Homework a waste of time?
Posted by rivalblogger on February 6, 2010
There is an interesting article on IOL about homework being “a waste of time”.
The article cites research by US author Alfie Kohn and his “new” book ‘The Homework Myth’.
Just for clarity sake the book was originally published in 2007 and readers can buy it from local online retailer Loot for R117.
Anyway that aside, Kohn argues that teachers dish out homework simply because its what is expected of them and that society has this concept that children must do schoolwork after school.
You then have tired children coming home to then deal with tired parents who have spent a long day at work. The parents want to then rest and the children are hammering on about having to sort out projects or homework in each subject and you end up creating a tense learning environment.
Kohns research seems to indicate that there is no correlation between doing homework and academic achievement / professional success which on its own is probably not groundbreaking.
On the flip-side of that a lot of kids do need repittion and to be taught the self-discipline of having formal homework time.
But then I look at our typical working day as it stands. We both wake-up before 6 and between getting the kids ready we are doing some form of work including checking e-mail and planning our day. Our kids (two in Grade 1 an 1 in Grade 6) go to after-care where they do formal homework sessions as well as an extra-mural activity.
We fetch them between 4:30 and 5:30. They come home, they’re exhausted from a long day and they just want to flop. Then it’s dinner and bath-time. The little kids are in bed by 7:30 and the older one is having to work until 8.30pm to get her homework done. She is often not asleep before 9:30 and this is in primary school.
Yes this child procrastinates and doesn’t have the best time management skills but the reality is that she cannot finish her day-to-day in the allotted hour for homework.
Maybe I am wrong but I see it like this:
- There are roughly 190 school days in a year
- The average 12 year old child receives about 2 hours of homework a day which translates into 380 hours which translates into another 16 “days” of extra work outside of school.
- During that time she is not really learning much. She is simply going through 20 or 50 repititions of a particular concept.
- During that time she could be reading a book or surfing the internet and growing her general knowledge. Go and ask your child some basic general knowledge questions about things which are topical at the moment e.g. what is in the news. A lot of them will draw a blank simply because what they learn at school is limited to what was in a textbook printed years ago. Kids are not stimulated to respond to what they see on the day to day basis.
Would love your thoughts on the subject.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:52 am
I agree with your thoughts and Alfie Kohn’s article. I am a work-from-home mom so time is not my issue. I think that homework is not helping anyone in other ways as well. Often I find that even I don’t understand my 7 year olds homework, the instructions can be ambiguous and confusing. I would also love to know the reason for each element of homework because then I could support their learning more. I would also love to know what level they should be working at to know if I am pushing my kids too hard to not pushing them enough. I almost feel as if I need to study teaching so that I can assist my kids more effectively.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Believe me I have had many fights with teachers on ill-prepared homework. They will send a 10 year child (with learning disabilities) home with a “whirly word” which has 40 odd words all over-lapping one another.
Alternatively they send it home without checking that the words actually are IN the word-search. The child then stresses because they can’t find the words. I then did the search and couldn’t find the words. After that I took it to the teacher and asked her to find it. She couldn’t find it either. The excuse was that the worksheets were the same they had done the previous year which means that nobody has actually bothered to check the words EXIST in the last few years.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:17 pm
I agree with the above to some extend, some teachers just give homework because it is expected from them. They make it so difficult the children can’t manage on their own so who ends up doing it..mom or dad. Homework can be a good thing if you give the right work and don’t try to make it impossible for the child to do on their own. If you give homework, make sure there is a purpose for the homework, or the project, that mom and dad don’t end up doing everything for the child.
Rather use homework as an assessment method to assess if the child understood the work.
February 24th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I have to say….there has to be some truth to the old saying…practice makes perfect…
Homework is essential to children to not merely memorise work but to truly learn something…
I will agree that sometimes it can be a litlle much, but that is the whole idea of learning, would you not want your child to think outside the box?
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:52 pm
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