Story: How much homework is too much?
Many schools are downsizing the homework load, but let's just focus on the one's banning it altogether. Isn't this how we teach responsibility and help encourage learning on your own? Now we're not saying students should have hours every night, but if they don't take home what they hear in class, couldn't the argument be made that the material will be lost? So now teachers will have no choice but to spend half their day reviewing old assignments because no one went home to practice. Why don't we eliminate tests too so we don't force kids into studying either? I think this concept just continues to lower the bar for standards, and we will be left with a generation slightly less capable and intelligent than its predecessors.
6 Comments:
This sounds like a great idea! It will give kids more time to play video games.
I'm all for making the homework load go down (I've had upwards of 6 hours worth), but the whole point of homework is to study and work! There would be too much time wasted in class! English class would have no time to work cause you can't read your book at home and math would just be review for an hour and a half because we don't work on it at home.
So (and I say this as a bitchy attitude filled student in grade 12) we need homework.
What's next? Getting rid of books and just watching movies in english? No math tests and we just tell our teachers we understand trig?
My child comes home with over 2 hours of homework a night, and she is only in the 5th grade. It makes it hard to spend so much effort on HW, and give her no time to relax.
Here's an idea, have the parents sign off daily that they are studying or reviewing school work each night with their child, rather than have them stress about completing assignments every night.
It depends entirely on the school and teachers.
I've been through lower- and middle school with very little "homework", some assignments, simple exercises ... no heavy study work, just enough practice to force us to review our lessons before returning to class.
It worked out because the teachers continuously gave little quizes; quickly went over the past days lessons at the start of the day and encourages us to review lessons at home and start off the next day with any questions.
Or questions would be brought up during excercised at the start of a lesson, did that in math, French, classes that lend themselves to exercise.
It worked for me, might not be the ticket for other schools.
I've been through lower- and middle school with very little "homework", some assignments, simple exercises ... no heavy study work, just enough practice to force us to review our lessons before returning to class.
The grades that I got most homework in was 6-9. I got less homework last year in grade 11 than I got in grade 8.
A good idea is to teach teachers and students how to use class time wisely. A good 4 hours of homework can be cut if a teacher has a rule to not lecture for half of the class and seating arrangements where made to stop fooling around as much as possible.
Checking a child's homework is one thing, but a huge problem is that parents often do the work FOR the kids. Here's a link to a recent survey that shows that 43% of parents admit to doing their kids homework:
http://blogs.tampabay.com/schools/files/ask.com%20survey.doc
As a teacher, I am held accountable for a child's performance. I cannot supervise the child when he or she is not in my classroom, so I usually don't give homework.
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