Macleans.ca published an article today on what they call “homework hysteria.” Apparently, elementary school kids are getting too much homework and they don’t have time for all the important stuff like hockey and dance practices. The article’s stand point which is backed up by some studies is that there is no point in doing homework until the latter part of elementary school if that since “there is scant evidence that elementary-level homework serves any purpose other than conditioning children for homework in high school…”
Apparently some geniuses in child psychology and learning have said “There’s no point in doing homework and it takes away from family time, now give me my Pokeball back or we’re not friends anymore.” OK, I made some of that up. The point is though people think kids have it rough nowadays. A lot of stress, not enough family time and all because of (god forbid) homework. The article mentions the 10 minute rule, where homework for the night should take you 10 minutes for each grade you’ve been through (40 for 4th grade, 50 for 5th and you get the point) [Sure wish I would have known this rule when I was in elementary and secondary].
The downside of this rule is, of course, that the amount of homework “seems reasonable enough for first graders, but this quickly (emphasis mine) escalates a full hour per night for 6th graders and two hours per night in Grade 12.” I don’t know about you but that amount sounds reasonable to me. What time do most schools get out at? Say 4 PM at the latest? So get home and be babied up by mommy and daddy who missed their precious overtired and overstressed angel so much during the day that they brought work home with them. All this takes you to say 5:30 PM. Dinner at 6. Homework at 6:30 and, if you’re in 6th grade, you’re done by 7:30. I don’t know what bedtime usually is for an 11 year old but lets say 9:30. You’ve got two full hours to spend with your family (Read watching TV or most likely on Facebook or MySpace).
But what about those poor grade 12′s. They have TWO full hours of homework. I don’t know about any of you, but in my grade 12 year (let’s say 4-5 years ago for the sake of argument) I didn’t go to bed until 12 AM if that. Trust me, it wasn’t the homework that kept me up, it was everything else I wanted to do. For most of my friends 1 or 2 AM was early to go to bed and again not because of homework.
I really do not understand this society of ours. I agree with the point that more doesn’t mean it’s going to work better. Or as in this case, help the pupils learn better. It is still needed, if just to make things like multiplication and taking derivatives automatic. You’ve heard of muscle memory, how about memory memory?
The kids of today are being babied beyond belief. I used to laugh at the whole “back in my day, we had it tough” but no more. The answer to the homework “problem,” if you want to call it that, is not the amount but the content. Homework needs to be made more engaging (not to mean more entertaining). Instead of asking students “How fast will a bucket empty if it has 5 L of water in it and it is leaking at 250mL per second?” change it to “How fast will your iPod fill up if you put 20 songs on it per day and it can take 20,000 songs in total?” It’s that simple.
OK, that’s enough for now, I have at least 170 minutes of homework waiting for me.
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