Why parents should say no to some homework

Far too often children bring home a great horrible pile of homework, or a project (a word has been known to cause cardiac events in even young parents) which the children cannot do, don’t understand, or cannot obtain the resources necessary.

How does this make parents feel? Well surprisingly, most parents ask schools and teachers for more homework. They believe that the more homework set the better the school. Can this be true? Well the setting and doing of homework, and its contribution to educational performance is all quite complex, so let’s take it step by step.

What homework is and what it shouldn’t be

Ideally homework is set to allow children to revise or put into practice what has been covered in class. There must be a clear and understood link. If children go home with homework they cannot understand then something has gone wrong, quite clearly. The homework is to provide an opportunity to reinforce what has already been learned in the classroom. So homework that is effective has to be very carefully set so it matches children’s abilities and understandings.

Sometimes longer term homework can be set in the form of a project or extended assignment. This sounds a good idea because children can develop research skills and educational commitment over a period of time. However resources must be easily accessible by children themselves. The children must understand what has to be done, and be able to work on the project over a period of time.

This almost never happens. Typically the extent to which the homework is done depends on the extent to which parents help. Parents differ in their ability to access high speed broadband systems and obtain resources, for example. In my experience most children seem to live in homes where there seems to be no working printer.

So with too much homework parents invariably become too involved in helping the child or even in simply doing the homework themselves. The child learns that he or she cannot do homework without extra help being provided. Once this pattern is established it continues on and on, and sometimes right through high school. The parents become responsible, not the child. This is hardly the outcome that teachers or parents want.

Take a simple reading comprehension with say five or six questions, designed for Year Four, Five or Year Six even. This comprehension might have five or ten or even 15 words the child doesn’t know. So it is too difficult and should not have been set, but so many teachers just press ahead, oblivious to the mismatch. It seems as they have no idea of just how long the child takes a look up even one word in the dictionary, and how difficult it is for the child to apply that meaning.

Of course the comprehension should have been prepared with the class in class time. This would also have allowed teachers to understand which children are at the right level to be able to do the work. Thus the homework should be a follow-up on the work done on the comprehension in class, and that includes how to approach and answer all the questions.

Don’t put up with inappropriate and counterproductive homework

It is not surprising then that research studies are increasingly showing that homework doesn’t necessarily produce improve educational outcomes, particularly with young students. Homework which is inappropriate, or professionally careless which is a more accurate way of describing it, takes huge amounts of time, with most students becoming increasingly anxious and experiencing feelings of failure, while parents rush around trying to help get it done. This is time taken away from outdoor activity, from creative playing, from reading books, and from sleep and rest. The children turn up to school the next day tired and disengaged from nine o’clock onwards. The lack of educational productivity continues.

So if this is happening to your child, and to you, do something about it. Parents should let the teacher know their child spent time trying to get the work done but only finished less than half. Collectively the parents of students in K to Year 5 should say that they do not want regular assessable homework set for their children, apart from reading, or bringing in a leaf for science study. If children of this age have the right amount of outdoor activity and adequate rest, and don’t have their brains turned into scrambled eggs with computers, they should turn up to school each day ready for five hours of really solid work. Then educational performance would improve, children would be much happier and so would their parents. Quite simple really.

Yet some teachers and schools may feel that during the day not much work is being done. Unfortunately this complaint has some truth in it. The school curriculum has now become increasingly crowded, more and more types of programs being added, despite the length of the day remaining the same. Quite some years ago primary schoolchildren would typically spend the first half hour of the day learning handwriting, and the rest of the morning on maths or English. Recess to lunchtime maths or English would continue, and this would be the pattern Monday to Thursday. An enormous amount of work would be achieved in the classroom as children were fresh and ready to work. Sadly this is no longer the case in many schools. Some primary schoolchildren are scarcely even taught maths. But all this is another topic for another day.