Down With Homework

Posted by poetjude on September 22, 2008 - 20:52

Times article reports :

"A top-ranking state school has slashed the amount of homework set, saying that too much of it can be “depressing” and put children off learning.
... deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, which has called for an end to homework in primary schools and a scaling-back at secondary level, said that homework had been “mindlessly lauded by successive governments and pushy parents”. He said: “All too often homework tasks are mechanistic and repetitive.”

Too right.. I hated homework from the time I was 8 and had to endlessly fill in these damn clock faces even though I had learned to tell the time years previously or do lists of repetitive sums (surely 5 or sowould be adequate to demonstrate you know how to do them).

So I ended up avoiding homework and was constantly in trouble at school.

Pushy parents push in all the wrong ways. Why try and teach a three year old to read?? Why not wait until they are at a stage of their develoipment when it's easier. I didn't learn how to read until I was six (and it was a doddle then) and I soon caught up and overtook many of the other kids.

From the time I was a small child, to my early teens, my father read to me (from E. Nesbitt to Gerald Durrell to George Orwell to James Herriot), taught me natural history in the great outdoors and that instilled in me a love of learning that has stayed with me ever since. Aside from getting in trouble for not completing assignments, and a bit of bad behaviour, I did very well at school, got three science A levels, went to a top university, and am still studying now at 32. I managed to do alright and yet being a kid was a lot of fun I remember.

These days, Government guidelines on how much homework pupils should do:

Primary

Years 1 and 2 1 hour per week
3 and 4 1.5 hours per week
5 and 6 30 minutes per day

Secondary

7 and 8 45-90 minutes per day
9 1 to 2 hours per day
10 and 11 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day

But many high achieving schools demand 3-4 hours per night. God, no wonder our child and teenage suicide rate is so high. I'd kill myself if I had to do two hours of algebra and two hours of irregular French verbs every night.

jude

Couldn't agree more. It's a nightmare in my house with homework. I have three boys aged 13, 12 and 9...just think about it! Very little of it is of benefit in my opinion. Art homework is sometimes good - something meditative for a change. Mental maths practice has a purpose. The role of parents is not to oversee schoolwork, but to give kids the education they don't get at school. But we are given precious little time for that if we bow to the teachers all the time.
Grrr.

At last! I was wondering when someone would finally see sense about this ridiculous misuse of childhood.

Growing up in the 60s, I was set no homework at all throughout primary school. It only began in the 2nd year of secondary school and then only became significant when I started the O level syllabus in the 4th form.

Somehow or other, teachers were able to teach me what I needed to know within school hours. My standard of English and Maths seemed to be much higher than I now encounter in present day school leavers.

My relationship with both my daughters was disrupted by having to nag them to do their homework in the evenings rather than spending quality family time in their company.

Helping them to do their homework without actually cheating and feeding them the answers did not count as quality time. We would generally end up just being tired and irritable with each other and the stress did nothing to enhance their 'enjoyment' of school.

We will never get this time back. Perhaps I should sue for compensation?

There is benefit in the discipline of being able to work at home and teach yourself, practise and memorise etc...but this is most appropriate from Yr 8 upwards, and the style of homework is generally not in that vein.

4 hours a night? I'd have only an hour to an hour and a half of free time. I'd say about 1 1/2 to two hours is a good ammount for a high school student here in Texas, not that I want homework mind you.

I remember back in 5th grade we'd have 2-3 hours of homework a day average. was torture my old school. how could they do that to a 10 year old?

I didn't do homework after the 2nd year of secondary school. I don't think it's entirely valueless. Not doing it didn't stop me getting GCSEs and A-Levels a lot better than the national average but - particularly in the subjects I was less good at - if I'd been willing and mentally suited to coming home from school and spending three hours with textbooks, I probably would've done better.

But out of all the useful advice I could now give my teenage self, 'make you do your homework' wouldn't be any of it.

I don't want or need an A in GCSE maths rather than a B. I wouldn't prioritise it over the game of Championship Manager that I enjoyed very much when I could have doing simultaneous equations, for example.

And if I have children I won't care if they don't do it, as long as they are interested in learning which - as Jude suggests - is something very different.

I spent most of last night doing my homework and what happens today? The meeting's postponed till Friday because nobody else did theirs.

The adult world is just as unfair sometimes.

Having just left school, we were told to do an average of two hours homework per subject a night in secondary school. With six subjects in a day, of whom about three set homework, they expected us to do six hours a night, even telling us that we not go on holiday during half term/Easter/Christmas to do homework during that time for every subject.

Needless to day, the amount of work that piled up at the end of each day was so great and mindnumbing that most of us never bothered and just went to work instead!

I couldn't give a toss.

www.myspace.com/norwichfacetransplant

In senior year at my high school we topped out at 6 hours of homework a night. 6 fucking hours. I want that time back.

Till?

My mother taught me to read from the age of four, unfortunately she didn't inform the school when she dropped me off there. Whoops! There was this kid who could read, and there were 25 other kids who couldn't.

Till!

But not, 'til.

~
www.fabulousmother.co.uk

I found speling tests distresing...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/education/primaryedu...