Down With Homework

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