if he tries himself in different fields, and chooses what he likes. I would really like that when my child goes to school, homework was canceled, and my child could spend his free time on what he likes. Thank you for sharing this article!

Nowadays in Sweden they practice “homework-less” studying. The first results are pretty impressive! No psychological damages for children. Interviews showed that their attitude to school became more positive. We all have to practice it. No more senseless homework for kids.

thanks for sharing!

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current events conversation

What Students Are Saying About Remote Learning

Teenage comments in response to our recent writing prompts, and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation.

By The Learning Network

Please note: This post is part of The Learning Network’s ongoing Current Events Conversation feature. We invite students to react to the news via our daily writing prompts and, each week, we publish a selection of their comments.

In “ Coronavirus Is Shutting Schools. Is America Ready for Virtual Learning? ” Dana Goldstein writes about the great shift that began taking place in American education last month. For this week’s roundup of student comments on our writing prompts, we asked students how they have been coping with remote learning .

They told us about all the things they miss about going to school: their friends, teachers, sports, extracurricular activities, even “the loud and crazy lunchroom.”

But some students have discovered that they enjoy getting to work at their own pace, set their own schedule and be free from “the stressful environment of school.”

Others, though, recounted the challenges of distance learning, from struggling to understand assignments and getting easily distracted to not having reliable internet. “If you had told me a few months ago that I would be praying to go to school, I would’ve laughed and called you crazy, but I would do anything to go back to my school,” Hannah from Nashville said.

Before we get to the rest of the comments, we’d like to give a warm welcome to the new students who joined the conversation this week from:

Barcelona; Berkeley, Calif.; Brighton, Mich.; Buckeye, Ariz.; Dawson High School; Easton, Conn.; Englewood, Colo.; Forest Lake Christian School, Auburn, Calif.; Fruitland, Idaho; Fulton Science Academy, Alpharetta, Ga.; Hawkins, Ind.; Irving, Tex.; Lacey, Wash.; Lawrenceville, N.J.; London; Long Beach, Wash.; Malverne, N.Y.; Martin Luther School-Maspeth, Queens, N.Y.; Mexico; New Orleans, La.; Rochester, N.Y.; Roland Grise Middle School; Sunnyvale, Calif.; WLSA Shanghai Academy and Yakima, Wash.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

‘I did not realize that I took my routine and school day for granted until now.’

School is a place for building friendships, learning responsibility, and getting an escape from the house, but it seems as though the Coronavirus has taken that all away from us. For me, I loved getting to see my friends everyday in the school environment. Now that it’s taken away from me, I realize now that school was my main source of communicating with people. Now I feel as though I’m losing friendships I had at school since we can’t go anymore. School also taught us responsibility. I had a schedule when going to classes and when to wake up and go to bed. Now that I have no reason to have a schedule, I have been going to bed and waking up much later than I used to. There also seems to be a lack of motivation for me now to accomplish tasks because at school, we were given an hour and a half each day to get work done in class but now I keep pushing assignments back until the last second. This definitely won’t be beneficial to my work ethic in the upcoming senior year for me … Thanks to the Coronavirus, I have decided to make every moment of my senior year count and not take it for granted as I did for the past three years of high school.

— Owen Midgette, Norfolk, VA

I did not realize that I took my routine and school day for granted until now. My online school day consists of waking up at 10 am instead of 6 am, working on my laptop in my bed instead of a classroom, and now I make my own schedule. While this sounds pretty enjoyable for any teenager, it has made me miss school. I miss walking down the hallways with my friends. I miss sitting in a classroom with a teacher and other students, having discussions and asking questions. I miss the loud and crazy lunchroom. I truly miss things I didn’t even know that I loved about my school. If you had told me a few months ago that I would be praying to go to school, I would’ve laughed and called you crazy, but I would do anything to go back to my school.

— Hannah, Nashville

Something I find really special about my high school is that we are really focused on student-centered learning. We use a Harkness-style teaching method where all the students and the teacher sit at a round table together and instead of learning through lecturing, we learn from each other. Peer-to-peer interaction is a really pivotal part of education at my school, and it feels like it falls so short in our distance learning. We use Zoom and can see one another and our teacher, but everyone is always muted so as not to interfere with background noise. Our classes have been cut down by ten minutes and instead of having six classes a day, we only have three or four classes synchronously. I feel like my education is not being fulfilled. I have a significant lack of motivation and I miss the thought-provoking discussions I used to have with my classmates during physical school. I am really anxious to get back to school and really foster my love of learning through my peers.

— Emily Barkley, Lawrenceville, NJ

‘The workload has been overwhelming.’

“Oh my goodness … Why there is so much homework?” This was my first reaction to online study as I looked at the homework checklist. Due to the outbreak, most activities, including daily clubs, are canceled at present, thus we do not have much to do at home. At least teachers believe so; therefore, tons of homework overwhelms us everyday. However, we actually get much to do everyday besides homework: standardized tests, such as TOEFL, SAT, AP, etc., needed to be prepared; activities that could be done indoor had to be completed … Homework is the straw which breaks the camel’s back. How I hope that assignment could be a little less and more time could be controllable by ourselves! I am now in China. Online study has already taken place for 2 months so far. Sometimes I really wish to go back to school having lessons face to face with teachers and classmates. School is not only a place for study, but a place to prepare us for future life when we embark upon complicated society and interpersonal relationship. Online education cannot replace school system thoroughly in this aspect. I really miss normal school days. Is the day of returning far?

— Sophie Dai, WLSA Shanghai Academy

The workload … has been overwhelming. The thought process of my teachers seems to be “Oh they have all of this free time now, so I can assign them more work than I normally would.” Or at least something along the lines of that, because my teachers haven’t let up one bit. That’s been the most challenging part of remote learning, because I get easily distracted when I try to work in my house, and that I have even more work than normal, it’s challenging to get everything done. I have been able to keep up with what we’ve been learning for the most part, but it would be nice to have a teacher that could answer my questions and help me in person.

— William, The Barker

I’m in my second week of online distance learning and it’s exhausting! Yes, school now starts at 9 am and we end at around 2:30, so it’s not like I’m doing school work all day. However, now I’m on the computer for about 4 or 5 hours at a time. Before the whole pandemic happened, I only spent about an hour, maybe 2 on the computer both at school and at home. At the end of the day, I don’t want to see another computer for a while. I actually did some research (on the computer) and I found that I was suffering from computer fatigue. Yep, it’s a real thing.

— Miriam, Oakland, CA

I also find it very hard to find an ‘escape’ from school. Since it all takes place at my home, destressing has become more difficult because I feel like school is there with me the entire day. I really hope, in the near future, we will be returning to our school since I am not receiving the best education at home.

— Zoe V., Nashville, TN

‘I find it impossible to actually learn anything new through the distance learning.’

From what I have been through for the past two weeks is that online schooling is really a double edge knife. For example, it’s quite nice working at your own pace so you’re able to be less stressed with deadlines. But at the same time because of that, I have had a great deal of trouble keeping up with all of the work that my teachers have been putting onto me. That’s mostly because my pace is slower than most of my other classmates because my dyslexia and ADHD make it a lot harder to keep things on track because of how free things are. My teachers have been very understanding about it but there is only some much that they can do and I’m honestly quite scared for my end of the year grades. I have done fine this year grade-wise A’s and B’s but since this started they have been going down a bit and I’m not sure what to do because I’m doing what I can but it’s not doing anything to help my grades go up. So I’m just praying for the best at this point.

— Stephan T, Easton CT

I enjoy the new schedule that internet school has given me, since I finally have time to sleep as much as I need and feel well rested and ready to work. Though my new schedule is beneficial, I find it impossible to actually learn anything new through the distance learning. It’s easier for me to get distracted and be lazy with my work, so I’m starting to hate the daily mundanity of distance learning. I never thought I’d want to be back in school until now.

— Cali, King of Prussia, PA

Digital learning hasn’t been the best experience for me. I’m constantly caught in this game of tug of war of too much work and too little. Sometimes I’ll have three projects and four assignments due in one day and other days, I’ll have nothing. The lack of social interaction I, as well as my classmates, are enduring is also a huge factor in me not enjoying online schooling. Only one of my classes has actual online meetings where we can talk, while the others just keep posting work. I can’t learn like that though, so I haven’t really retained any of the information I just spit back at them for a grade.

— Emma B., Cass High School, Georgia

‘I’m often anxious that I will not be able to join and maintain access to online classes and assignments.’

Online school has been a stressful process for many of my friends and me. I live in an area where internet access and WiFi are hard to get and, as a result, I’m not only stressed about school but I’m often anxious that I will not be able to join and maintain access to online classes and assignments. Working at home is hard for me as well since there is no distinct separation of school v.s home. Normally at school, I am able to focus as it is a work environment and I am constantly communicating face-to-face with those around me. At home, I want to get up and go outside and stop staring at my iPad, it gives me headaches and I am tired of looking at it after 4-5 hours a day. Many of my teachers have been seemingly understanding of the issues caused by online school, but at the same time, they are continuing to give the normal work-load.

— Kitty, Stockton, NJ

So far, no, our schools have not yet switched to online. However, they have given us a long list of websites and activity suggestions to keep students occupied in learning while the School District figures out what to do for us … My sister and I just recently came up with our own schedules (which consists of some of the suggested websites and activities of our own) which was fun! I started my school schedule today, since I just got off of Spring Break. My biggest concern, if they do switch to online (which will most likely occur soon) is the lack of technology my family has (like Dana Goldstein writes about in the first paragraph of the article). The School District just sent out a survey to see who is lacking the school supplies necessary to be involved in online school, so hopefully they will be able to rent out computers to families who need them, like mine. We only have one laptop, and sharing one with a timed schedule would be impossible! I’m keeping my fingers crossed! :)

— Leah, Springfield, OR

‘I miss seeing everyone, especially my friends.’

Out of the concerns that Ms. Goldstein expresses, the most relevant one is how schools provide so much more than academics. Social interaction, a way to exercise … I miss seeing everyone, especially my friends, even that teacher who talks too much … I mean, at least they’re there to explain the assignment. Zoom calls and texting and Google Hangouts just can’t replace face-to-face interaction. I’m a dancer too, and dance has always been so infallible to me, I felt like even if schools shut down it would somehow still be there. But it wasn’t. Sometimes I just feel really lost because I feel like I don’t have anything to hold onto. I’m just trying to do well in “class” and waiting for this to end.

— Julia A, California

I too believe that school is more than just academics alone. School is what makes the basis of our early lives, 14 years of work, stress, and success. Not to mention all the great people you meet along the way, such as our mentors and teachers, as well as our lifelong friends. The activities I miss the most in school are going to my locker early in the morning, having quick chats with friends and colleagues, and roaming the halls listening to music. After school activities are another story, I miss going to track practice, making jokes with friends on a local loop (1.5 mile run around campus), and getting a good workout in for the day (thanks Mr. Frazer).

— Ethan Davila, New York

‘I am actually quite fond of it.’

Last week was the second week of E-Learning for my school, and I am actually quite fond of it. While I do understand the social aspect of school — as someone with an Anxiety Disorder lack of sleep and work load gets to me quickly, making this honestly an enjoyable experience for me. I feel as though I can learn the material at my own pace and on my own time, with breaks when I need them. With the stressful environment of school being significantly reduced, in my mind the pros of E-Learning outweigh the cons. I enjoy getting to know my teachers and classmates but I think there is a lot to be learned from the teaching and learning style we’ve had to embrace.

— Ella Mastin, Glenbard West HS

With the new shift to online schooling, I feel like an adult working from home. I get to organize my work schedule so that it works best for me, and I get to complete all of my work from the comfort of my own room. In the mornings I put on a nice shirt, so I look put together when attending online instructional Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings, but what the camera, my teachers, and my peers cannot see is that I am actually lounging around in the comfort of my sweatpants.

— Tracey N, Dawson HS

Before a normal school day involved me waking up at 5:45 and returning home at 3:30. Now, I wake up at whatever time I’d like, which has had a positive effect on me, reducing my levels of stress overall. I find that I am able to stay on task effectively, as I am able to work at my own pace and at the time I choose to. I find myself adequately occupied with work, as I have spent an average of 3 hours a day on schoolwork, which I feel is the same amount of work I completed in school, with the rest of the hours wasted on irrelevant information. I miss the social aspect most of school, as a social life is impossible to maintain virtually … In addition, the freed time has allowed me to pursue interests not supported by the public school system, as I have had more time to learn to code, and even accomplished creating a Virtual Private Network from scratch.

— David Vallejo, Miami

Since I can plan out my day myself, I feel it suits me better than what school puts students through, though it is challenging to learn new topics of some subjects without direct explanation from a teacher.

— Alicja Paruch, NY

‘A lot of the time, I get confused.’

I am starting my third week of remote learning and let me tell you, I can not wait for the day this whole thing is over. My school went directly into remote learning around the time the first confirmed case was found in my state and I do not like it. I find myself getting distracted much easier and find myself procrastinating more and more. I’m not motivated to complete some work until I realize it will impact my grade, unlike normal school. A lot of the time, I get confused. I don’t have the luxury of being able to ask my teacher why I need to do different when I don’t understand something or don’t know what to do and a lot of the time, an email doesn’t get back to me in the time I am completing my work.

— Tommy J, Saco

My first weeks of online classes have been hard because it’s difficult to stay on task with all the work we are being assigned by teachers. The work isn’t necessarily hard but figuring out how to use the different websites and when a new assignment has been posted takes a while. I am getting better at this as I go just like my classmates but sometimes I’ll miss some assignments I didn’t realize were due.

— Gerlanda Di Stefano, Malverne NY

As someone who’s family is financially stable and has access to a computer, I can say that it hasn’t been extremely hard for me to get my work done. It was hard whenever I didn’t understand something and instead of being able to ask my teachers and get an immediate response, I had to email them and wait for them to email me back. I believe that I have it very lucky and I know that some of my peers are struggling a lot.

I know that my school is trying very hard to help the kids, like providing food for children that relied on school lunches and having a curbside pickup for laptop rentals. They also have paper packets that they mailed so if you didn’t have access to the internet you could still continue learning and not get too far behind, which helps eliminate Dana Goldstein’s concern in that area, but there are still valid points that Goldstein makes that are still problems at my school as well.

— Morgan Sharp, Anna, Texas

Here in England we were all told that schools would almost certainly not shut and if they did it wouldn’t be until after Easter. However, our PM closed schools until September and cancelled all exams all of a sudden, even though he said a few hours before he wouldn’t even close them for two weeks so none of our teachers were prepared. Frustratingly, my school isn’t using Zoom or Google Classroom (and neither are any others that I’ve heard of) but are instead putting work on to the shared area online which we have to manually search through hundreds of files everyday to find that work that has been set for our classes. Only one subject, English has actually given us instructions and tasks to complete with a weekly deadline — the others have just uploaded random files and past papers etc and not told us what to do or when its due … I find it really hard to be motivated to do work / study for exams I am not even going to be taking. I wish my school would make all subjects give us specific tasks with deadlines and maybe use online resources such as Google Classroom so that we have more structure.

— Rachel, London, England

‘I’m missing out on my “high school experience.”’

The worst part of this experience is the fact that I finally made it to high school and now I’m missing out on my “high school experience.” Everyone talks about how high school is some of the greatest years of our life, but right now it’s not off to a spectacular start. I’m only a freshman, but the poor seniors are getting hit the hardest. Not being in school means there’s no sports, no school dances like Prom, and there might not even be a graduation at this point. Imagine getting to senior year and thinking that it’s going to be the best year overall, and then getting told that you won’t get to finish your final season of the sport you’ve played your whole life, or you can’t go to your last dance with the people you’ve been with all of high school. These people might not get to even experience graduation. All of their hard work for the past four years might get handed to them in the form of a PDF or a document in the mailbox.

— Natalie, Yakima, WA

I have been training for weeks to make state competition for poetry interpretation in Speech and Debate, and to see all my hard work go down the drain is disheartening. I felt like that opportunity was robbed from me. Since I am a junior, I now have to wait until senior year to attempt to attend state and it would be my last chance to do it. I really wish I was able to give it a shot this year.

— Jessica Franklin, Dawson High School, TX

Personally the main thing I miss is my sports season, I was looking forward to this years lacrosse season the whole year and it was heart breaking to be on day 4 and have it be cancelled.

— James, Barkoukis

One of the things I’m missing about school is theater. Before school was closed, I had two shows that were going to be performed the next week and now I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to perform the shows. Overall, this remote learning is an F in my book.

— Kayla C., Cass High School, Georgia

‘I’ve had to become my seven-year-old brother’s teacher.’

Everyday my motivation to do my work decreases and recently all my assignments have been turned in late causing my grades to drop. It has also been very difficult because I’ve had to become my seven-year-old brother’s teacher. My parents aren’t very fluent in English, so they aren’t able to help him with his schoolwork. It’s very challenging to keep up with both his work and my work at the same time.

— Adriana Segura, Cass High School, GA

The switch to distance learning has been hard for my family. I’m lucky enough to go to a school that provides each student with a computer, but for the first two weeks my younger brother (age 9) didn’t. He was sent home with a folder packed with work, but once that ran out, his teacher expected him to go digital. We have a computer, but it’s barely functioning, let alone good enough to run the programs they expected us to use. This was later remedied, but he’s also on an IEP which means he’s used to one on one learning for math, science, and reading as well as holds a general animosity towards learning in general. We’re terrified for what this will do to the progress he’s made. My mom has been struggling to teach it to him so she’s been enlisting my help. I’m happy to do it, but now I’m tackling two work loads a day on top of everything else going on.

— Kaylee Tener, Holicong Middle School

‘I’ve noticed that staying on task gets harder as the week goes on.’

The only thing familiar about my “school days” is getting up in the morning. The similarities come to an abrupt stop there. I eat breakfast each morning with my mom, who now works from home, and converse with her frequently throughout the day. Having a chance to connect with her in this way has is something I am grateful for. During the scheduled lunch break my school includes in its remote learning class schedule, I frequently take naps, mostly out of boredom. Far more distractions — my pet and the availability of food all the time, to name a few — abound as I try to remain engaged in classes and complete assignments. For the most part I am on task, but some of the very same distractions I deal with in school, such as receiving texts from friends or my phone serving as a distraction in and of itself — seem much harder to resist at home. For the most part, though, as a high school senior, I know and accept what work I have to complete and I return to the tried and tested routines that have served me well throughout my high school years.

— Aaliyah Rogers, Martin Luther School-Maspeth, Queens, NY

A school day for me is very different than what I’m used to. I now wake up an hour after I would normally be getting to school, so that’s three hours of extra sleep. I think because of this, my sleep schedule is messed up and I don’t have the structure we used to all get. I’ve noticed that staying on task gets harder as the week goes on. We’re obviously not at school working with our classmates and teachers, so it is hard for me to focus … There’s no structure, which is making it hard to get up and be productive. Overall, online school makes time management extremely difficult and I feel like I’m not even learning in some of my classes.

— Riley S, Brooklyn, NY

‘How harshly are AP exams going to be graded now?’

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Collegeboard announced massive changes to the AP tests: students only have 45 minutes, the tests are now only free response questions, and the major twist, the exams are now online. With this new information, as well as the fact that Collegeboard cut down on the curriculum we are being tested on, many of my classes switched from learning new material to review mode. Instead of preparing for multiple choice questions, I must now scramble to prepare for a writing only test that will determine my fate on whether I receive college credit for the many AP classes I have spent a year taking. My biggest fear now is that it is unknown how the new shortened tests will be graded, leaving me with only the written portion to get a good score on the exam. This added stress was not something I needed in an already stressful year.

— Ryan C, Dawson High School

As a junior, I have been very stressed about how the rest of the school year will pan out. Constant thoughts running through my head are, “When am I going to take the SAT? How harshly are AP exams going to be graded now? What are colleges going to do for admissions next year?” All of these questions are constant thoughts that most teenagers my age are thinking about right now. The work that we are being provided with now is only supplementary; which, does not help students stay motivated to get their work completed. Teachers are doing the best they can but the ones who truly care about their students’ mental health and education are putting in extra time just to help. Sadly, I have one teacher who I know I can count on to go to because she has been sending out constant emails about our AP exams and always asking how we are doing. If as many teachers cared as much as she did, then maybe more students would want to do their work …

— Amaya Lancaster, Branham High School, San Jose, CA

‘I feel for our teachers who have had to change everything about their classes.’

Luckily I have pretty good computer knowledge, but like Ms. Goldstein pointed out, I feel for our teachers who have had to change everything about their classes. Asking teachers to all of sudden offer the same kind of curriculum online is impossible, so it is important we stay patient … I’m not really thinking about what I need from my teachers as much as what our teachers need from us. All we have to do is stay on task and take this seriously while they have to change their jobs from in school to online in a matter of days. The workload isn’t unbearable and the teachers are very lenient, but as long as we don’t take advantage of this and stay diligent we can all get through this.

— Estevan, Corpus Christi, Texas

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Student: Online Learning Is ‘Stressful and Irritating’

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(This is the third post in a multipart series. You can see Part One here and Part Two here. )

Here is the new question-of-the-week:

What has your online learning experience been as a student? What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it? How does it compare with your experience as a student in a physical classroom? In the future, if you could choose, would you want to do more online learning? If so, why? If not, why not?

In Part One , five students from the high school where I teach in Sacramento, Calif., shared their reflections.

In Part Two , contributions come from students in Austin Green’s 1st grade class in Utah and others connected with the Kansas State School for the Blind.

Today, contributors come from my class; Ryan Jakacki’s class in Plymouth, Minn.; and Anne Magnin’s class in France.

“Stressful and irritating”

Ka’La Lawson is a junior at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif.

My online learning experience as a student has been very stressful and irritating. I honestly feel like I’m not learning anything—just getting assignments back-to-back. The only thing I like about this is that I can be home and I can choose when I want to do the work. I don’t like the fact that I’m not learning anything—just watching YouTube videos and trying to figure out what I’m doing and if it’s correct. In the future if I would not choose to do online learning because I generally hate it and it’s just adding more stress on me than I already have, plus if I have a question about something I have to wait for my teacher to respond. And sometimes that response won’t happen until the next day when I could have just finished the assignment the same day I was doing it. I also prefer to be in a physical classroom because I can also get help from my peers if I need it and if it’s online no one is really going to help me at all.

Teachers “pile up work”

Savanah Tomasko is an 8th grader at Plymouth Middle School in Plymouth, Minn. :

Online school has been harder than I thought it was. In the first few weeks, it seemed pretty easy. But eventually, the teachers stopped thinking about how stressful it can get when they pile up work. The only thing I like about online learning is that we get to stay in our beds and go at our own pace. I don’t like that teachers think that we have so much time to do all their work in one day and still have a life. I get to socialize in normal school and see my friends in the day. Although, in online school, we have to just focus on work and not socializing. It would be so cool if, in the future, we had an option to one day do online school and the next, go to school. For example, if you’re really not looking forward to going to school one day, you could just call the school and say that you’re doing it online. I wish the teachers were more understanding but I also get the frustration about kids not doing their work.”

A “quite good” experience

Axel Gardas is a sophomore at Lycée Marcelin Berthelot in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France:

My online learning experience has been quite good. I have a quiet room to work in, a laptop at my disposal and teachers that don’t send a huge amount of homework. So, there is worse. Still, there are some positive and negative points.

First, the pros: I really like waking up later and not being in a rush. It’s a lot less stressful and leaves me time to do sport and take a healthy breakfast.

For the cons, even though my teachers do everything they can in this situation, I feel like we are learning less and in a way that is not the best. I think it is crucial for students to have a teacher in front of them. They explain with their own words and not only with a written lesson, which allows us to understand better. We can ask them questions at any moment, and they can correct us easily. It allows us to really practice and learn the lesson we are working on. Without this direct contact, we have more difficulties to learn and need more time to do so.

I personally, and like a lot of students I think, prefer going in a physical class. Of course, the pressure is higher, we must wake-up earlier in the morning and our days are more exhausting; but at least, we can see our friends and most important, see our teachers in person. Although I wouldn’t be against a few days in the month with online courses. We would feel more relaxed and less stressed. If we can still go out to see our friends or just take some air, not like now...

“A very nice adventure”

Isako Kikkawa is a 16-year-old student at Marcelin Berthelot High School in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés in France:

My online learning experience has been a very nice adventure. I have so much liked it because I was able to study alone in my room. Nobody annoys me and I can focus on my homework.

But it has been a bit complicated : online learning requires a good organization. I was panicky a little bit and surely the others too. In addition, you must always be in front of the computer. So, when I had finished all my homework, my back was hurting me.

I think this system is nice, but I prefer the school where you can see your friends and study together. Furthermore, in the classroom, it is easier to ask questions and it is more understandable. So, in the future, if I could choose, I don’t want to do more online learning. I would like to go to school.

Thanks to Ka’La, Savanah, Axel, and Isako for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

Just a reminder, you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn’t include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the “answers” category found in the sidebar.

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Homework Is Stupid and I Hate Everything

How to get your child unstuck, re-glued, and doing their work.

Posted September 4, 2014

“I can’t do this! I can’t do anything! This is stupid! I’m stupid. Everything is stupid, I quit!”

We’ve all witnessed these moments of utter frustration when kids feel daunted by an assignment, or even just the idea of homework, often even before the work comes out of the backpack. Their unhelpful, pessimistic sixth sense tells them that this really is impossible, then comes the melt down, the shut down, the collapsing into a heap at the kitchen table, the tears, the anger . The mess.

What’s a parent to do?

If you’re like most parents, what you do starts out nicely enough: calmly reassuring, then coaxing, then pleading, then as your child’s resistance mounts, you quickly devolve into exasperation. The tough-love comes out and it’s not too pretty (or effective).

We could launch into an escalating match of dueling catastrophizers (Why can’t he do this? If he can’t even handle 15 minutes of homework, how is he ever going to get through school, get a job—deal with life?! I can’t take it!), but thankfully, there are other choices!

While it seems like your child is being cranky, spoiled or just needs to toughen up—that’s missing the point (and you certainly won’t advance the cause by mentioning it).

Kids in these moments would love things to be different; they don’t want to act or feel this way—but their internal yikes button has been pushed, they are in amygdala overdrive, their brain has detected a threat and they are going to fight or flee, but in no way sit down and work. So caught up in their emotions and quick-assessment of the impossibility of their work, they’re stumped, they feel trapped, and they don’t know how to get out.

Kids have probably never loved homework, so that’s not new, but thanks to our fast-paced, immediate gratification culture, kids today think that learning and everything else that’s mildly challenging and not fun, shouldn’t be. The resilience and perseverance they show when playing videogames or looking for the perfect outfit is unavailable to them when it comes to schoolwork. They think that learning should be like voila! Instant success. No fuss, no muss. And when it’s not, they are convinced that their struggle is undeniable proof of their inadequacy and lack of intelligence — they can’t do it, they’ll never be able to do it, and… they’re stupid.

What’s our job? How do we reset the yikes button?

To begin with, we need reverse our children’s learning about learning. We need to teach kids that a little bit of struggle is a normal and expected part of anyone’s climb on the learning curve. Everyone. Yes, every single person. Very smart people go through the same thing—a lot. In fact. that’s how they get smarter. They just aren’t talking about it so kids don’t witness it, but it happens to "smart kids" too.

Struggle is not a sign of a problem, it’s a sign that new growth is ahead! A sign that mastery is on the other side of this struggle and that means that in a little bit they are going to know even more than they do right now. And when it comes to knowledge—more is more.

If kids knew to expect the struggle, and viewed it as temporary and manageable, and that on the other side of it is the aha moment of success and pride—well, they wouldn’t be so set on avoiding their work fearing that it will gobble them (and their self-esteem ) up; they’d head in knowing that they will emerge triumphant soon (like they always do).

Great. But how do you teach this to a child who is falling apart on the floor?

Empathy, and a plan to do it differently next time. Job number one is to help your child get into the right mindset about work and learning and mistakes, but also creating a plan with your child to get into good work habits and patterns for success. Here are ideas to get you started.

Reflect and Empathize Rather than Convince, Using the Red Pen Edit : Resist the urge to just “fix” or “downplay” your child’s distress. Instead, empathize with your child’s frustration—this doesn’t mean you agree with the reasons they are feeling the way they do. Your empathy will free them up to hear other points of view. Take the “I can’t! ” and edit in some qualifiers: “You’re feeling really frustrated right now .” “This looks really hard right now .” “You’re not feeling like you want to do this right now .” “This feels really overwhelming to you, right now .” “Your mind is telling you right now that this isn’t going to work.” Notice how these edits take away the authority of the negative thinking . “I can’t” sounds like a fact, irrevocable. Putting in the qualifiers shows how these ideas are just temporary—they are one interpretation among many possible alternatives.

Words like this get your child nodding in agreement, and that base of connection will provide the springboard for collaborating on your next move together. Without it, there’s no springboard; there’s just the gravity of your child’s resistance pulling you both down.

Relabel the Bad Guy: Rather than saying things like: “Why are you being so negative (or difficult)? Help your child get distance from their own feelings and don’t confuse your child with their negative exaggerating brain. Instead, help your child step back and say: “Your worry is really trying to take over,” or, “Your worry mind is really trying to make this hard for you; that’s not fair to you.” This also helps your child know that you are working with them, not against them.

Get Specific and Think in Parts: Anxious thinking supersizes small problems and makes them seem monumental, permanent and unchangeable. Help your child narrow down the problem from the “everything” that is wrong, and identify the one thing that’s really feeling daunting. Negative thinking speaks in absolutes. The antidote is using the word some : “Tell me some parts that are hard, some parts that are perhaps easier.” “This feels really big, right now what feels like the hardest part? What’s the part that you think will be the toughest?What part do you think you could tackle first?

Once you break through the tyranny of all or none thinking, some things feel more approachable. The door is open.

Ask Your Child to Time the Process: Children hate homework, but adding an hour of resistance to the 15 minutes it often takes to complete the work is just extending the misery. Challenge your child to see how much more efficiently they can get their work done when there’s minimal grumbling. Be a neutral, agenda-free encourager of your child’s data collection. Have your child time their actual work time vs. start up time each day for a week. When they see how much time they’re wasting on start-up, the result will sell itself. (Don’t ruin the project by saying things like—“see, I told you it would be faster if you didn’t complain.” Best if your child discovers that for himself).

Use Grandma’s Rule As An Incentive: First comes dinner, then you get to eat dessert. Heading into homework time, ask your child what they want to do after their work is done. This will help get the momentum going.

Create a Routine: Rather than fight the homework battle anew each day, discuss a plan with your child for when and where homework will be done every day, so after a few weeks (it takes about three weeks to establish a new routine), your child will know the drill and get with the program, and won’t argue about it (especially if they were involved in the creation of the plan). Have your child write down the schedule and hang it on the fridge, so if there are questions, you don’t have to be the bad guy, just point to the schedule.

Destigmatize Mistakes Some of the homework drama comes from kids being afraid they won’t know how to do something and they don’t want to be caught in that moment. Take the pressure off. Yes, there is often a right or wrong answer in school, but in life, kids need to learn how to try things when they are not exactly sure how they will go. Link mistakes with courage and learning rather than embarrassment and failure. Focus on the process—what they can learn from it—rather than the fact of the mistake. Have your child identify a “fallible hero” or “famous failure” such as Michael Jordan being cut from his high school basketball team, or Thomas Edison requiring 10,000 trials before he made a successful light-bulb. Success is about perseverance; mistakes are the stepping stones.

Don’t Talk about the Future in Negative Ways Keep the—“you need to be able to do this for college!, or, “Every grade counts!”—orientation out of your nightly homework routine. What matters is the “trend” of your child’s work ethic and performance, not every single moment. The best predictor of future success and confidence is current success and confidence. Don’t pull the rug out from under your child by holding the future over her head, instead build confidence by encouraging your child’s efforts now.

Normalize! Show the Seams of How Learning Works Many children believe that intelligence is fixed—you either have it or you don’t. Parents and educators need to actively promote the idea that intelligence is acquired through experience and experience isn’t always neat and tidy. Introduce the idea of a learning curve , let children know that concepts are hard at first , that they have not mastered them yet (not that it is a now or never endeavor). Use examples of your own learning process with new challenges to show the trial and error process of gaining competency. It is not about Presto! It’s about effort.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about homework success. Next topic: Strategies for Preventing Homework Procrastination .

Want to learn more about how to help your child overcome worry and negative thinking? Check out my new book, Freeing Your Child from Anxiety: The Revised and Updated Version: Practical Strategies to Overcome Fears, Worries and Phobias from Toddlers to Teens and Be Prepared for Life! Harmony Books, 2014.

©Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., 2014. No part may be copied without permission from author.

Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., is a psychologist dedicated to helping children, teens, and adults overcome anxiety.

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How to Get Homework Done when You Don't Want To

Last Updated: March 15, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Ashley Pritchard, MA and by wikiHow staff writer, Hannah Madden . Ashley Pritchard is an Academic and School Counselor at Delaware Valley Regional High School in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Ashley has over 3 years of high school, college, and career counseling experience. She has an MA in School Counseling with a specialization in Mental Health from Caldwell University and is certified as an Independent Education Consultant through the University of California, Irvine. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 248,299 times.

Homework can be a drag, but it's got to be done to keep your grades up and stay on track during school. Going somewhere quiet, making a plan, and giving yourself breaks can all help you stay focused and on task to get your work done quickly. Try to keep your assignments organized and give yourself credit for completing hard or boring work, even if you didn’t want to.

Getting Motivated

• Keep a list of your assignments and check them off as you finish them. This can give you a sense of accomplishment that can motivate you to keep going.

• Make it the rule that you work for a certain amount of time, or until a certain amount of work has been accomplished. Afterward, you can hang out. Stick to this schedule.
• Try this out and see if it works. If you're too distracted by having friends around, make a date to hang out after homework instead.

• Make sure you keep the competition to yourself. Competing with your friends isn’t fun, especially over homework assignments and grades.

• Learning something that will probably help with future assignments, even if you don't know what they are yet.
• Proving to your teacher that you understand the homework so that they don’t keep assigning it over and over.
• Improving your GPA.
• Getting a good grade.

• Try not to reward yourself with food, as that can lead to snacking when you aren’t really hungry.

Staying Focused

• For instance, tell yourself that if you finish your first assignment in 20 minutes, you can go on your phone for 5 minutes.

• Make sure you stand up and do something when it's your break, or you won't get your wiggles out.
• Set a timer on your phone or use a kitchen timer to let yourself know when it's time to switch tasks.

• If you don't have control over the subject, try to find connections between the topic and something you care about. Find aspects of the subject that interest you.
• For instance, if you have to study History but you care the most about fashion, investigate the styles of the times and places you are studying. Learn how political and economical developments changed the way people dressed.

• You can find playlists on Spotify and YouTube that are made for studying and doing homework.

• When you're struggling to focus, sign out of your email and all social media so you don't check them as a reflex.

Creating Good Study Habits

• If you have many textbooks and worksheets, stack them and put them to the side.
• Get things like pencils, erasers, calculators, rulers, and paper.

• Having a planner will make it less tempting to procrastinate, as long as you have broken up your studying into manageable chunks.
• Your planner can be paper, or you can get one on your phone. Just make sure it has space for task lists as well as events.
• Once you have completed a task, cross it off or put a check next to it. Seeing that you're getting your work done will make you feel better, which in turn will motivate you to keep up the good work.
• Don't put more than you can do in one day on a list! Split up your week's work so that every day has a manageable amount.

• If you have a job or extracurricular activities that change your daily schedule, determine a weekly schedule that you stick to as much as possible.

• Sometimes just explaining what you have to do will help you understand it better.
• Talking to another person is a great way to brainstorm ideas. They may ask you questions or provide comments that can help you organize your ideas.
• Other times, the person you are talking to will notice something about the prompt that you overlooked.

Supercharge Your Studying with this Expert Series

Expert Q&A

Reader Videos

Share a quick video tip and help bring articles to life with your friendly advice. Your insights could make a real difference and help millions of people!

• Try asking a family member to help you remember when to start your assignments so you don’t forget. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 2
• If you’re really struggling with a topic, consider going to a tutor for extra help. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 2
• Getting motivated can be tough. Just try your best, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 2

Tips from our Readers

• Set up a dedicated study area at home with your needed supplies, to establish a consistent homework routine. Having everything in one prepared place helps minimize distractions.
• Use a planner to schedule out all your assignments. Break them into small, manageable pieces so it's less overwhelming. Checking tasks off as you finish motivates you along.
• If completely stuck on an assignment, reach out and talk it through with someone. Verbalizing it can provide new insights to move forward.
• Take short activity breaks every 45 minutes. Get up, stretch, grab some water. It refreshes your mental focus so you stay engaged.
• Incorporate a fun personal interest into an assignment when possible. Writing about something you care about keeps you absorbed.
• When you really need to concentrate, eliminate enticing distractions like your phone. Logging out keeps you on track.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/comm/files/smarttalk_staff_guide.pdf
• ↑ http://www.wcsu.edu/housing/wp-content/uploads/sites/55/2018/05/Handout-V6N6.pdf
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/worry-wise/201410/how-prevent-homework-procrastination
• ↑ Ashley Pritchard, MA. Academic & School Counselor. Expert Interview. 4 November 2019.
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/homework.html
• ↑ http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/organize-focus.html?WT.ac=p-ra#
• ↑ https://www.stonybrookmedicine.edu/sites/default/files/homework_tips.pdf
• ↑ https://childmind.org/article/strategies-to-make-homework-go-more-smoothly/
• ↑ http://kidshealth.org/en/teens/homework.html#

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5 things to say when your child says, “I hate homework!”

by: The GreatSchools Editorial Team | Updated: February 27, 2023

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Honestly, it’s hard to argue when your child say they hate homework. But how can parents respond in a way that’s helpful, builds your parent-child bond, and reinforces the idea that your child’s education and learning are hugely important? We asked the experts to weigh in.

5 ways to respond to “I hate homework!”

“i hear you.”, “we’re in this together.”.

“Often times, parents go negative,” observes America’s Supernanny Deborah Tillman. “The child says, ‘I’m not doing my homework!’ The parent says, ‘Yes you are doing your homework!’ Then it’s back-and-forth and arguing.”

Tillman says you want to motivate your child, but you also want to make sure they understand that you’re not going to engage in a battle over homework.

“How about a snack?”

Especially when a child is having trouble with it, homework is often difficult or boring, says Christine Carter, child development expert and author of Raising Happiness . And homework time often takes place when kids are wiped out and grumpy. “You have to do homework at the end of the day when all of your self-control is depleted or your willpower is depleted. So it’s asking something very difficult of children, especially younger ones,” she says. “To reinstate that self-control, your blood sugar level needs to be rising.”

“Tell it to the teacher.”

“break it down.”.

In Bird by Bird , the writer Anne Lamott famously describes her 10-year-old brother’s despair at having left a big homework project — a report on birds — until the last minute.

“…he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Lamott took a lesson for writing from her dad’s wise words, but there’s a lesson for parents there, too. “Kids experience a lot of fear and stress doing big projects,” says Diane Divecha, development psychologist and research affiliate of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

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Co-defendant in McGuire Memorial hate-crime case receives 10 year sentence

DAUGHERTY TWP. ― Another former healthcare employee from Beaver County has received his sentence for carrying out hate crimes against disabled patients.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, federal judges issued the sentence for 34-year-old Tyler Smith, of New Brighton, on Friday afternoon. The court announced that Smith, a former employee of the McGuire Memorial in-patient healthcare facility, will now spend 10 years in prison and three years under supervised release.

Smith had entered a guilty plea to the hate crime charges in December after his co-defendant, Zachary Dinnell, pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Smith's charges included one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Dinnell's sentencing: Former care worker sentenced to 17 years for patient abuse

“Today’s sentencing holds Tyler Smith accountable for the abhorrent and degrading assaults he and Zachary Dinell carried out against more than a dozen victims – simply because they were disabled,” said U.S. Attorney Eric Olshan. “Hate crimes target and terrorize not just individuals but whole communities. Our hope is that today’s result brings some measure of closure to the victims’ families who have shouldered the crushing burden of Smith’s and Dinell’s conduct for so many years. This office and our partners at the FBI will continue to work every day to give voice to the voiceless and protect the most vulnerable members of our communities.”

In December, reporters for The Times wrote that Smith had admitted in his plea that he conspired with Dinell to commit hate crimes against disabled in-patients at McGuire Memorial's facility in Daugherty Township from June 2016 to September 2017. These crimes included various methods of assault, including "punching and kicking residents, rubbing liquid irritants in their eyes, spraying liquid irritants in their eyes and mouths, and, in one instance, removing a resident’s compression stocking in a manner intended to inflict pain."

Smith told federal investigators that he and Dinell were able to avoid detection by exploiting their one-on-one access to residents and selective targeting of non-verbal victims who could not report the abuse.

“I hope today’s decision brings some comfort to the families impacted by this egregious crime,” said FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek. “Today’s sentencing shows there is no room for hatred, and crimes against our most vulnerable citizens will be met with the force of justice. The FBI and our partners stand committed to safeguarding the rights and dignity of every individual.”

Scotland's hate crime law: The problem with using public order laws to govern online speech

S cotland's new hate crime law came into force on April 1, sparking immediate controversy over its potential effects on freedom of speech and expression, especially online. The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act expands on current laws about crimes that have the possibility to stir up hatred, in Scotland only.

A "hate crime" itself is not its own specific offense under existing laws, or the new law. But if you are found to commit another crime (for example, assault) and it is proven that this was based on hostility against someone's protected characteristic (usually race, religion, disability or sexual orientation) you can be given a harsher sentence.

The new law in Scotland introduces the offense of "stirring up hatred"—either in person or online—related to to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. This does not extend beyond Scotland.

A stirring up offense is committed if someone behaves in a way that the average person on the street would consider to be threatening or abusive, and that behavior is based on the victim's protected characteristic. To find someone guilty, it must be proven that their aim or purpose was to stir up hatred. This is a high threshold and difficult to prove.

Alongside threatening or abusive behavior in person, the law criminalizes sending such communications online. This has been the most controversial change. Critics fear it could harm free speech , especially online, where context is everything, but is often lost.

Of particular concern have been discussions over transgender identity—author JK Rowling challenged police to arrest her over a series of posts describing transgender women as men, though police say this did not amount to a crime.

But should a law like this even be used to govern online speech?

Stirring up offenses online

The rationale behind public order legislation, including the new Scottish law, has always been to maintain public order during a time of disorder. It is difficult to argue that online comments can amount to criminal offenses that threaten public order.

Public order prosecutions of people who make hateful or prejudicial comments online are rare —and successful convictions even rarer. There are only a handful of cases in the public domain to use as examples.

In 2012, Liam Stacey, a student, was sentenced to 56 days in jail under the Public Order Act 1986 for sending tweets intended to stir up racial hatred aimed at footballer Fabrice Muamba . As I and other legal scholars have argued , while Stacey's tweets were clearly abusive, they never threatened public order. And yet, he was convicted of a public order offense, under a law enacted 20 years before Twitter even existed.

The act was also successfully used to prosecute 45-year-old Wigan man Stuart Sutton , who received a 16-month custodial sentence in 2022 for posting anti-Semitic and racist commentary online.

Distinguishing between intent to stir up hatred and speech intended to inform rather than offend is incredibly complex, especially online where proving public order is under threat is near impossible. Indeed, speech intended to inform is protected under the European Convention of Human Rights , even if it could be construed as racist.

In most cases, online comments have been successfully prosecuted under other existing laws, such as communications offenses.

Following England's defeat in the 2020 Euros, three people were arrested for public order offenses relating to stirring up racial hatred. But, in the event, each was later charged and convicted of sending a grossly offensive message in violation of the Communications Act , as opposed to a public order offense.

Scotland had another law that dealt specifically with threatening communications, as well as behavior at football matches, with provisions in place to uplift sentencing for communications grounded in hate. This law was used 32 times , and was later repealed following concerns that it was illiberal and unfairly targeted football fans.

In England and Wales, provisions such as the Malicious Communications Act and the Protection from Harassment Act have been used to prosecute people for offensive comments online. The Sentencing Act also allows the courts to "uplift" a person's sentence under any criminal provision, if their offense is proven to be aggravated by hate. This is used much more commonly than specific public order offenses.

Fighting hate online

Scottish government officials have hailed the new law as a significant step forward in protecting people from hate and prejudice. The reporting of hate crimes across Scotland has been relatively low compared to other jurisdictions.

But there is little evidence that the offense of stirring up hatred itself is effective in tackling online hate , which is certainly on the rise . The reality is that prosecutions for harmful online speech are likely to fall under other existing laws.

If we really want to tackle the rise in hate online (which recent debates seem to suggest we do), public order legislation and the weight of the criminal law will never work. It is only through open and public debate and better education that we can enact change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Provided by The Conversation

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Israel lashes out as U.S. expected to cut aid to IDF battalion over alleged human rights violations

By Debora Patta , Omar Abdulkader

Updated on: April 22, 2024 / 8:13 PM EDT / CBS News

Tel Aviv — Israeli leaders have lashed out at the prospect that the Biden administration may cut off aid to one of the Jewish state's army battalions over accusations that it's committed human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. According to a report by Axios, sanctions against the Israeli army's ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion could be announced in the coming days.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested a decision had been made on Friday when he was asked about internal investigations under a U.S. law that prohibits military aid being sent to foreign forces found to be violating human rights.

Asked about the U.S. probe, Blinken said Friday that it would be "fair to say that you'll see results very soon. I've made determinations; you can expect to see them in the days ahead."

The government has been investigating the IDF unit since 2022, a U.S. official told CBS News. The battalion came under heavy criticism after a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man was found dead in January of that year after being detained by IDF soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reacted angrily to the possibility of his military being sanctioned over the more than two-year-old accusations as it continues its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

• U.N. official says Israel systematically impeding Gaza aid distribution

"If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, I will fight it with all my strength," said the Israeli leader.

In a separate statement, Israel's Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant lauded the Netzah Yehuda battalion, heaping praise on it for fighting Hamas' ally Hezbollah along Israel's northern border with Lebanon, and "most recently, they are operating to dismantle Hamas brigades in Gaza."

"The battalion's activities are carried out in accordance with the values of the IDF and in accordance with international law," Gallant said, insisting that "any event that deviates from the aforementioned standards is addressed accordingly" by the IDF and Israel's justice system.

"Any attempt to criticize an entire unit casts a heavy shadow on the actions of the IDF, which operates to protect the citizens of Israel. Damage to one battalion, affects the entire defense establishment — this is not the right path for partners and friends," he said. "I call on the U.S. Administration to withdraw its intention to impose sanctions on the Netzah Yehuda battalion."

A U.S. official pointed out that the U.S. is not and has not been considering sanctioning units in the IDF clarifying that "without confirming what may be under consideration, under the Leahy Act, certain units would be ineligible for American security assistance until the violations are remedied."

The suggestion that the U.S. could cut off aid from a military unit of its long-time ally has turned the spotlight on the IDF as Netanyahu and his military continue dealing with a domestic backlash for failing to thwart Hamas' bloody Oct. 7 terror attack, which sparked the war in Gaza.

In the first top-level fallout from that failure, the IDF announced that the head of Israel's military intelligence agency, Major General Aharon Haliva, would be resigning as soon a successor was appointed.

Haliva said last year, not long after Oct. 7, that he accepted responsibility for the intelligence failures that allowed Hamas to launch its unprecedented attack on Israel. That assault saw Hamas kill about 1,200 people and take more than 200 others hostage.

Israel's war of retaliation against Hamas, with which Netanyahu has vowed to destroy the Palestinian group, has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. The ministry's tally does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties, but a majority of those killed have been women and children, according to the United Nations.

The IDF released video that it said was of a counter-terrorism operation in the West Bank city of Tulkarm over the weekend. The IDF said 14 militants were killed, but residents, just like Palestinians in Gaza, say they have borne the brunt of Israel's retaliation.

When the IDF forces pulled out of Tulkarm, they left massive destruction in their wake, and residents told CBS News they had seen nothing like it before in the occupied Palestinian territory, which is considerably larger than Gaza.

• U.S. sanctions 2 entities linked to extremist West Bank settlers

During the mission, Israeli bulldozers smashed through homes and shops, tore up roads and severed pumps and power lines — cutting off electricity and water supplies.

"The attack was wild," said resident Salah Yousif. "They came from four different sides."

In Gaza, meanwhile, the war grinds on toward the seven-month mark, with officials in the Hamas-run enclave saying nearly 15,000 children have been killed. That includes members of a family killed in a strike over the weekend on the southern city of Rafah. Gazan officials said 16 people were killed in that strike, most of them children.

The U.S., along with other Israeli allies, has warned Netanyahu against carrying through with his plan to launch a major military ground operation in Rafah, fearing it could lead to huge civilian casualties in the city, where an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge. It is the only major city in Gaza that IDF forces have yet to invade since Oct. 7, but Netanyahu has vowed to order the incursion as he says there are still a couple Hamas combat units hiding out there.

Tucker Reals and Sara Cook contributed to this report.

• Antony Blinken
• Palestinians
• Benjamin Neta​nyahu

Debora Patta is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since joining CBS News in 2013, she has reported on major stories across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many accolades Patta has received for her work.

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Melissa McCarthy Defends Meghan Markle Against Critics & Online Hate, Calls Her 'Amazing' & 'Inspiring'

Melissa McCarthy is coming to Meghan Markle ‘s defense!

The 53-year-old actress previously worked with the 42-year-old Duchess of Sussex in 2021 for Meghan ‘s 40th birthday campaign .

Back in March, Meghan opened up about the toxicity of social media and why she keeps her distance from it, amid constant online bullying and hate.

Recently, Melissa spoke out in support of the Duchess , defending her from online attacks.

Keep reading to find out more…

“It bums me out for every woman and every person, that for no reason people just like to attack,” Melissa told Page Six . “A smart, interesting woman that has her own life, for some reason, is incredibly threatening to some people.”

“I always think, how inspiring!” she added, emphasizing her admiration for people like Meghan . “I’ve never once been threatened by someone who is amazing. I just think how inspiring. It’s really on the people throwing the hate.”

Melissa also called Meghan “wonderful” and “awesome.”

Previously, Melissa praised both Meghan and her husband Prince Harry after filming the 40th birthday campaign video.

If you missed it, Meghan has two new projects in the works at Netflix!

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