Posts Tagged ‘homework’

Another school holiday and another couple of homework assignments. During this two week break my daughter (S3) has been set an essay for English and a worksheet for Computing as well as revision for a test in French to be taken the second day back after the holidays. My reaction has been the same (but with lower blood pressure) as the one I had to summer holiday homework… “Don’t do it, you are on a break”.

I’m seriously considering that this becomes my stock response to ALL homework. I’ve never seen a single benefit to homework, either as a pupil or a parent. Every week for seven years of their primary schooling, my children were assigned the exact same homework, spelling and sentences. I reckon 14 years worth of sentences is enough and have no intention of suffering a further 7 year stretch with child three. I have decided I will not tolerate such lazy, unimaginative and boring tasks taking up my time with Paul.

Secondary school has seen this problem multiply 13-fold. We have even experienced 2 teachers sharing a class both set homework at the same time. Madness!

Up until now the only reason I have taken any interest in their homework has been to keep them out of trouble with their teachers. But I’ve had enough. Holiday homework is the final straw. What benefit to my children is there in repeating work they have completed and understood in the classroom? What benefit to them is there in attempting work they have NOT understood in the classroom without the teacher there to explain it again?  If they “got” it then homework is just a boring waste of their time . If they didn’t “get” it then homework is a horribly frustrating task they have to struggle with unsupported. I have a whole bunch of “O” Grades and Highers but they didn’t endow me with any tutoring skills. I can kind of remember most of it, enough to have some stonking good debates with them, but I can’t teach it . That’s why teaching is a profession, it’s NOT something we can all do (although I would argue our stonking good debates are teaching them something!).

Any way you look at it homework, as it is currently set for my children, is useless.

So who wants homework? My children would certainly rather be doing something else, and given that the something else’s that they do are worthwhile I fully support them. Do teacher’s want it? Do parents?

At the end of September we were invited to the school to meet and greet the new rector, Andy Smith. Not wishing to pass up the opportunity at having a captive audience we parents were asked to fill in an anonymous questionnaire citing three things we considered strengths of the school and three things we’d like to see improved. Before leaving we were each given 4 votes and asked to mark what we considered the most important issues from the full list we had generated.

The top 5 were…

1. Get rid of the vans selling food at the school gates
2. Provision of lockers for the pupils
3. Discipline (no details unfortuntately so not sure what people were “voting” for there!)
4. Pupil motivation and stretching the more “able” pupils
5. Improved communication with Guidance staff

I found this list quite funny and it got funnier the further down you went. Surreal even.  Four people were concerned about the issue of “infection control” (???!).

We’d just sat through a short talk from Mr Smith in which, amongst other things, he highlighted the school’s academic achievements. They are in fact bucking the national trend with boys getting great results at Higher level that not only outperform the girls, but place the school in the top 10% in the country. And that’s including private fee paying schools. Despite knowing this, over a third of those parents still used their votes to support the view that the school isn’t pushing and motivating pupils enough! How hard exactly do they want them pushed? How hard and how far is enough? Top 5% in the country or til they break perhaps? I laughed, but really, it’s not funny.

The van ban really got my goat too. If half a sample of polled parents don’t want their children eating from the vans then I respectfully request they tell them not to eat from the vans and refrain from imposing this decision on the other half who don’t particularly care either way. If their children won’t abide by their wishes I suggest they don’t provide them with cash to spend at the vans. They can either give them a packed lunch or pay funds into their school vending card account by cheque through the office. If they do give their child money and they spend it somewhere they have forbid them to then that’s a problem they have with their child. Not me and not mine.

Homework was 8th on the list with 15% of parents selecting it as a point for improvement. Now I’m not sure what “improvement” means in this sense. Banning it would be an improvement if you ask me but I’m guessing that’s not where they were coming from. 15% isn’t a lot really, but I suspect they are a vocal minority… the first to complain if little Josh or Chloe isn’t getting the right quantity or quality of homework. I don’t get this. If they are so concerned that their child spend great swathes of time out of school learning then shouldn’t they be actively involved in this themselves? I try and I’m pretty crap at it (no patience!). They way I see it teachers have enough time to influence and guide my child’s learning while they are at school, I’ll take over in the evenings, at weekends and during holidays if that’s OK?

Parents who push for harder and more homework probably consider themselves strong supporters of their child’s learning but I think they’re just a bunch of lazy sods who are unwilling to take any personal role in their child’s learning.  As soon as they get their child enrolled in school it’s up to the teachers to teach…all the time. They’ve done their bit by the time their child is 5. I once had a rather heated argument with the Mum of a 7 year old who was practically screaming at me in response to my moaning about the nightly reading homework… “So YOU don’t think you’re children should read out of school?” (and it wasn’t only the loud music in the pub that got her yelling). Well DUH. Of course I do, it’s why I buy them books and why they have had library cards since aged 3. The difference between me and her? I’m happy to, in fact I insist on, encouraging them myself. I enjoy trawling libraries and book shops with my kids searching out material that will engage them and encourage them to want to read. She, on the other hand, is quite content to have it handed to her by the school, no matter how dire or boring the material. She didn’t get it (and not just because of the loud music, my guess).

I think parents who demand homework really have to ask themselves why. I’m sure there are some who lack the confidence to complement school education with their own input, which is a shame if it results in them demanding the school do more rather than asking the school what more they could be doing themselves. I’m equally sure there are some parents who just don’t want to get so personally involved in their child’s education, who are quite happy to have homework that keeps them out of trouble and out of their hair.  I am under no illusion that there are parents and children who just don’t give a damn and see no value in school work of any kind. I’m not sure homework is the great leveller in those situations either and presumably generates more chasing of homework, punishment exercises, chasing of punishment exercises and detention than it’s worth.  Unsupported kids who are keen to learn will do homework… the repetitious boredom of work they understand and the struggle with work they don’t understand applies to children in supportive and non-supportive homes alike.

That’s not to say that all homework lacks value. It’s just that the homework my children are given clearly does. I can think of two types of out of school work I don’t have too many issues with. Firstly finishing off. Sadly the timetabling at their school doesn’t feature such a thing as a double-period. Remember them? A whole 80 minutes to play a decently long game of hockey, or write a decently long creative piece, or see the paint almost dry on a piece of art. No lesson my children attend is longer than 55 minutes. They can’t even cook anything bigger than a fairy cake in that time, let alone jump on a bus to the pool, change, swim, dry, change and get back in time for the next lesson. It’s nonsense.  Cooking, art, PE, English and sciences all warranted double-periods when I was at school, which meant way less taking home and finishing of work. I don’t have a huge issue with this type of homework simply because the teachers have no choice.

The other type of homework I could live with is home preparation. Rather than having them repeat stuff they’ve already done in school why not have them preparing ahead of a lesson? Even if it’s just reading a passage or a chapter of a text book they will arrive in the class either well prepared having understood the task or in need of help and (this is the good bit) in the classroom with a teacher there to help. It sure takes the pressure of failing to grasp homework if the point of it isn’t to get a mark for it. Who knows, they might even delve a bit further, they might even ask their parents. How refreshing would it be to have homework where a parent couldn’t simply say “show me the question” and tell them the answer. How much more would a teacher learn about their pupils if they arrived in their class with questions rather than leaving their class with questions.

Just some long rambling thoughts.