||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BOING BOING - Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish 2006 book "The Case Against
Homework" is a fine and frightening explosion of the homework myth: that
giving kids homework improves their educational outcome. The authors
start by tracing the explosion in homework since the eighties, and
especially since the advent of the ill-starred No Child Left Behind
regime, which has teachers drilling, drilling, drilling their kids on
math and reading to the exclusion of all else.
Kindergarten kids are assigned homework. Kids get homework over the
weekend. Over vacations. When they're away sick for a day.
What's more, all the credible research on homework suggests that for
younger kids, homework has no connection with positive learning
outcomes, and for older kids, the benefits of homework level off sharply
after the first couple assignments.
Not that most teachers would know this -- homework theory and design
isn't on the curriculum at most teachers' colleges, and most teachers
surveyed report that they have never received any training on designing
and assessing homework. . .
One thing the authors keep coming back to is the way that excessive
homework eats into kids' playtime and family time, stressing them out,
contributing to sedentary obesity, and depriving them of a childhood's
measure of doing nothing, daydreaming and thinking. They quote
ten-year-olds like Sophia from Brooklyn, saying things like "I have to
rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush through my day, actually through my
seven days, and that's seven days wasted in my life."
No Child Left Behind has to shoulder some of the blame here. No Child
Left Behind and standardized testing not only turns your child into a
slave to her test-scores, but they can even affect your property values:
a school with low test-scores brings down the neighborhood property
values. That means that whatever your approach to your kids, the chances
are that the other parents in your neighborhood are busting their asses
to get their kids great test scores, drilling them, sending them to
tutors, helping them with assignments that they were meant to complete
themselves. If you don't do the same, your kids will suffer by
comparison.
The authors report on an elementary school in North Carolina where at
least twenty standardized test books have to be replaced after their use
because the stressed out elementary school kids working to them have
vomited on them.
The stories go on and on, and just when you're ready to throw in the
towel and send your kids into the woods to be raised by wolves, the
authors supply several long chapters of strategies and sample dialogs
for convincing your kids' teachers to ease off on homework, for changing
the homework policies in your school district and for rallying other
parents to their cause.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/27/homework_sucks_the_c.html
STOP HOMEWORK
http://stophomework.com
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BOING BOING - Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish 2006 book "The Case Against
Homework" is a fine and frightening explosion of the homework myth: that
giving kids homework improves their educational outcome. The authors
start by tracing the explosion in homework since the eighties, and
especially since the advent of the ill-starred No Child Left Behind
regime, which has teachers drilling, drilling, drilling their kids on
math and reading to the exclusion of all else.
Kindergarten kids are assigned homework. Kids get homework over the
weekend. Over vacations. When they're away sick for a day.
What's more, all the credible research on homework suggests that for
younger kids, homework has no connection with positive learning
outcomes, and for older kids, the benefits of homework level off sharply
after the first couple assignments.
Not that most teachers would know this -- homework theory and design
isn't on the curriculum at most teachers' colleges, and most teachers
surveyed report that they have never received any training on designing
and assessing homework. . .
One thing the authors keep coming back to is the way that excessive
homework eats into kids' playtime and family time, stressing them out,
contributing to sedentary obesity, and depriving them of a childhood's
measure of doing nothing, daydreaming and thinking. They quote
ten-year-olds like Sophia from Brooklyn, saying things like "I have to
rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, rush through my day, actually through my
seven days, and that's seven days wasted in my life."
No Child Left Behind has to shoulder some of the blame here. No Child
Left Behind and standardized testing not only turns your child into a
slave to her test-scores, but they can even affect your property values:
a school with low test-scores brings down the neighborhood property
values. That means that whatever your approach to your kids, the chances
are that the other parents in your neighborhood are busting their asses
to get their kids great test scores, drilling them, sending them to
tutors, helping them with assignments that they were meant to complete
themselves. If you don't do the same, your kids will suffer by
comparison.
The authors report on an elementary school in North Carolina where at
least twenty standardized test books have to be replaced after their use
because the stressed out elementary school kids working to them have
vomited on them.
The stories go on and on, and just when you're ready to throw in the
towel and send your kids into the woods to be raised by wolves, the
authors supply several long chapters of strategies and sample dialogs
for convincing your kids' teachers to ease off on homework, for changing
the homework policies in your school district and for rallying other
parents to their cause.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/27/homework_sucks_the_c.html
STOP HOMEWORK
http://stophomework.com
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
No comments:
Post a Comment