With his head collapsed over his elbow on the Harkness table, my friend naps during class. His eyes, which he forced to remain open late into the previous night, close. As he sleeps, a sixth of the material for our new unit whizzes by. “What are we doing?” asks my friend after he sees the worksheet before him.
In contrast, a group of senioritis infectees passionately present how Rubix cubes connect to the group theory we learned in math class. One senior even learned how to solve a Rubix cube for the project, and another displays a custom 3D digital model of a Rubix cube.
By minimizing required schoolwork and maximizing optional learning, teachers would increase students’ intrinsic motivation to learn for fun. Faculty should start by simply following Milton’s homework guidelines.
On its website, Milton claims that students should expect a full-year course to include 4.5 to 5.5 hours a week of learning time and have homework assignments that average 30 to 45 minutes per class meeting. However, in a survey with fourteen respondents, students reported that a median of three of their classes violate these guidelines. While the website asserts that students should expect at most 12.4 hours of homework per week, according to The Milton Paper’s State of the Acad, students spend an average of 17.6 hours per week on homework.
While the median student on my survey rated the productivity of such learning at four out of five, they reported spending a median of only 2.25 hours per week learning for fun rather than a looming assessment. When classes already take too much time, students generally do not pursue them much further even though they deem such pursuit productive.
In addition, despite Milton’s prestige and requirement for four years of English and the completion of Algebra II, Milton students scored a mean of 1397 on the SAT in 2023 while students at Alpha High School, a private school in Austin, Texas, averaged a 1470 while spending only three hours per day on academics. We do not need long hours of forced learning to gain foundational skills.
Flexible homework assignments minimize mandatory homework while projects maximize optional learning. Together, they encourage students to learn for themselves. Acknowledging variations in student interest, Math Teacher Michael Kassatly asks students to “attempt” some problems for homework rather than force students to solve them. Later in the year, after students have gained sufficient mathematical background, Kassatly allows students to pursue their passions freely through projects, so they can discover applications and proofs that match their interests. This freedom actually leads to greater learning: in my Linear and Abstract Algebra class with Kassatly, we learned several topics in higher math usually reserved for college students.
By contrast, Katherine Sheng ’28, who reported spending fourteen hours per week on AP Latin, described the course as “doom and despair.” Furthermore, Claire Liu ’28 reported that schoolwork prevented her from deeply pursuing other activities; she said she had no activities for which she spent over five hours per week on and did not remember the last time she felt immersed in an activity. As Liu states, schoolwork consumes her weeks with a never-ending stream of work until summer.
To free students to learn outside of class requirements, we must strengthen and enforce current guidelines: Milton should designate an official email to report homework-length infractions and inform teachers when multiple students report overly long assignments. Julia Goddard ’29 explained that when students told her English teacher that the homework took “way too long,” the teacher deflected responsibility by saying that the students did not manage their time well. When one teacher violates the guideline, they steal time that a student could otherwise use independently discovering other subjects.
Instead of ignoring complaints of overly long homework assignments, teachers should redesign assignments for greater time flexibility; they could split up longer readings or provide auxiliary material for students to optionally ponder. Classes might not cover as many units or texts, but they would teach students to learn according to their own drive rather than a teacher’s mandate.
Excessive assignments result in academic dishonesty as well. According to The Milton Paper's State of the Acad, 62.2% of students have reported cheating on schoolwork and only 2% of students always complete assigned readings.
As teachers plan next year’s syllabi, they must consider how to invoke passion rather than how to force learning with endless exams and assignments. Rather than in hours of schoolwork or chapters of material, let us measure learning by the passion with which students learn for fun and for themselves.