Rethinking homework
Some parents believe that the excessive homework given to school children is detrimental rather than helpful to their academics. Terence Pillay investigates.
It’s back to school and children seem very excited to start the new school year. And they should be excited – it promises to be a great year. But there’s a subject that on the minds of parents everywhere – homework! There is a growing cohort of parents and educators who are “anti-homework” — viewing it as a stress-inducing, mostly useless practice that saps students’ desire to learn rather than nurture it.
Homework is any work or activity which students are asked to do outside lesson time either on their own or with parents or carers. Homework should not prevent students from participating in an activity after school such as sport, music or clubs of any kind, but unfortunately it does.
The purpose of homework is:
1. To encourage students to develop the confidence and self-discipline to work on their own, an essential skill for adult life.
2. To consolidate and reinforce skills and understanding.
3. To extend school learning, for example through additional reading.
4. To enable students to devote time to particular demands such as project work.
5. To support the home/school relationship.
The school does not have a fixed homework timetable with time allocated for different subjects on different evenings. Students will need to learn to manage their time so that they do some homework each evening.
But are they coping? I spoke to Michael Cunningham who is in Grade 12. His day starts at 5am, when he gets up for pre-school water polo practise. He then does a full day at school. After school he has hockey practice till 4.40pm. Then he does an hour of extra Math, English or Science. By the time he starts his 3 hours of homework it’s around 9pm.
Michael has a 20-hour day, but he’s not an international sports star or the CEO of a multinational company. He’s a 17 year old boy at the beginning of an average school day. His mom, Taryn has 3 sons, who have all been through the “mill”, as she likes to call it.
Next I spoke to sisters Mikhaila Reddy, 6-years old and Keshnie Reddy, who is 11-years-old. Both attend a co-ed model C school. Both parents are educated people with professional careers, and both of the girls are doing well at school. The parents say they battle setting aside time to do homework with the girls. But education is a family priority and they are concerned that if homework was “nixed”, that their girls might end up academically disadvantaged.
Then there’s Lisa Folwer, a divorced mom of two boys aged 9 and 12. Both have learning problems. Lisa is also an educational psychologist. She is not in favour of homework, and believes there are better ways to help children learn and ultimately encourage them to want to study on his/her own. She has done research on stress levels in children and says homework is a significant stressor. In general she says school environments are too competitive and pressurised.
Professor Albie Henning / Director: Centre for Education Practice Research University of Johannesburg Institute for Childhood Education (Soweto Campus) says: "In its extreme form, homework can be counter-productive. It is irrelevant when it is just an uninteresting repetition of what was already done in school. It is relevant when children go home and explore, even if it is around the house - not be managed by parents who end up doing the investigations.”
The Department of Basic Education’s Musi Mahlambe, says that they do not have a formal policy on how much or what homework should be given so schools are left to devise their own approach.
The debate seems to have been sparked some years ago by American, Alfie Khon who wrote a book called The Homework Myth, which debunks common claims about homework. He’s a well known author and educator in the US.
In the US, many parents are opting out of homework, citing negative impacts ranging from a loss of quality family time or play time to stress-induced headaches, anxiety and even ulcers in youngsters. One primary school in the US and another in Canada did away with homework this year.
In the UK, though homework is not compulsory. But guidelines for schools say five-year-olds should do homework from the first day of school for an hour a week, increasing this to between 90 and 150 minutes a day by the age of 16. Teachers have called for homework to be abolished for primary school children.
The negative effects of homework are well known. They include children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest in learning. Many parents lament the impact of homework on their relationship with their children; they may also resent having to play the role of enforcer and worry that they will be criticised either for not being involved enough with the homework or for becoming too involved.
According to Kohn and Fowler, there is no research to show that there is any academic benefit from assigning homework in junior school. For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement.
At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.
Yet, more homework is being piled on children despite the absence of its value.
In South Africa, researchers at the University of South Africa have found that more than 85% of grade R learners are not learning in their home language and this situation persists through their school careers. Despite this, teachers persist in sending school work home. Parents may be illiterate or semi-literate, yet teachers expect them to read to their children, correct their pronunciation, monitor homework and so on, in many cases in a language they do not even understand.
But while some parents campaign hard for a homework-free experience that would give them their life back, others are worried about their children falling behind or failing to learn the discipline and time management required in high school and beyond.
Do you believe that homework should be done away with at schools or is it necessary?
Sources: Independent Newspapers, News24, TimesLive
You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.
Homework is any work or activity which students are asked to do outside lesson time either on their own or with parents or carers. Homework should not prevent students from participating in an activity after school such as sport, music or clubs of any kind, but unfortunately it does.
The purpose of homework is:
1. To encourage students to develop the confidence and self-discipline to work on their own, an essential skill for adult life.
2. To consolidate and reinforce skills and understanding.
3. To extend school learning, for example through additional reading.
4. To enable students to devote time to particular demands such as project work.
5. To support the home/school relationship.
The school does not have a fixed homework timetable with time allocated for different subjects on different evenings. Students will need to learn to manage their time so that they do some homework each evening.
But are they coping? I spoke to Michael Cunningham who is in Grade 12. His day starts at 5am, when he gets up for pre-school water polo practise. He then does a full day at school. After school he has hockey practice till 4.40pm. Then he does an hour of extra Math, English or Science. By the time he starts his 3 hours of homework it’s around 9pm.
Michael has a 20-hour day, but he’s not an international sports star or the CEO of a multinational company. He’s a 17 year old boy at the beginning of an average school day. His mom, Taryn has 3 sons, who have all been through the “mill”, as she likes to call it.
Next I spoke to sisters Mikhaila Reddy, 6-years old and Keshnie Reddy, who is 11-years-old. Both attend a co-ed model C school. Both parents are educated people with professional careers, and both of the girls are doing well at school. The parents say they battle setting aside time to do homework with the girls. But education is a family priority and they are concerned that if homework was “nixed”, that their girls might end up academically disadvantaged.
Then there’s Lisa Folwer, a divorced mom of two boys aged 9 and 12. Both have learning problems. Lisa is also an educational psychologist. She is not in favour of homework, and believes there are better ways to help children learn and ultimately encourage them to want to study on his/her own. She has done research on stress levels in children and says homework is a significant stressor. In general she says school environments are too competitive and pressurised.
Professor Albie Henning / Director: Centre for Education Practice Research University of Johannesburg Institute for Childhood Education (Soweto Campus) says: "In its extreme form, homework can be counter-productive. It is irrelevant when it is just an uninteresting repetition of what was already done in school. It is relevant when children go home and explore, even if it is around the house - not be managed by parents who end up doing the investigations.”
The Department of Basic Education’s Musi Mahlambe, says that they do not have a formal policy on how much or what homework should be given so schools are left to devise their own approach.
The debate seems to have been sparked some years ago by American, Alfie Khon who wrote a book called The Homework Myth, which debunks common claims about homework. He’s a well known author and educator in the US.
In the US, many parents are opting out of homework, citing negative impacts ranging from a loss of quality family time or play time to stress-induced headaches, anxiety and even ulcers in youngsters. One primary school in the US and another in Canada did away with homework this year.
In the UK, though homework is not compulsory. But guidelines for schools say five-year-olds should do homework from the first day of school for an hour a week, increasing this to between 90 and 150 minutes a day by the age of 16. Teachers have called for homework to be abolished for primary school children.
The negative effects of homework are well known. They include children’s frustration and exhaustion, lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest in learning. Many parents lament the impact of homework on their relationship with their children; they may also resent having to play the role of enforcer and worry that they will be criticised either for not being involved enough with the homework or for becoming too involved.
According to Kohn and Fowler, there is no research to show that there is any academic benefit from assigning homework in junior school. For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement.
At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.
Yet, more homework is being piled on children despite the absence of its value.
In South Africa, researchers at the University of South Africa have found that more than 85% of grade R learners are not learning in their home language and this situation persists through their school careers. Despite this, teachers persist in sending school work home. Parents may be illiterate or semi-literate, yet teachers expect them to read to their children, correct their pronunciation, monitor homework and so on, in many cases in a language they do not even understand.
But while some parents campaign hard for a homework-free experience that would give them their life back, others are worried about their children falling behind or failing to learn the discipline and time management required in high school and beyond.
Do you believe that homework should be done away with at schools or is it necessary?
Sources: Independent Newspapers, News24, TimesLive
You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.