Homework sucks. Kids hate it, teachers hate it, parents hate it. It almost always feels like busy work that intrudes on kids’ personal time. I’ve even written about how much I dislike homework in the past. There has to be a better way. But what school in their right mind would possibly consider rocking the boat with all the pressure on schools to get their students to perform at certain levels on all those standardized tests.
Grant Elementary School in Glenrock, Wyoming appears to be one of those brave schools. They have a “no homework policy.”
I love it. Go read the post which includes a letter that the principal sent to the parents to explain the new policy including reminding people that the amount of homework that kids do has been increasing but the performance has not been increasing at anywhere near the same rate during that time.
While we’re at it, I’d like to see a couple other changes.
No summer break. – Can you imagine trying to learn how to do something and every 9 months you quit doing it for 3 months? Imagine how long it would take to relearn what you forgot and so that you could start learning again.
Frequent short breaks. – It seems perfectly reasonable to me to give kids frequent Fridays off. Maybe every few weeks. Then we could build more one week breaks during what used to be summer break.
But then when would the teachers have time to continue their own education. Most of them end up taking classes during summer break. I have several teachers in my family and they are always taking a class or two.
Here’s my answer and it may not be very popular. We got rid of homework in the step before. That should free up some night and weekend time. That is a very good time to take classes. I have taken quite a few classes since I got out of the military and went on full career mode. Trust me, if I can muster up the motivation to do it, anybody can.
Technorati Tags: school, homework, education
Related posts:
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Just a note…most of my “after school” time is not used up by grading. It is spent creating activities that meet the needs of all learners in my classroom for school activities…I thought that it was just a “newbie” thing, but I stay late (3-4 hours after school) every night with a large percentage of a well “seasoned” staff that is doing the same thing. We are just trying to keep our heads above water as the next new innovative technique is presented to us to implement immediately…not sure what time that leaves for taking classes…although, I did take them!
This may be a little salty, but it’s been a long week!
On the note of the year round schools…I love the idea as long as universities could provide programs that accommodate those schedules. Also, Student teaching schedules would be screwed up. I know a few people that have worked in Year Round Schools and have loved it and some have hated it.
On the homework note…homework should be used to provide an opportunity for practice on a skill learned during the day’s lesson. Also, it should provide an opportunity for the student to connect book knowledge into real world experiences…not just a worksheet!
I guess it comes down to this…whatever is best for kids is what I’m willing to do!
One thing that would help teachers lesson plan a little bit during the school day would be to start actually having art, music, gym, etc. be put into the curriculum as part of the daily routine. These things used to be in the system and everybody did just fine. I just don’t think that the current trend of throwing more and more homework on kids is going to fix the problem. It’s just going to cause burn out when kids realize that they spend most of their day doing school work.
Ask any office dweller what happens when they are forced into long term overtime situations. They still get eight hours of work done. It just ends up taking 10 hours.
As for getting the colleges to accommodate night and weekend classes for advanced degree seeking teacher, if all teachers had to work throughout the year, the colleges would be forced to make changes or they would loose their advance degree education programs when everybody stopped taking classes at that school.
Anyway, it makes me happy to know that there are schools out there that are trying to fix the system by looking into what kind of benefit homework actually provides.
I am with you on the homework front. I think the problem is that a lot of grandparents came from Europe where there was a lot of homework, but school was only half a day long.
On the summer break thing, I am not sure. In fact. I didn’t realise how passionately I felt about it until you suggested ending the tradition.
As an international, tri-lingual, tri-cultural family, we need long breaks to connect with our home countries. Two weeks is just too expensive and not worth the carbon impact. We also have child care systems (like summer day camps, summer school) to deal with child care during long breaks. For short breaks, you need a whole new system and how would you staff it if the university and college students who staff summer camps are still in school.
Plus, where I am from we get so little good weather that is distracts kids from their studies and they behave badly for the few weeks between the start of summer and summer break and don’t learn a thing. In full-year schools, a lot of kids will never see the sun and never get any fresh air or time in the woods.
I just moved away from an area of FL where they actually GOT RID OF RECESS in order to have more time to study for state assesment testing. This is for all grades. Even 1st graders have to sit at a desk ALL DAY. Well it’s okay, there’s no obesity problem in this country or anything, so what the hey?
Considering how much time I spend with my kids on homework, I’d like it to be slimmed down!
We’ve just moved and our new school district is a year round one. I’ve heard so many different views on it by parents and only a few by teachers, although as someone that taught pre kids I think I have a pretty good idea how I would feel about it. Unfortunately in our area some school are year round and others not. I met a family last week who has kids in year round in Elementary and in middle they have summer holidays. They are planning to just take out the little guy for family holiday. I guess if you’re going to do a system it has to be state wide.
Homework has it’s place but so does free time. The pressure is enormus everywhere on that one. I had quite a few parents in my early years of teaching who wrote to the school and told them their children would not be doing homework. The school accepted that as it wasn’t linked to grades. Now a days everyone has a home school contract that you must sign. Where’s the option any more?
I enjoyed your post. Love the layout.
I am a high school teacher and get tired of seeing my fellow teachers assign way too much homeword in an effort to make their class seem rigorous. They delight in being the “hard teacher.” I think this is ridiculous and only assign my students work that I feel is important to improving their skills.
Thanks for the article! I am a high school teacher and I agree homework has gotten out of hand. I also believe that summer break is too long. My suggestion would be to scrap summer break in place of two week breaks at the end of each quarter. Maybe take three weeks at Christmas and Easter. That might help retention a bit more.
I think a reasonable amount of homework is great. It helps less educated people like myself to realize the level of discipline that may be necessary to assist the child. And I am not making reference to disciplining the child, but instead the parent. No homework is great when your children are in school districts that have after school assistance, but to measure it out side of that environment would be difficult.
I concur. Homework is a outdated barbaric ritual that serves no purpose. The average American workday is 10 hours long. My daughtrers (10 and 8 years of age) spend 2 hours a night doing homework. They have zero free time and never get a good nights rest because the are up too late doing homework.
I would like to see no summer break. Frequent short breaks (8 weeks on / one week off). And abolish homework entirely.
Educators have 7 hours a day to create a meaningful educational experience for children. If they can’t do it in this time frame, then what are we paying them for?