People are forever saying that homework teaches kids to be responsible, or to manage responsibility.
Well, yesterday I asked my students what the word "responsibility" means. They said, "Something you need to do." So I asked them to list their responsibilities. Here's what they said:
Taking out the garbage and recycling
Walking the dog
Caring for a pet
Setting the table
Washing the dishes
Brushing your teeth
Cleaning my room
Picking up after myself
Not leaving my things lying around until my mother says she's going to throw it out if I don't put it away
Notice anything missing? I've been teaching this lesson for seven years, and not ONCE has a kid said homework unless I prompted them.
Not. Once.
Clearly my students ARE learning a sense of responsibility. They have heard the word enough to know what it means, and they associate it with real responsibilities that they have. But they don't associate that with homework. They're learning responsibility from chores around the house, from having pets, and from living with other people. They're not learning it from doing worksheets.
Here's my idea of homework that would actually teach something useful. Together, teacher and child set a goal. Then the child has to meet that goal in the allotted time or explain why she didn't. That's it.
So let's say the child sets a goal to knit a scarf. She says she can do it in a week. At the end of the week, she either comes to school with a scarf, or she explains that she worked on her knitting for half an hour each day but she made a lot of mistakes and had to start over a number of times so she wasn't able to complete the scarf. Assuming that her parents can verify the effort, the teacher and child would then set a more reasonable goal for the next week based on the child's skill level.
Or maybe the child sets a different kind of goal: I'm going to ride my bike around the park 100 times. She'd have to figure out how many times she'd have to ride each day, and how to keep track of her laps, and how to document her effort. If it rained all week, then she'd have to figure out how to deal with that setback. Will she ask for an extension? Ride all 100 laps when the sun comes out? Make a different goal for the week?
The goal could also be associated with a learning topic: make a comic book about the Revolutionary War (or a video, or a painting, or a story, or sew a costume.) But that will only work if the child is able to use his strengths when home. The hard, uncomfortable, muscle-flexing work should be done at school where there is a professional to help. If a child needs extra practice, he should get extra practice at school when he has the time and energy to dedicate to learning. Home should be for recharging, for pursuing other interests, and for spending time with family. But if a child's interests can be channeled into teaching responsibility, then a child will feel validated and will learn.
This kind of homework would allow children to learn real world skills about time management, negotiation and problem solving while sharing strengths with their teachers and classmates. It would also help them integrate their interests into school, so that they don't feel like learning stops at the classroom door.
Showing posts with label Race to Nowhere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Race to Nowhere. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2013
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Homework vs. Play
This article really got me going. (For those not clicking the link, it's about the ineffectiveness of homework. Homework, according to this article, affects neither test scores nor grades.) But I'll take that as a given. For the most part, homework is a waste of time, and I'm sure I'll rant about that another day.
For today, I want to focus on what homework takes away from a child's life. Because whatever time a child is spending on homework is time that she could be using to do something else. And as long as you leave the TV off, or use it only for video games, whatever your child is doing is probably better for her than doing homework.
The importance of play in child development has been well-established in articles like this and this and this. Personally, I feel there should be more time for play in school. But if school is to be reserved for academics, so be it. There is some sense in that. After school, however, should be reserved for pursuing a child's interests (where applicable) and for play.
We try to limit Boo's screen time for several reasons. The most compelling reason is that when we turn off the TV, we have to come up with something else to do. That used to be my responsibility, when Boo was little and I was a stay-at-home-mom. Now, as often as not, Boo will come up with activities of her own. But the only reason she can do that is that she's been practicing for all of her nine years. When she was little, there were days when it was hard to keep the TV off. I had to make up artificial rules ("The TV doesn't work in the summer except when it rains.") to keep up the effort. But every day I kept the TV off was worth it, because I had to come up with something else to do. We built things, we took walks, we played games together--all because the TV was off.
Homework can be the same kind of excuse for lazy parenting. We send our kids off to do their homework and then we can spend a little while reading the paper or playing on Facebook or (if we're feeling industrious) cleaning the house. Without homework, we are forced to parent: to come up with something for the kids to do, even if it's helping us clean the house. Over the past two weeks while Boo has been on break, our family has played dozens of board games (well, about four board games, but dozens of times.) That was important family time that couldn't have happened if Boo had been spending hours doing homework. Boo also spent time with friends, playing outside or playing together inside, and with family. We've also been working on cleaning and sorting all of Boo's stuff: first cleaning her playroom and then her bedroom. She wants to move to another room in our house so everything has to be sorted and packed, which is a big job, but Boo is organizing the job, and Hopper and I, and even my parents, are helping. All of these things are important parts of childhood that I do not want Boo to miss. Especially not so that she can fill in another worksheet.
When Boo goes outside and climbs trees, or rides her bike, she's exercising, she's usually socializing, and she's learning a great deal about physics through experimentation. These are things that can't be learned in school or through homework. When she organizes a project like moving rooms, she's learning valuable skills about work, persistence and organization. Could she learn that from homework? Maybe. But the lesson is much more valuable when tied to something meaningful in her life. She wants to switch rooms. She's motivated. And she's working, day by day, toward that goal. That's something she'll remember her whole life. When she is finally settled in that new room, she'll feel really satisfied with the work that she's done, and really pleased that the adults in her life have helped her achieved that goal. That's a meaningful achievement that's its own reward, and that whole experience: setting a goal, enlisting people to help her, and then working over the course of a week or two until the goal is achieved, is a really important learning experience that can't easily be duplicated by any school project.
If you haven't already seen it, watch Race to Nowhere. Get on their website, join their movement, and lobby at your child's school for the homework load to be reduced. And then go do something--anything--with your kids.
For today, I want to focus on what homework takes away from a child's life. Because whatever time a child is spending on homework is time that she could be using to do something else. And as long as you leave the TV off, or use it only for video games, whatever your child is doing is probably better for her than doing homework.
The importance of play in child development has been well-established in articles like this and this and this. Personally, I feel there should be more time for play in school. But if school is to be reserved for academics, so be it. There is some sense in that. After school, however, should be reserved for pursuing a child's interests (where applicable) and for play.
We try to limit Boo's screen time for several reasons. The most compelling reason is that when we turn off the TV, we have to come up with something else to do. That used to be my responsibility, when Boo was little and I was a stay-at-home-mom. Now, as often as not, Boo will come up with activities of her own. But the only reason she can do that is that she's been practicing for all of her nine years. When she was little, there were days when it was hard to keep the TV off. I had to make up artificial rules ("The TV doesn't work in the summer except when it rains.") to keep up the effort. But every day I kept the TV off was worth it, because I had to come up with something else to do. We built things, we took walks, we played games together--all because the TV was off.
Homework can be the same kind of excuse for lazy parenting. We send our kids off to do their homework and then we can spend a little while reading the paper or playing on Facebook or (if we're feeling industrious) cleaning the house. Without homework, we are forced to parent: to come up with something for the kids to do, even if it's helping us clean the house. Over the past two weeks while Boo has been on break, our family has played dozens of board games (well, about four board games, but dozens of times.) That was important family time that couldn't have happened if Boo had been spending hours doing homework. Boo also spent time with friends, playing outside or playing together inside, and with family. We've also been working on cleaning and sorting all of Boo's stuff: first cleaning her playroom and then her bedroom. She wants to move to another room in our house so everything has to be sorted and packed, which is a big job, but Boo is organizing the job, and Hopper and I, and even my parents, are helping. All of these things are important parts of childhood that I do not want Boo to miss. Especially not so that she can fill in another worksheet.
When Boo goes outside and climbs trees, or rides her bike, she's exercising, she's usually socializing, and she's learning a great deal about physics through experimentation. These are things that can't be learned in school or through homework. When she organizes a project like moving rooms, she's learning valuable skills about work, persistence and organization. Could she learn that from homework? Maybe. But the lesson is much more valuable when tied to something meaningful in her life. She wants to switch rooms. She's motivated. And she's working, day by day, toward that goal. That's something she'll remember her whole life. When she is finally settled in that new room, she'll feel really satisfied with the work that she's done, and really pleased that the adults in her life have helped her achieved that goal. That's a meaningful achievement that's its own reward, and that whole experience: setting a goal, enlisting people to help her, and then working over the course of a week or two until the goal is achieved, is a really important learning experience that can't easily be duplicated by any school project.
If you haven't already seen it, watch Race to Nowhere. Get on their website, join their movement, and lobby at your child's school for the homework load to be reduced. And then go do something--anything--with your kids.
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