Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Down With Homework


I had a good education from the very beginning.  My mother read to us and told us stories. We could not afford a lot of books of our own but we had a public library. Until we were old enough to have library cards of our own we could choose books and my mother or father would check out the books we chose.

When I began to go to school I lived in a small town. Each classroom had three grades and one teacher. Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade were all in the same room.

Mrs Cittercup was our teacher. While she would instruct one class the other two would study whatever had been their instruction previously.

In kindergarten we learned to print, read, spell, and do addition and subtraction. In first grade we read more difficult books, learned multiplication and long division, cursive handwriting, and grammar.

My family moved a lot. It was not until the 5th grade that I was in a school with enough pupils to have one grade in the room. But we were kept busy learning geography, science, and history as well as taking music classes and keeping our bodies physically fit.

We did a lot and learned a lot. It came easily to me but even the students who did not find learning easy kept up and learned the same things. I was not the only one. All the kids did it.

Even more remarkable was we did it with no homework. The only work I ever remember doing at home was reading a book in order to do a book report.

That is the point I wish to make. Homework is not necessary. As a matter of fact I believe most homework to be nothing but "busy work". Busy work is something that you do just to stay busy. There is no other reason to do it.

I occasionally had homework in high school. College gives a lot of homework. Those are different times in a person's life.

I was appalled when my grandchildren would come home with so much homework. Teachers tried to plan at least 1/2 hour of each subject.

Children need play time. It is the time they learn social skills. They learn to fend for themselves. They get exercise. Their imaginations are used. They learn to troubleshoot and police themselves. How will they have this necessary time when they have at least 2 hours of homework every night and more for the weekend?

Teachers are paid to teach. They should be able to instruct the children during school hours. Parents should not be the major instructors when homework is the way children learn.

As I said at the beginning I had a good education. Times have changed and technology has added new things to learn. But that happened when I was in school too.

Ask children today to recite the Preamble to the Constitution. Most cannot. Ask them why the Revolutionary War was fought. They have only a vague idea. Ask them to correctly spell and pronounce jewelry. Many were not taught spelling at all. Ask them to correctly use their, there, and they're in a sentence. You might receive a blank look. Do they know what an asterisk is?

Children are taught to use a calculator. They cannot do slightly complex mathematical exercises. How many children know who Madame Curie was and what contributions she made to science? How many children know who Jonas Salk was and what an insidious threat polio was to the world?

Speaking of new technology how many children know the history of telephones? How many know what is involved in the making of a video game? Can they explain what a pixel is?

Too many teachers foist the job of instruction off to the parents. Most parents are not qualified to teach properly. And there is plenty of time to teach at school.

Now I know from experience that teaching is a difficult job. But it is a job. That means someone is being paid to do it. The merits of whether they are paid enough is not what this is about. This is about the children.

Children need to have that play time. They need a few moments of each day to themselves. It is a part of their educations. Organized learning is for school. Free style learning is for home.




14 comments:

  1. I so agree with you. The time that kids spend on homework could be spent exercising. Also, my 10 year old nephew asked his mother if she could teach him cursive writing. They don't teach this in schools anymore. Sad.
    You should forward this post to those in administration in our schools!

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    1. Oddly enough I heard on the news this morning that a principal in New york has banned homework for the school she is in charge of. Maybe it will start a trend.

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  2. Hello greetings and good wishes.

    Very interesting post and thought provoking.

    In my city, Kochi, little children are made to carry a heavy load of books and note books weighing not less than five to six kilos. Why this is done only the school and the teacher knows. I understand that children are made to carry all the books so that if one teacher is absent another teacher can teach her subject. eg. if the history teacher is absent, the maths teacher can teach maths. There is a time table but the time table is not followed.

    Here also too much home work is given. The only difference is that most of the children go to tuition classes immediately after school time and do their home work with the tuition teacher. Most of the children spend their time either in school or tuition classes and they have no time to rest or relax or play.

    The parents push their children to study too much and score high marks in examinations. Most parents want their children to become engineers or doctors.
    There is too much pressure on children to study and score good marks.

    Teachers don't have to really teach because the real teaching is done by the tuition teachers. Some teachers who don't teach in school will take give tuitions in their houses to make money.

    Teaching profession has become very commercial.

    Best wishes

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    1. Studies have been done about those heavy backpacks so many children have to use. They are causing spinal problems due to the weight. Thank you for bringing that to our attention.

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  3. I agree with you about homeworks. At where I have worked at before, I have seen how homeworks tortured students. They're left to be doing their homework until 2 or 3 am. I have very big pity for the children. More than that, some these homeworks are nonsense, not even an exercise that would make the pupils remember what they were taught about. Some of them are pretty irrelevant or just mere repetition. I think that homeworks are ok as far as it doesn't leave the child suffering. In my homecountry, students bring at most 3 homeworks a day. Subject teachers coordinate and make sure that no not any more than 3 HW are given. Also no surprise tests on a Monday k owing that children had a rest and nobody really opened their books on a weekend.

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    1. Thank you for your input. I think it is something worth investigating further.

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  4. Kids will burn out early doing homework every night. I'm not sure what constraints teachers face these days, but I know it's a different environment than when I was a kid.
    R

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    1. It is different. My children attended public school in a large city. The teachers are supposed to teach the children while keeping certain members of the class from being violent. I am not mindless of the obstructions they face to doing their jobs. There has to be a way to do this.

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  5. Some interesting points both in your post, Emma, and in the comments made. I cannot recall how much homework was given in the Catholic elementary school I attended, but there was definitely homework in the Catholic high school. It would be great if lessons could be completed within the classroom structure, but many schools today actually have less school time than when I attended.

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    1. I believe you may be right about the time. To be fair we were sometimes given homework in high school but we had one class period of study hall. A teacher presided and all we did was study. Our homework was completed then.

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  6. These difficult parts of kids going to school make me consider homeschooling for my own kids someday. I think the pros lean more on homeschooling than the traditional one. :)

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    1. There is a lot to be said for homeschooling. At the same time I personally believe that the social interaction at regular school is a valuable experience too.

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  7. Dear Emma, this is interesting! I think that it depends a lot on the time children spend at school. In Germany there are schools were you come at 8 and leave at 13 or earlier - and Ganztagsschulen, where they do their homework at school. In the first case I think homework is necessary, though I see your point about unfairness because for some parents it might be easier to help their child than others.
    I had a lot of homework to do - and I believe that it was quite helpful: to learn something by heart is more difficult in a class - though I agree that in former times schoolchildren learned a lot more by heart (when I think of my parents), and were able to do the tasks you name above. But maybe they learn different skills nowadays - though I fear a bit that the span of attention is very much reduced by all the new media. And I see that a lot of kids don't move enough - due to computer/TV on one side, but traffic on roads and less sites to play on (and very, very anxious protecting parents) on the other.

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    1. These are all important points. As I said i think there must be a better way. If students are only in school for hours each day I would not have as much problem with some homework. It bears further study.

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