Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Abolish Homework:
Aside from the story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle about kids and overloaded backpacks, I was having this discussion with my friend, Kevin yesterday.
Sociologists have been saying kids are over-scheduled, they don’t have time to make friends or just engage in unstructured play. They said it’s how kids learn negotiation skills and how to relate, and these lessons cannot be taught in a highly-structured environment with adults ever-present.
It’s actually a problem for many adults also. No time to just relax and socialize away from computers and the internet.
Our schools have kids 7-8 hours a day, and many include a study period. That should be enough. It’s arrogance and dictatorial to assign kids more hours of schoolwork every evening and on weekends. It’s understandable when there’s a major test to study for, but aside from those times, schools have no right to infringe upon the home time of students.
If kids are over-scheduled and don’t have enough free time, this is part of the problem. Schools take up enough of a kid’s day without bleeding into their afternoons and evenings. If the school is not teaching with 7-8 hours of time a day the failure is on their part.
(Aside from the usual aspects that get in the way of teaching.)
The one exception I would consider is assigning a book every semester. But it’s really parents that should be encouraging their children to read. With all the media that pulls at our attention families should be leading by example. In my family there were often times when everyone in the house was reading a book at the same time.
Many of us leave the office and the work stays there. Why should it be different for kids? They need more unstructured time. The schools need to figure out how to do their job in the plethora of hours they are given.
Aside from the story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle about kids and overloaded backpacks, I was having this discussion with my friend, Kevin yesterday.
Sociologists have been saying kids are over-scheduled, they don’t have time to make friends or just engage in unstructured play. They said it’s how kids learn negotiation skills and how to relate, and these lessons cannot be taught in a highly-structured environment with adults ever-present.
It’s actually a problem for many adults also. No time to just relax and socialize away from computers and the internet.
Our schools have kids 7-8 hours a day, and many include a study period. That should be enough. It’s arrogance and dictatorial to assign kids more hours of schoolwork every evening and on weekends. It’s understandable when there’s a major test to study for, but aside from those times, schools have no right to infringe upon the home time of students.
If kids are over-scheduled and don’t have enough free time, this is part of the problem. Schools take up enough of a kid’s day without bleeding into their afternoons and evenings. If the school is not teaching with 7-8 hours of time a day the failure is on their part.
(Aside from the usual aspects that get in the way of teaching.)
The one exception I would consider is assigning a book every semester. But it’s really parents that should be encouraging their children to read. With all the media that pulls at our attention families should be leading by example. In my family there were often times when everyone in the house was reading a book at the same time.
Many of us leave the office and the work stays there. Why should it be different for kids? They need more unstructured time. The schools need to figure out how to do their job in the plethora of hours they are given.
# posted by Phillip T. Alden @ 7:57 PM 
