homework in the 2000s

The Cult of Homework

America’s devotion to the practice stems in part from the fact that it’s what today’s parents and teachers grew up with themselves.

America has long had a fickle relationship with homework. A century or so ago, progressive reformers argued that it made kids unduly stressed , which later led in some cases to district-level bans on it for all grades under seventh. This anti-homework sentiment faded, though, amid mid-century fears that the U.S. was falling behind the Soviet Union (which led to more homework), only to resurface in the 1960s and ’70s, when a more open culture came to see homework as stifling play and creativity (which led to less). But this didn’t last either: In the ’80s, government researchers blamed America’s schools for its economic troubles and recommended ramping homework up once more.

The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s . Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study , for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.

But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely. They’re reviewing the research on homework (which, it should be noted, is contested) and concluding that it’s time to revisit the subject.

Read: My daughter’s homework is killing me

Hillsborough, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco, is one district that has changed its ways. The district, which includes three elementary schools and a middle school, worked with teachers and convened panels of parents in order to come up with a homework policy that would allow students more unscheduled time to spend with their families or to play. In August 2017, it rolled out an updated policy, which emphasized that homework should be “meaningful” and banned due dates that fell on the day after a weekend or a break.

“The first year was a bit bumpy,” says Louann Carlomagno, the district’s superintendent. She says the adjustment was at times hard for the teachers, some of whom had been doing their job in a similar fashion for a quarter of a century. Parents’ expectations were also an issue. Carlomagno says they took some time to “realize that it was okay not to have an hour of homework for a second grader—that was new.”

Most of the way through year two, though, the policy appears to be working more smoothly. “The students do seem to be less stressed based on conversations I’ve had with parents,” Carlomagno says. It also helps that the students performed just as well on the state standardized test last year as they have in the past.

Earlier this year, the district of Somerville, Massachusetts, also rewrote its homework policy, reducing the amount of homework its elementary and middle schoolers may receive. In grades six through eight, for example, homework is capped at an hour a night and can only be assigned two to three nights a week.

Jack Schneider, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell whose daughter attends school in Somerville, is generally pleased with the new policy. But, he says, it’s part of a bigger, worrisome pattern. “The origin for this was general parental dissatisfaction, which not surprisingly was coming from a particular demographic,” Schneider says. “Middle-class white parents tend to be more vocal about concerns about homework … They feel entitled enough to voice their opinions.”

Schneider is all for revisiting taken-for-granted practices like homework, but thinks districts need to take care to be inclusive in that process. “I hear approximately zero middle-class white parents talking about how homework done best in grades K through two actually strengthens the connection between home and school for young people and their families,” he says. Because many of these parents already feel connected to their school community, this benefit of homework can seem redundant. “They don’t need it,” Schneider says, “so they’re not advocating for it.”

That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that homework is more vital in low-income districts. In fact, there are different, but just as compelling, reasons it can be burdensome in these communities as well. Allison Wienhold, who teaches high-school Spanish in the small town of Dunkerton, Iowa, has phased out homework assignments over the past three years. Her thinking: Some of her students, she says, have little time for homework because they’re working 30 hours a week or responsible for looking after younger siblings.

As educators reduce or eliminate the homework they assign, it’s worth asking what amount and what kind of homework is best for students. It turns out that there’s some disagreement about this among researchers, who tend to fall in one of two camps.

In the first camp is Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Cooper conducted a review of the existing research on homework in the mid-2000s , and found that, up to a point, the amount of homework students reported doing correlates with their performance on in-class tests. This correlation, the review found, was stronger for older students than for younger ones.

This conclusion is generally accepted among educators, in part because it’s compatible with “the 10-minute rule,” a rule of thumb popular among teachers suggesting that the proper amount of homework is approximately 10 minutes per night, per grade level—that is, 10 minutes a night for first graders, 20 minutes a night for second graders, and so on, up to two hours a night for high schoolers.

In Cooper’s eyes, homework isn’t overly burdensome for the typical American kid. He points to a 2014 Brookings Institution report that found “little evidence that the homework load has increased for the average student”; onerous amounts of homework, it determined, are indeed out there, but relatively rare. Moreover, the report noted that most parents think their children get the right amount of homework, and that parents who are worried about under-assigning outnumber those who are worried about over-assigning. Cooper says that those latter worries tend to come from a small number of communities with “concerns about being competitive for the most selective colleges and universities.”

According to Alfie Kohn, squarely in camp two, most of the conclusions listed in the previous three paragraphs are questionable. Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , considers homework to be a “reliable extinguisher of curiosity,” and has several complaints with the evidence that Cooper and others cite in favor of it. Kohn notes, among other things, that Cooper’s 2006 meta-analysis doesn’t establish causation, and that its central correlation is based on children’s (potentially unreliable) self-reporting of how much time they spend doing homework. (Kohn’s prolific writing on the subject alleges numerous other methodological faults.)

In fact, other correlations make a compelling case that homework doesn’t help. Some countries whose students regularly outperform American kids on standardized tests, such as Japan and Denmark, send their kids home with less schoolwork , while students from some countries with higher homework loads than the U.S., such as Thailand and Greece, fare worse on tests. (Of course, international comparisons can be fraught because so many factors, in education systems and in societies at large, might shape students’ success.)

Kohn also takes issue with the way achievement is commonly assessed. “If all you want is to cram kids’ heads with facts for tomorrow’s tests that they’re going to forget by next week, yeah, if you give them more time and make them do the cramming at night, that could raise the scores,” he says. “But if you’re interested in kids who know how to think or enjoy learning, then homework isn’t merely ineffective, but counterproductive.”

His concern is, in a way, a philosophical one. “The practice of homework assumes that only academic growth matters, to the point that having kids work on that most of the school day isn’t enough,” Kohn says. What about homework’s effect on quality time spent with family? On long-term information retention? On critical-thinking skills? On social development? On success later in life? On happiness? The research is quiet on these questions.

Another problem is that research tends to focus on homework’s quantity rather than its quality, because the former is much easier to measure than the latter. While experts generally agree that the substance of an assignment matters greatly (and that a lot of homework is uninspiring busywork), there isn’t a catchall rule for what’s best—the answer is often specific to a certain curriculum or even an individual student.

Given that homework’s benefits are so narrowly defined (and even then, contested), it’s a bit surprising that assigning so much of it is often a classroom default, and that more isn’t done to make the homework that is assigned more enriching. A number of things are preserving this state of affairs—things that have little to do with whether homework helps students learn.

Jack Schneider, the Massachusetts parent and professor, thinks it’s important to consider the generational inertia of the practice. “The vast majority of parents of public-school students themselves are graduates of the public education system,” he says. “Therefore, their views of what is legitimate have been shaped already by the system that they would ostensibly be critiquing.” In other words, many parents’ own history with homework might lead them to expect the same for their children, and anything less is often taken as an indicator that a school or a teacher isn’t rigorous enough. (This dovetails with—and complicates—the finding that most parents think their children have the right amount of homework.)

Barbara Stengel, an education professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, brought up two developments in the educational system that might be keeping homework rote and unexciting. The first is the importance placed in the past few decades on standardized testing, which looms over many public-school classroom decisions and frequently discourages teachers from trying out more creative homework assignments. “They could do it, but they’re afraid to do it, because they’re getting pressure every day about test scores,” Stengel says.

Second, she notes that the profession of teaching, with its relatively low wages and lack of autonomy, struggles to attract and support some of the people who might reimagine homework, as well as other aspects of education. “Part of why we get less interesting homework is because some of the people who would really have pushed the limits of that are no longer in teaching,” she says.

“In general, we have no imagination when it comes to homework,” Stengel says. She wishes teachers had the time and resources to remake homework into something that actually engages students. “If we had kids reading—anything, the sports page, anything that they’re able to read—that’s the best single thing. If we had kids going to the zoo, if we had kids going to parks after school, if we had them doing all of those things, their test scores would improve. But they’re not. They’re going home and doing homework that is not expanding what they think about.”

“Exploratory” is one word Mike Simpson used when describing the types of homework he’d like his students to undertake. Simpson is the head of the Stone Independent School, a tiny private high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that opened in 2017. “We were lucky to start a school a year and a half ago,” Simpson says, “so it’s been easy to say we aren’t going to assign worksheets, we aren’t going assign regurgitative problem sets.” For instance, a half-dozen students recently built a 25-foot trebuchet on campus.

Simpson says he thinks it’s a shame that the things students have to do at home are often the least fulfilling parts of schooling: “When our students can’t make the connection between the work they’re doing at 11 o’clock at night on a Tuesday to the way they want their lives to be, I think we begin to lose the plot.”

When I talked with other teachers who did homework makeovers in their classrooms, I heard few regrets. Brandy Young, a second-grade teacher in Joshua, Texas, stopped assigning take-home packets of worksheets three years ago, and instead started asking her students to do 20 minutes of pleasure reading a night. She says she’s pleased with the results, but she’s noticed something funny. “Some kids,” she says, “really do like homework.” She’s started putting out a bucket of it for students to draw from voluntarily—whether because they want an additional challenge or something to pass the time at home.

Chris Bronke, a high-school English teacher in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, told me something similar. This school year, he eliminated homework for his class of freshmen, and now mostly lets students study on their own or in small groups during class time. It’s usually up to them what they work on each day, and Bronke has been impressed by how they’ve managed their time.

In fact, some of them willingly spend time on assignments at home, whether because they’re particularly engaged, because they prefer to do some deeper thinking outside school, or because they needed to spend time in class that day preparing for, say, a biology test the following period. “They’re making meaningful decisions about their time that I don’t think education really ever gives students the experience, nor the practice, of doing,” Bronke said.

The typical prescription offered by those overwhelmed with homework is to assign less of it—to subtract. But perhaps a more useful approach, for many classrooms, would be to create homework only when teachers and students believe it’s actually needed to further the learning that takes place in class—to start with nothing, and add as necessary.

The Surprising History of Homework Reform

Really, kids, there was a time when lots of grownups thought homework was bad for you.

Homework causes a lot of fights. Between parents and kids, sure. But also, as education scholar Brian Gill and historian Steven Schlossman write, among U.S. educators. For more than a century, they’ve been debating how, and whether, kids should do schoolwork at home .

At the dawn of the twentieth century, homework meant memorizing lists of facts which could then be recited to the teacher the next day. The rising progressive education movement despised that approach. These educators advocated classrooms free from recitation. Instead, they wanted students to learn by doing. To most, homework had no place in this sort of system.

Through the middle of the century, Gill and Schlossman write, this seemed like common sense to most progressives. And they got their way in many schools—at least at the elementary level. Many districts abolished homework for K–6 classes, and almost all of them eliminated it for students below fourth grade.

By the 1950s, many educators roundly condemned drills, like practicing spelling words and arithmetic problems. In 1963, Helen Heffernan, chief of California’s Bureau of Elementary Education, definitively stated that “No teacher aware of recent theories could advocate such meaningless homework assignments as pages of repetitive computation in arithmetic. Such an assignment not only kills time but kills the child’s creative urge to intellectual activity.”

But, the authors note, not all reformers wanted to eliminate homework entirely. Some educators reconfigured the concept, suggesting supplemental reading or having students do projects based in their own interests. One teacher proposed “homework” consisting of after-school “field trips to the woods, factories, museums, libraries, art galleries.” In 1937, Carleton Washburne, an influential educator who was the superintendent of the Winnetka, Illinois, schools, proposed a homework regimen of “cooking and sewing…meal planning…budgeting, home repairs, interior decorating, and family relationships.”

Another reformer explained that “at first homework had as its purpose one thing—to prepare the next day’s lessons. Its purpose now is to prepare the children for fuller living through a new type of creative and recreational homework.”

That idea didn’t necessarily appeal to all educators. But moderation in the use of traditional homework became the norm.

Weekly Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

Privacy Policy   Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

“Virtually all commentators on homework in the postwar years would have agreed with the sentiment expressed in the NEA Journal in 1952 that ‘it would be absurd to demand homework in the first grade or to denounce it as useless in the eighth grade and in high school,’” Gill and Schlossman write.

That remained more or less true until 1983, when publication of the landmark government report A Nation at Risk helped jump-start a conservative “back to basics” agenda, including an emphasis on drill-style homework. In the decades since, continuing “reforms” like high-stakes testing, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Common Core standards have kept pressure on schools. Which is why twenty-first-century first graders get spelling words and pages of arithmetic.

Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Get Our Newsletter

More stories.

The Coldest Cream

Wooden Kings and Winds of Change in Tonga

The Impact JSTOR in Prison Has Made on Me

Sex (No!), Drugs (No!), and Rock and Roll (Yes!)

Recent posts.

• Black Freedom and Indian Independence
• Real Estate and the Revolution
• Birthing the Jersey Devil
• Celebrating the Fourth of July
• Swimming Rediscovered, True Crime, and Zealandia

Support JSTOR Daily

Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

A New Report Reveals That Homework in the United States is an Easy Load

Two new reports debunk the notion that U.S. schoolchildren suffer from a growing homework load, with little time to play and just be kids.

The great majority of students at all grade levels now spend less than one hour studying on a typical day—an amount that has not changed substantially in at least twenty years, according to data analyzed by the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution and the RAND Corporation.

The research contradicts dramatic anecdotes of children overwhelmed with homework. The Brookings and RAND researchers collected and reviewed the best social science available on children’s homework, including data from surveys conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

Even at the high school level, where more homework might be expected to prepare students for the demands of college or the workplace, only about a third of seventeen-year-olds spend an hour or more a day on homework.

The Brown Center on Education Policy conducted the study after a wave of dramatic news stories over the past few years described a backlash against homework. Since 2001, feature stories about onerous homework loads and parents fighting back have appeared in Time , Newsweek , and People magazines; the New York Times , Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , Raleigh News and Observer , and the Tampa Tribune ; and the CBS Evening News and other media outlets.

“The stories are misleading,” writes author Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center. “They do not reflect the experiences of a majority—or even a significant minority—of American schoolchildren.”

“Excessive homework is not a common problem,” writes Loveless in the report. “The critics of homework need to produce some very powerful evidence before policymakers start mandating reductions in homework or even banning it altogether. To date, the evidence put forth by homework critics has been weak.”

Across three different age groups, the percentage of students with less than an hour of daily homework has actually risen since 1984, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which for two decades has been asking a nationally representative sample of students questions about homework.

In 1999, 83 percent of nine-year-olds, 66 percent of thirteen-year-olds, and 65 percent of seventeen-year-olds reported having less than an hour of homework per night (see figure 1). In 1984, 81 percent of nine-year-olds, 63 percent of thirteen-year-olds, and 59 percent of seventeen-year-olds had reported spending that amount of time studying.

Another survey, the Third International Math and Science Study, finds that American high school students have one of the lightest homework loads in the world. Of twenty countries, the United States ranked near the bottom, tied for the next-to-last position. Students in France, Italy, Russia, and South Africa reported spending at least twice as much time on homework as American students.

The University of Michigan research does show an increase in the amount of homework given to children ages six to eight. But the increase of ten to eleven minutes a day is largely due to the fact that the baseline was low to begin with—only a third of children ages six to eight spent any time at all on studying in 1981.

“Why is it important to get the homework study right?” asks Loveless. “Mainly because it is positively associated with student learning.” Research shows that the relationship of homework with student achievement is positive for both middle and high school students and neutral for elementary school students.

Moreover, homework is a “barometer of the success—or the limits—of movements to raise academic standards,” write Brian Gill of RAND and Steven Schlossman of Carnegie Mellon University in the fall 2003 issue of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

“To succeed, academic excellence movements ultimately require students to invest effort in their studies; time spent on homework is a ground-level indicator of this effort,” say Gill and Schlossman.

Gill and Schlossman trace homework time trends of the past fifty years, finding that the only substantial increases in homework for high-school students occurred in the decade after Sputnik, when the nation launched an academic excellence movement motivated by competition with the Soviet Union. Homework time subsequently declined to pre-Sputnik levels, and the excellence movement of the 1980s and 1990s that followed the publication of “A Nation at Risk” caused surprisingly small increases in homework (see figure 8).

Ironically, the only increase in homework in the last two decades has happened precisely in the lower grade levels, where researchers believe it matters least for academic achievement, according to Gill and Schlossman.

Most parents feel the homework load is about right, and, of those who would like to change it, more parents would rather see more homework than less, according to a 2000 poll conducted by the Public Agenda Foundation. Only one out of ten parents believes there is too much homework.

When a homework problem exists, which can happen because children vary in their study habits, solutions should come from parents and teachers, not policymakers, Loveless says.

About the Brown Center on Education Policy and the Brookings Institution

Established in 1992, the Brown Center on Education Policy conducts research on topics in American education, with a special focus on efforts to improve academic achievement in elementary and secondary schools. The Brown Center is part of the Brookings Institution, a private, nonprofit organization devoted to research, education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. The Institution maintains a position of neutrality on issues of public policy. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.

For a full copy of the report as well as information about other Brown Center events and publications, please visit the Brown Center’s website , or call Tucker Warren at 202/457-8100.

About RAND Education

RAND Education conducts independent research and analysis on education policy, including school reform and educational assessment and accountability. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.

About Brookings

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Sofoklis Goulas

June 27, 2024

June 20, 2024

Modupe (Mo) Olateju, Grace Cannon, Kelsey Rappe

June 14, 2024

• Corpus ID: 142679124

The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning

• E. Kralovec , John Buell
• Published 1 July 2000

142 Citations

In search of the epiphany of homework assignments: a model of evaluating local schools' homework practices., the homework pendulum: teachers’ perspectives on the costs and benefits of assigning homework.

• Highly Influenced

Doing Homework, Doing Best? Homework as a Site of Gendered Neoliberal Governance

A two-way street: homework in a social context, parents and the politics of homework: some historical perspectives, what is homework for hong kong primary school teachers' homework conceptions., swedish parents’ perspectives on homework: manifestations of principled pragmatism, what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework an account of newcomer immigrant youths' afterschool academic lives, students’ study time and their “homework problem”, parents, homework and socio-economic class: discourses of deficit and disadvantage in the "new" south africa., related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

We’re fighting to restore access to 500,000+ books in court this week. Join us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The end of homework : how homework disrupts families, overburdens children, and limits learning

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

38 Previews

2 Favorites

Better World Books

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station46.cebu on December 28, 2022

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

• Meet The Team

30 Words & Phrases From The Early 2000s We Should Bring Back

The 2000s had a lot of things that we probably want to forget, from low riding, weirdly cut jeans , to hair feathers, the twee aesthetic and pearlcore galore (okay, those last two weren’t so bad), that we sometimes close our eyes and wish the beginning of the decade had never happened. However, there’s a lot of relatively cool early 2000s slang that’s actually held up. We’re not saying you should go around using words like “biotch” on the regular, but many of these once-popular phrases  could still be used today… if you really wanted to. 

The most popular early 2000s slang

Meaning: Basically, shiny stuff on clothing — this could go anywhere from bejeweling, to jewelry in general! Bling is a simple way of saying that someone has an extensive amount of sparkle on their outfit.

Meaning: Essentially synonymous to having a good time (See: “Let’s get crunk!”), which could mean anything between sober fun, or not sober fun.

Meaning: Usually used sarcastically, “that’s hot” is used as a satirical juxtaposition to someone doing something that absolutely isn’t hot.

Meaning: Synonymous to “Crunk,” except definitely not sober.

Meaning: “Word” indicates that something is either understood or appreciated. It could be used similarly to “okay,” or to “awesome,” depending on context.

Meaning: A quirky take on b*tch. You might have seen this used in 13 Going On 30 , one of the quintessential 2000s films.

Meaning: Something people would say when they felt like they accomplished something over someone else, especially winning a game. Ex. “Yeah, dude I owned you at Mariokart!”

Meaning: Similar to “Owned”, but you basically say “served” instead. It’s like you serve them their own busted ego on a tarnished silver platter.

Meaning: Similar to “awesome,” “baller” was a way to describe things being cool and/or exciting in the early-mid 2000s.

Meaning: Essentially a more relaxed version of being “ecstatic.” Being ecstatic about your birthday, for example, is different from being stoked about not having Geology homework.

Meaning: A fun substitute for “goodbye.” Extra points if you make a peace sign with your hand as you say it.

Meaning: A substitute for “leaving” a place or a situation. Ex. “Let’s bounce” rather than “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

Meaning: A way to describe another person that you felt pleasantly towards. Ex. “What’s up, dawg?

Meaning: Cool. See “Lip Gloss” by Lil Mama.

Meaning: An opening statement to conversation, such as, “How are you doing?” except so very much worse.

Meaning: A sort of grotesque reaction to something that is bad at a relatively mediocre level.

Meaning: Another friendly term for another person. Ex. “Wassup, homeskillet?” Synonymous with “Homeslice.”

Meaning: Similar to “cool,” “mega” is a way to describe something radical or awesome.

Meaning: To both “chill” and “relax” at the same time. It’s redundant because the two words have extremely similar connotations, but still extremely fun to say.

Meaning: An exclamation of excitement, this term could be compared to “Holla” or “Eureka.” It should live on in infamy.

Meaning: Very cool or fashionable, first popularized by Mean Girls . Yes, we are trying to make it happen.

Meaning: A shorter and cuter way to say “parents.” Try this one if you’re close with your family and see how they react.

Meaning: Someone who’s, well, new at doing something, and maybe a bit naive. See also: “Noob.”

Meaning: Short for “people,” your peeps are your ride-or-dies. Peeps walked so “besties” could run.

Meaning: Not just a taste descriptor! “Sweet” is yet another way to exclaim happiness, especially when you just got good news. Ex. “I just found $20 on the ground! Sweet!”

Meaning: “For sure.” (Thank you, Snoop Dogg.) Maybe we don’t need this one in our regular lexicon, but hey, you know you want to use it ironically sometimes.

Meaning: Oh my god, relax! Often used in a passive-aggressive sense, it’s meant to sarcastically calm down someone who’s stressing you out with their nervous or angry energy.

Meaning: Usually accompanied by flipping your hand out at someone, this is a more clever way to say that you’re over the conversation and won’t be dealing with it any longer. Period.

Meaning: Not trustworthy. Your crush only texts you back at 3 a.m. ? That’s sketchy.

Meaning: Holler. This can be used on its own as a way to signal your excitement about something (see also: Booyah), but “holla at me” means you want someone to give you a call. I know, almost none of us talk on the phone instead of texting these days, but I bet you miss Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.”

• early 2000s

We wanna slide into your DMs

(but via email)

The newsletter you won’t leave unread.

• Back To School

12 Things You Definitely Did After School in the Early 2000s

The early 2000s were an amazing time for TV, fashion, music, and just about everything else. And if you were a kid back then , there really wasn't anything quite like the feeling you had when you finally got home from school. You could watch the Disney channel (hello, Boy Meets World reruns!), eat snacks, log onto AIM to see what crazy drama you missed since you said goodbye to your friends 20 minutes earlier, and do your homework in front of the TV because screen time wasn't really a thing yet. It was an interesting and magical time that you likely won't fully understand unless you lived it. Take a trip down memory lane and keep reading for 12 things you probably did after school in the early 2000s.

Take Off Your Heavy Backpack Full of Trapper Keepers

Taking off your heavy backpack after school is the kid equivalent to taking off your bra as an adult.

Break Open Some Dunkaroos

It didn't matter if you already had some in your packed lunch, you went right for your mom's stash in the pantry for another round after school. And if these weren't your thing, we're willing to bet you were all about Bagel Bites and pizza rolls.

Immediately Turn on TRL

TRL was the best. How else were you going to memorize the dance moves from the latest Destiny's Child music video?

Practice New Choreography

While many of today's musicians just stand at a microphone and sing, the early 2000s were known for delivering some of the best choreography of all time. From Britney Spears to Destiny's Child to the Backstreet Boys, learning their dance moves took time, patience, and respect. And you probably still remember it today.

Watch the Disney Channel

After TRL , you went straight for the Disney Channel and stayed there for the rest of the night. And you had plenty to watch, too, with all their amazing original movies, new shows like Lizzie McGuire , and reruns of Boy Meets World .

Log Into AIM

Embarrassing screen names and even more embarrassing away messages? What a time.

Do Homework With Gel Pens

Unlike regular pens, gel pens wrote smoothly and came in unique, metallic colors. Doing homework and organizing notebooks with these babies was like therapy.

Sneak a Sweet Snack Before Dinner

You didn't care if it was going to "ruin your appetite" like you were told, Push Pops, Baby Bottle Pops, Ring Pops, and more just couldn't wait.

Eat Dinner With Your Family

You probably threw food at your sibling from across the table, said "fine" when your parents asked you how your day was, and had to seriously negotiate to not eat all of your veggies, but looking back, those are priceless memories.

Listen to Your Newest CDs

After a hard day in class, jamming to our favorite CDs in your room was the best stress reliever. Whether you used a CD player or a Discman to get some privacy from prying sibling ears, nobody understood you like those songs did. Bonus points if you also brought your massive CD player into the bathroom to sing into your shampoo bottle like you were on the VMAs stage.

Write About Your Crush in Your Journal

It doesn't matter what your crush did that day, you wrote about it.

Fight With Your Siblings Before Bed

It might have been over a borrowed top or them using the phone while you were waiting for your BFF to call, but you basically started a war every night before bed.

• Little Kids

Studies show today's students have more homework than previous generations

By Maira Ansari

LOUISVILLE (WAVE) -- Are kids spending too much time on the three R's and not enough time with family? Many students and their parents are frazzled by the amount of homework being piled on in the schools. WAVE 3's Maira Ansari investigates how much homework is too much.

WAVE 3's Maira Ansari has some tips to help you and your children get through the homework crunch.

Mason Allen is 12 years old, and like countless kids his age, he spends a lot of time doing homework. The day we spoke with him he was working on "social studies, language arts, math -- and I gotta study for two tests."

That's a full load of homework, and if you ask Mason, it's too much. "Math is kind of hard when you do it at home."

Homework is a tradition that is part of a big debate that can often become a sore subject between you and your child.

"When I was in school, I thought I had a heavy workload," said Joanna Smith, Mason's grandmother.

Now, as children's backpacks grow heavier and their leisure time more scarce, parents are concerned.

"It takes a lot for a parent to have time to just sit with the children if they need help" said Smith.

Many national studies say kids are doing more homework than ever before. Research at the University of Michigan shows the amount has more than doubled. In 1981, students ages 6 to 8 did about 52 minutes of homework a week. That increased to 128 minutes in 1997. The increase was smaller among 9 through 12 year olds.

That's no surprise to kids like Whitney Bowman, a sixth grader. "Gosh! How much do you really need?" she asked.

Experts say what young students need versus what they sometimes get are two different things. In fact, recent studies say they are getting more homework.

Janet Leitner is an elementary liaison in Jefferson County. She says not all parents think their kids are overloaded with homework.

"Sometimes we receive calls from parents saying 'my child doesn't get any homework, I want them to have homework,'" Leitner said. "Then, other times, parents may feel that it's too much homework.

Leitner says homework has three purposes:

• For practice of information that is already been in the classroom.
• Prepare for the next lesson.
• Extend knowledge between parents and their children.

"We don't want kids to ignore their homework," Leitner said. "But by the same token, we don't want them to suffer through it either."

So if your child is burning the candle at both ends, there is a problem. There are several things you can do to help your kids manage their homework.

• Establish a routine -- when and where your child is going to get their homework done.
• Guide your child -- don't do their homework.
• And if your child is working, you need to find something constructive to do as well.

"It's really disheartening for students when the parents are watching TV, talking on the phone, surfing the Internet and they have to work," Leitner said.    And if you find yourself saying "that's not the way I learned it when I was in school," remember, times are changing.

"Homework is looking differently, said Kenwood Principal Jill Handley. "We are moving away from that 'skill and drill' to balancing more with an approach of higher order thinking and hands-on problem solving at home."

So if your child's homework is leaving you scratching your head, there is help. By logging onto the Internet, technology is making it easier for parents to get a peek into the classroom without leaving their home.

Leitner suggests that parents visit "the JCPS homepage and look at 'Practice Your Skills' and 'Homework Help.' Sometimes parents are not familiar with the vocabulary and terminology that is used and this will help the student and parent."    And if that isn't enough, some teachers are also placing their lesson plans online to keep you up to date.

Teachers and staff say in the end, it's about making homework a family affair.

"A certain amount is reasonable and good," Leitner said. "It is practice, extension, it's necessary. But we don't want this turn into a battle at home and something that is a turnoff to learning."

Leitner says if your child continues to struggle, ask your child and their teacher how well they focus in class. And if you find that you're having a hard time figuring out your child's homework, the best thing you can do is send a note to the child's teacher. Tell them you tried to help your child, and let them know how far you got. More than likely, they will be understanding.

Debbie Mabry teaches at Kenwood Elementary. She says there may be more homework these days but says it's assigned for a reason. "It reinforces the concepts we are doing in class."

Mabry says homework also helps parents stay in the loop of what's going on in their child's classroom. But the actual time spent on homework varies by student, as well as how much guidance they need from parents.

However, Mabry says teachers don't expect children to spend three to four hours a night finishing homework assignments.

"If they are spending that long on homework, it's either because we have not done our job at school and we have not thoroughly explained and they go home and they really don't understand how to do it so it takes them longer or they did not listen in class and they don't know how to do it."

Don't forget another major problem -- bad study habits. That happens when students allows themselves -- or worse -- you allow your child to lose concentration. Even a few minutes of distraction by a TV, talking on the phone or listening to music can add up quickly and extend the amount of time it takes to complete assignments.

To help ease up on the work load at Kenwood, teachers have what they call the 10-minute rule -- 10 minutes for each grade level.

"Children K-2 their homework should not be longer than 10-20 minutes. 3-5 it should not last longer for 30-60 minutes," said Kenwood's Handley.

Although every school has a different policy, parents and teachers agree there are a few factors that are common to every family.

Handley says homework problems can be compounded by children being involved in more extracurricular activities and parents working longer hours.

Smith agrees. She says the homework load may seem heavier because times have changed and everyone is busy. "Those extra activities. At one time, everything was in one neighborhood so you went to church in your neighborhood, Girl Scout meetings in your neighborhood. Now we drive an hour just to get to the activities. That puts more stress on the children when they get home."

Teachers says there's another major problem -- parents and teachers are often not on the same page when it comes to what's going on in the classroom and their child's assignments.

"Parents are encouraged to keep that open communication with that teacher," Handley said. "And that's what we are after -- the partnership with school and home."

If your child is spending a lot of time after school doing homework, contact their teacher and let them know there is a problem. But there are also so many resources out there to help parents track what their kids are supposed to be getting done, and how well.

Online Reporter:  Maira Ansari

Online Producer: Charles Gazaway

Tornadoes cause damage, shock in Parkland neighborhood

A lottery for a house received only 6 applicants: ‘We don’t understand’

Teen snow cone stand employee puts rude customer in her place: ‘You are a grown woman’

Former Baptist Health employee accused of credit card theft

Man identified in weekend motorcycle crash on Bardstown Road

Louisville man credits his birthdate with lucky number Kentucky Lottery win

FORECAST: Additional thunderstorms today before sunny, calm weekend

Cat who was 4 times average size steals hearts with weight loss journey

• Toys & Games
• Computer Hardware
• Video Games
• Books, Comics, Mags
• More Lists…
• The Gallery
• Argos Catalogues
• Social Media
• Most Wanted

5 Homework Struggles That Only 90s Kids Understand

• Posted by Retromash
• Tagged with

The education system has dramatically transformed over the past couple of decades. It’s hard to believe how different it was before, in the 90s and early 2000s. Today, students can’t even imagine what challenges were imposed on learners 20-30 years ago. Let’s dig deeper and have a look at some of the difficulties experienced by students doing their homework in the 90s.

No e-books Nowadays, e-books are an integral element of our lives. Some of us can’t imagine even a day without reading an e-book. They are easily portable, so students don’t worry about hefting around a full book if they’ve decided to do homework outside of their home or library. E-books can be downloaded to any device, which is really convenient. What’s more, they are normally less expensive than traditional textbooks, so students can save substantial amounts of money.

Unfortunately, 90s students couldn’t enjoy all the aforementioned benefits of e-books . Paper study materials were quite expensive, so not everyone could have access to them. Students also often shared their textbooks with each other, which complicated the process of doing homework. Additionally, pupils couldn’t be as flexible in choosing a place for learning.

Writing by hand Even though students had an opportunity to type their assignments in the 90s using word processors, in most cases, old-fashioned teachers required hand-written works. Sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it? Teachers used to believe that writing by hand was a more thoughtful activity than typing, so it helps students assimilate knowledge more effectively. Also, they assumed that writing trains the mind to process information and improves focus, so that pupils might make fewer mistakes.

Naturally, handwriting took up more time that could be potentially spent on other academic activities. Hence, it could be argued that instead of learning new concepts and generating innovative ideas (or perhaps spending more time socialising!), students had to spend more time on their homework assignments. In other words, their productivity was perhaps lower compared to now.

No assignments services Even the most complicated tasks don’t scare modern students as they can easily find needed help on the web. It’s not a problem to get assistance with any type of assignment through the Internet. There are numerous essay writing services that can support students to complete different types of writing projects in a short time. One of the leading services on the market is Assignment Bro Help , which is famous for its high quality. Professionals working there always stick to the strict academic standards and help produce excellent grades. This is one of the most reliable companies that deliver homework to college students.

90s students didn’t have opportunities to turn to services like that? They could only really rely on themselves, and those around them, which might sometimes be quite discouraging. Students could ask their peers for help but it was quite risky. Educational experts say that when students don’t get enough academic support, they may get unmotivated for new accomplishments.

Limited communication Today we can reach out to almost anybody, anytime. Students can get in touch with instructors by email or via messengers once they face difficulties in learning. They can receive prompt responses that will alleviate study challenges and make the education process stress-free. Modern teachers are also open to communication and always eager to help. But it hasn’t always been like this. A few decades ago, students could communicate with educators only in person. There was no possibility to reach them via the Internet and teachers were unwilling to share their phone numbers as they wanted to keep privacy . This means that students couldn’t get answers to all of their questions, so they needed to solve most of their academic issues by themselves. Postponed communication disrupted a state of flow while studying and made the learning process more difficult.

No Wikipedia Nowadays, almost any type of information can be easily accessed on the web. All the aspects of human knowledge are gathered in one place and freely shared with anybody. Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias have answers to almost any question that may come to your mind. This makes our lives much easier compared to the past because we don’t need to search for data from different sources. Previously, students had to spend a lot of time looking for the required information. Doing research was extremely difficult in the 90s as individuals needed to go through numerous resources in libraries and book clubs in order to find reliable ones. They might even have to scour through the dreaded microfiche. In fact, the chances of succeeding in getting full answers to certain questions were much lower.

Final thoughts Hopefully, now you realize how optimized today’s education process is compared to the past. Even a few decades ago the level of technological progress gave pupils different challenges with their studies. I’m sure modern students have their own unique challenges when it comes to learning, but they certainly are luckier than students from the recent past in terms of having numerous technological opportunities that can ease areas of learning and help them achieve great academic results.

Recent Posts

• 5 Best Ways To Play Retro Games Anywhere
• Gaming Rewind: Nostalgic Video Game Influences on Modern iGaming
• Remembering Classic 70s Adventure Series
• How is cryptocurrency changing the gaming industry?
• The Evolution of Nostalgia in Gaming

Popular Posts

• Argos catalogues from the 70s, 80s and 90s
• Building a Home Arcade Machine
• Audio Mashup – How I edited ‘Thunder In Your Heart’
• How I met Keith Harmer, the artist behind the amazing 80s Lamborghini Countach poster
• This Matchbox catalogue from 1984 cost 5p and is filled with absolute awesome
• Johnuary – A Summary of the Month
• The Retromash Book List
• Possibly my favourite magazine of all time
• 11 Different Ways To Time Travel
• G.I. Joe v Action Force
• Top Ten Arnie Films
• Top Ten Lamborghini Countachs
• Photography
• Retrogaming
• Time Travel
• Toys & Games
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014

Social Media Channels

No breach of copyright intended to the owners of any property or product mentioned in this site.

• 5 Best Ways To Play Retro Games Anywhere July 4, 2024
• Gaming Rewind: Nostalgic Video Game Influences on Modern iGaming June 28, 2024
• Remembering Classic 70s Adventure Series June 20, 2024
• How is cryptocurrency changing the gaming industry? June 20, 2024
• The Evolution of Nostalgia in Gaming June 18, 2024
• 15 Things 90s Gamers Will Remember Fondly June 15, 2024

Argos catalogues from the 70s, 80s and 90s Building a Home Arcade Machine Part 1 Poker to Pokemon – The Evolution of Card Games How I met Keith Harmer, the artist behind the amazing 80s Lamborghini Countach poster This Matchbox catalogue from 1984 cost 5p and is filled with absolute awesome Spider-Man’s Early Video Games Johnuary – A Summary of the Month The Retromash Book List Possibly my favourite magazine of all time G.I. Joe v Action Force Top Ten Arnie Films Top Ten Lamborghini Countachs

© Copyright Retromash 2014-2021. All Rights Reserved

• Shows You Watched After School
• Fashion Trends We All Regret
• Discontinued Foods and Drinks
• Funniest Movies of the 2000s
• Toy Commercials
• Action Movies
• Small Details Fans Noticed From Forgotten 2000s...
• Most Beautiful Women
• Top Sitcoms You Were Watching
• Cute Teen Boys:Then and Now
• The Greatest 2000s TV Shows
• The Best 2000s Slang, Ranked By People Who Know...
• One-Hit Wonders
• British Sitcoms
• One-Hit Wonders You Forgot
• Nickelodeon Cartoons

Things That Never Fail To Instantly Give Us Nostalgia For The Early 2000s

The farther away we get from our youth, the more fondly we look back on it. Every generation eventually reaches an age where it will hold up the trends, fashion, and pop culture of its younger days and collectively fawn over the shared experience of growing up with those circumstances. We've recently gone through this process with '80s babies and then '90s kids , and now - all of a sudden it seems - it's been more than two decades since the year 2000, and the kids are ready to get wistful. 

The people of Reddit have gone in-depth about the things that never fail to give them the early-2000 feels. Vote up the ones you remember well.

Binders Full Of CDs

From Redditor u/salvation122 :

CD binders full of stuff you burned. Just like forty CD-Rs, maybe six of which you actually know the tracklist for.

And Redditor u/BadAnimalDrawing :

I still have 3 CD binders full because my old car didn't have any other way to play music that wasn't the radio... got a new car with Bluetooth and everything but I refuse to get rid of the scratched up pos CDs I've had since about 2007.

Flip Phones

• OptoScalpel
• Wikimedia Commons
• Public domain

From Redditor u/queuedUp :

flip phones

And Redditor u/ llamaesunquadrupedo:

Nothing more satisfying than snapping a phone shut and hanging up on someone.

The Computer Room

From Redditor u/Wyattf*ckinEarp :

Having a computer room.

And Redditor u/grundelgrump :

Nobody realized you were talking about in a house lol.

And Redditor u/TerribleAttitude:

Every late '90s/early 2000s middle class home had a specific room in the house that was dedicated to The Computer, because a middle class family could only afford one computer. The Computer was used by all family members for all computing needs. Homework, work, games (if you were lucky. Some of us had only default games, paint programs, and demo disks to play with), internet which you could only use for a specific number of minutes and would have to cut short if someone needed the phone.... all on one machine, in a dedicated room.

From Redditor u/repeatingRemainder6 :

The Windows XP startup sound.

And a former Redditor said:

I always wanted to visit that grassy hill.

Old School MP3 Players

• Victor Svensson

From Redditor u/elee0228 :

iPods with clickwheels.

• Miramax Films

From Redditor u/OctorokHero :

DVDs with lots of bonus features.

And Redditor u/JeffersonFriendship :

And FULLY ANIMATED MENUS!

Get the Reddit app

This is a subreddit dedicated to satirically mocking those people who, blinded by their own nostalgia, believe certain things in the past to be unequivocally better than today. We place a special emphasis on music, because this subreddit was created after annoyance over "born in the wrong generation" attitude often expressed by fans of 60s/70s rock.

Life was better in the 2000s because nobody had homework or tests?

10 Major News Stories of the 2000s

These events shaped the first decade of the 21st century

Daniela Jovanovska-Hristovska / Getty Images 

• Writing Essays
• Writing Research Papers
• English Grammar
• B.S., Criminology, California State University Fresno

The first decade of the 21st century was filled with major news events that include tragic acts of terrorism, natural and humanitarian international disasters, and celebrity deaths. Some of the events that rocked the world in the 2000s continue to reverberate years later. They influence government policy, disaster response, military strategy, and more.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks

People all over the United States remember where they were when news broke that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. The morning of September 11, 2001 , would end with two hijacked airliners flown into each of the WTC towers, another plane flown into the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashing into the ground in Pennsylvania after passengers stormed the cockpit. Nearly 3,000 people died in the country's worst terrorist attack, which made al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden household names. While most were horrified by the carnage, news footage from around the globe captured some people cheering in response to the attacks.

The intelligence that led to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 remains a controversy, but the invasion changed the decade in a way that its predecessor, the Gulf War, didn't. Saddam Hussein , Iraq's brutal dictator since 1979, was successfully ousted from power; his two sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed fighting with coalition troops; and Hussein was found hiding in a hole on Dec. 14, 2003.

Tried for crimes against humanity, Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, marking an official end to the Baathist regime. On June 29, 2009, U.S. forces withdrew from Baghdad, but the situation in the region is still unstable.

Boxing Day Tsunami

The wave struck on Dec. 26, 2004, with a catastrophic force usually confined to apocalyptic action flicks. The second-largest earthquake ever recorded, with at least a 9.1 magnitude, ripped the floor of the Indian Ocean west of Indonesia. The resulting tsunami slammed 11 countries as far away as South Africa, with waves up to 100 feet high. The tsunami claimed victims in both poor villages and plush tourist resorts. In the end, nearly 230,000 people were killed, missing, or presumed dead. The devastation prompted a massive global humanitarian response, with more than $7 billion donated to the affected regions. The disaster also prompted the creation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System.

Global Recession

In December 2007, the U.S. experienced its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression . The recession showed that globalization means that countries aren't immune to the effects of foreclosures, rising unemployment rates, controversial bank bailouts, and a weak gross domestic product.

As various nations suffered the consequences of the downturns, world leaders grappled with how to counter the economic crisis in a unified manner. Then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown unsuccessfully tried to push his "global new deal" in response, but most leaders agreed that better regulatory oversight was needed to prevent a similar crisis in the future.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 in western Sudan. Then, rebel groups began fighting the government and its allied Arabic-speaking Janjaweed militia. The outcome was mass murder and displacement of civilians leading to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. But Darfur also became a celebrity cause, attracting advocates such as George Clooney. It led to an argument at the United Nations about what constitutes genocide and what necessitates U.N. action. In 2004, however, U.S. President George W. Bush finally discussed the conflict, which took an estimated 300,000 lives between 2003 and 2005 and displaced two million people.

Papal Transition

Pope John Paul II, leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics since 1978, died at the Vatican on April 2, 2005. This prompted what has been called the largest Christian pilgrimage ever, with four million mourners descending on Rome for the funeral. The service drew the most heads of state in history: four kings, five queens, 70 presidents and prime ministers, and 14 heads of other religions.

After John Paul's burial, the world watched in anticipation as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope on April 19, 2005. The elderly, conservative Ratzinger took the name Pope Benedict XVI, and the new German pontiff meant that the position would not immediately go back to an Italian. Pope Benedict served until his resignation in 2013 and the current pontiff, Pope Francis, was appointed. He is an ethnically Italian Argentine and the first Jesuit Pope.

Hurricane Katrina

The people of the Gulf Coast braced themselves as the sixth strongest hurricane in Atlantic history hurtled their way. Katrina roared onshore as a Category 3 storm on Aug. 29, 2005, spreading destruction from Texas to Florida. But it was the subsequent failure of the levees in New Orleans that made the hurricane a humanitarian disaster.

Eighty percent of the city remained in stagnant floodwaters for weeks. Adding to the crisis was the weak government response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency , with the Coast Guard leading rescue efforts. Katrina claimed 1,836 lives, and 705 people were categorized as missing.

The War on Terror

The U.S.-UK invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, toppled the brutal Taliban regime. It stands out as the most conventional action in a war that has rewritten the rules on conflict. The global war on terror was sparked by the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on U.S. soil, though Osama bin Laden's group had previously struck U.S. targets. American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole off Yemen were among them. Since then, a number of countries have committed to the effort to stop global terrorism.

Death of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson's death at age 50 on June 25, 2009, led to tributes all over the world. The sudden death of the pop star, a controversial figure mired in sexual abuse allegations and other scandals, was attributed to a cocktail of drugs that stopped his heart. The medication that led to his death prompted an investigation of Jackson's personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray.

A star-studded memorial service took place for the singer at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It included his three children whom Jackson had famously sheltered from the press.

News of his death, which garnered massive worldwide attention, also revealed a major shift in the news media. Instead of a traditional press outlet, the celebrity gossip website TMZ broke the story that Jackson died.

Iran Nuclear Race

Iran steadfastly claimed that its nuclear program was for peaceful energy purposes, but various intelligence sources said the country was in dangerous reach of developing a nuclear weapon . The Iranian regime, which has continually railed against the West and Israel, left little doubt about its motivation for wanting a nuclear weapon or willingness to use it. The issue has been tied up in various negotiation processes, United Nations deliberations, probes, and sanctions debates.

• Why Did the U.S. Enter the Vietnam War?
• Understanding the Bush Doctrine
• U.S. Policy in the Middle East: 1945 to 2008
• Top 10 World News Stories of 2012
• Sunni Versus Shiite Conflict Explained
• What Is Interventionism? Definition and Examples
• National Security Definition and Examples
• 8 of the Scariest Days in America
• Department of Homeland Security History
• What Effect Did the Crusades Have on the Middle East?
• Iraq | Facts and History
• Top 10 News Stories of 2010
• Biography of Saddam Hussein, Dictator of Iraq
• George W. Bush - Forty-Third President of the United States
• An Introduction to Psychological Warfare
• Biography of Nikita Khrushchev, Cold War Era Soviet Leader