Comments on: There Are Alternatives To Homework

By: Gerald Metivier

Gerald Metivier — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:23:26 +0000

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 Homework is a outdated barbaric ritual that serves no purpose.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?

By: 303 Insanely Interesting Links From 2007 -- Jarkko Laine - Insanely interested

303 Insanely Interesting Links From 2007 -- Jarkko Laine - Insanely interested — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:42:09 +0000

[...] There Are Alternatives To Homework, Be a Good Dad [...]

By: dad

dad — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:49:52 +0000

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.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:00:52 +0000

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.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:49:30 +0000

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.

By: Melitsa

Melitsa — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:27:25 +0000

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.

By: Insanely Interesting Links: Everything - Jarkko Laine - Insanely interested

Insanely Interesting Links: Everything - Jarkko Laine - Insanely interested — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:06:27 +0000

[...] There Are Alternatives To Homework: Be A Good Dad has an interesting take on homework, and some new ideas for school work in general. It’s interesting how the same problems that we have in the corporate world actually are present also at school: You bring work home, and have to be as efficient as possible in learning hard values needed for making money. [...]

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:47:58 +0000

Considering how much time I spend with my kids on homework, I’d like it to be slimmed down!

By: Marie

Marie — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:53:01 +0000

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?

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:29:38 +0000

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.