A motion at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference discusses the question of whether homework should be abolished. Union leader Mary Bousted said the difficulty of completing homework could set up a cycle of resistance to school in children from poorer homes.
I think it sets up a cycle of resistance to school because they don’t have access to the cultural and emotional and learning support which middle-class children can get.
The government says that homework is not compulsory but it is encouraged as a key part of the learning process. Its guidelines for schools in England say children should be doing homework from the day they start school, rising from one hour a week at five, to 90 to 150 minutes a day at 16. They say 10 and 11-year-olds should be doing half an hour of homework every day.
What do you think – did/does homework help you or did it just depress you, cause more grief for the teachers?
The real issue is that students should be doing a certain amount of self-study and independent work. The way to make time for it in a day is to eliminate teaching things that kids will forget the next week, which is most lecture.
Thanks for your comment Steve, looks like you have a great blog.
In many ways I agree with you, there are so many things that teachers are expected to share and do with pupils today and so it doesn’t happen in a good manner, a lot is left out, and a lot is not high quality.
Just an interesting note from the business world. We often use prework to help maximize classroom time. You’d be surprised how many people show up without doing their homework.
Also, I also have a Yorkshire Terrier who dropped out of puppy kindergarten. He claims he ate his own homework.
Homework should be banned. My son whos 7 has already had 4 years of homework and he can’t stand doing it. However, he loves to read and he knows what skills he would like to improve. Why not have some sort of diary instead? I know he wants to improve his dividing, why can’t we work on that at home and fill in his diary. You can’t accomplish difficult tasks like clockwork at home as you do in school. They need months of consistant work when the child is wanting to learn.
We spend a lot of time with the children teaching them things such as gardening, housework and woodwork. They love it, but this is not counted as ‘homework’. Instead my son has to search the internet for ‘facts’ on beatrix potter.
Homework is terrible. The majority of it is hardly relevant, and is just homework for the sake of homework. I don’t get out my homework, study it, and learn something from it. If for some reason I get homework, I will take it out, do it, then realise what a pointless waste of time it was to write out a list of spelling words I knew in preschool(well maybe grade 4).
I find it an insult that I have to be told what I have to complete to teach myself, and the basic homework activities given aren’t the best methods of teaching.
Homework should not be given to those students who can prove that they do not require it or if they can do much better doing their own personal study — I know I can. Much, much more efficient to do what you need to do in the way of homework, rather than doing what the school thinks the majority should do.
statementofviews.blogspot.com for more about school.
I’m often appalled to find myself teaching maths to my son, through his homework, at 5pm when he’s been watching videos at school… shouldn’t it be maths at school, videos at home?
The one thing I can find in favour of homework, though, is that you do have a chance to see first hand whether your child understands what they have been taught (or not) at school.
Homework sucks, enough said
It’s interesting that this post is one of the most popular on my blog. I’m convinced the reason for that is the homework doesn’t flow – there is a need for additional work but the way it is set up doesn’t work for pupils, teachers or parents. Thanks for the comments Alex, Maggi and Andrew.
We think homework is good, we’re 14 years old and while we may groan when our teacher sets us homework, at the end of the day, our exam results would not be as good as they are in our school if we didnt have homework. We disagree with setting it for the sake of it, but everyone should look at the bigger picture and if homework were to be banned, the exam results and intelligence in schools would slowly but surely deteriorate.
BYE
I am 14 years old, and unlike Ellie and Rhiannon, i absoulutely hate homework, and don’t see you point of it. End of!
I find homework completely unnecessary. Why should I waste my free time doing projects I don’t want to do. We already spent half the day in school. Then they give homework so it seems like they are asking us to take out all but 2 hours of our day that involves some form of learning. Homework never has helped me. It drives me insane it takes up all my time, it puts stress on me. Since I started getting homework in the 7th grade my grades have gone down I’ve gotten sick 5 times more often and I never have time to do what I want. Then when I don’t do my homework I have a lecture about how I’m not prepared. I think that is just silly of course I’m not prepared I get home at 3:30 then I have to do homework which if I actually do it, I get done at 9:30 and since my mom is a bit paranoid about bed time, I have to go too bed in 30 minutes. That is just ridiculous I get a total of 49 hours of free time a week if I do my homework. I don’t so my grades have decreased From A+ to D’s C’s and F’s. Homework should cease to exist.
I agree fully with Jesse. Homework is completly pointless and leaves me feeling stressed out when I’m done. I’m in eight grade and have more math homework than anything else. My mom usually needs to help me, and boy does that go well. Ha! by the end of THAT session, we’re both frustrated, angry, and tired. While I don’t get sick as much as Yasmin, I do find that working late into the night on homework tires me out and leaves me feeling groggy in the morning, even if I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep. I think homework should totally e banned. END OF STORY!
i hate homework
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i hate homework !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Personaly I think homework should be banned i have 3 days MY WEEKEND!!! to finish 400 PG. book and make 3 projects out of it and i gotta do it all myself when i have things to do i say SCREW HOMEWORK NEVER AGAIN!!!!!
!!!!!! BURN !!!!!! HOMEWORK !!!!!!!
I NEED HELP..!
COULD SOMEONE HELP ME BECAUSE I GOT A CORSEWORK TO DO..!
AND THE QUESTION IS “SHOULD HOMEWORK BE BANNED OR NOT”..!
WHAT DOES EVERYONE THINK..?
HELP ME PILIZZ..!
i think it shouldnt be banned!
yes
Homework should be for those dumb s**ts who dont know anything.
but not for those smart a**** who know everything.
But homework does suck.
Homework has taught be how to start swaring.
It has stressed me out so much. that i have actully started going onto these internet sights and posted comments about how much i hate it.
http://www.scottishautismnetwork.org.uk/FacultiesNotGifts.doc
http://www.phad-fife.org.uk/recognition.php
Homework wrecked all my educational chances and very close to killed me. I was set unsurvivable undoable quantities with nobody willing to believe this was the case, after the teachers had decided my abilities were higher than they were. This was an utter abuse of my life. It caused a fearsome crisis where I had to go into catatonic trances and even in them fear whether they would be accepted as real.
In the impossible fear trap involved in facing discipline and potential labelling as in defiance of authority and to be stuck in a room with the headmaster screaming over me, when I could not do the work he believed I could do, there was no adult to turn to, they had all been brainwashed to believe I was as clever as this nutter fantasised of, and any confided fears risked getting confided straight on to the school. Homework also destroyed my chance to make it as a child author.
If anyone in the whole world ever needs absolute proof that homework is a life-threatening child abuse and a crime against humanity, my story is it. This has been the case for more than the whole present school, population’s lifetimes, for these things happened near 30 years ago. In Wales. Naturally, stories like mine are systematically excluded from the news coverage of education policy and from publishing. Education politics, systematically, refers often to pressure load upon teachers and never to pressure load upon abused enslaved kids. When the whole political scene agrees so, an issue can be airbrushed out of public awareness, made a non-issue, we have no safeguards of participative democracy against that happening.
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