The Truth About Homework
October 22nd, 2007Via: Alfie Kohn:
There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data. Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic caring communities. Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them. Homework continues to be assigned – in ever greater quantities – despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.
The dimensions of that last disparity weren’t clear to me until I began sifting through the research for a new book. To begin with, I discovered that decades of investigation have failed to turn up any evidence that homework is beneficial for students in elementary school. Even if you regard standardized test results as a useful measure, homework (some versus none, or more versus less) isn’t even correlated with higher scores at these ages. The only effect that does show up is more negative attitudes on the part of students who get more assignments.
I would imagine this is true of the “busywork” sort of homework that most people associate with homework, but I think there is some benefit to having students read works of classic literature as homework. It’s probably because of all the busywork homework that students so often don’t read the English literature assignments they get.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
The only real goal of our current form of “public education” is to destroy the individual’s individuality and produce another cog for the military/industrial complex. Those children already predisposed for this type of identity (i.e., those already predisposed to love the Machine) do best (and go on to be overseers in the slave camps), while those whose strengths are frowned upon by the Machine (strengths such as creativity, originality, self-assurance, and the ability to draw strength from their bond to their nuclear family) are discouraged, humiliated, dulled, and even drugged where necessary until they either fall in line or fall through the cracks. The great industrialists who designed our spiritually bankrupt society a century or so ago weren’t stupid: they knew, just as the Nazis did, that conditioning must begin at childhood if it is to be most effective.
Would you like a paxil with that soul-crushingly meaningless job? Goes down a lot easier that way!
Alfie Kohn has just been in New Zealand and was interviewed on National Radio where he did talk about the the subject of homework – he was immediately followed by an interview of a school principal who reassured the audience that actually homework was still an important part of a child’s education (or words to that effect).
Needless to say the interviewer failed to ask the principal what his evidence was.
A couple of people emailed the interviewer to complain about his poor performance. His excuse? He was running out of time.
It’s just one more example of the brainwashed state of journalists that they can’t even recognise the key question to ask in an interview (if it even slightly threatens the status quo).
Much ado about nothing. Many of my students at a private tech college admitted that they managed to avoid homework all through high school, and they proceeded to continue to do so in college. I’d assign a short story — something fun and anti-authoritarian like Harlan Ellison’s “‘Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” and less than half would actually read it. Sure, they were exhibiting a form of “independence” by not following instructions, but what a waste of tuition fees. I felt sorry for their parents, dishing out all that dough so that their kid could sleep off a hangover at the back of the class (on a day that he would actually attend class, that is). But who’s to say the hungover kid wasn’t learning something, at least about the effects of alcohol, while his aching head felt as if it were going to implode? hahahaha
Homework has always been a big gripe for me. I suppose this is because I have five daughters. And so much of the homework–especially if you live in a high-end school district–is clearly not do-able by children, and hardly do-able by adults.
Teachers will send home 4-5 “mind bender” problems, with little or no math compuation value. Each problem can easily take an hour or two for a parent to solve. The schools seem bent on wasting the whole family’s time.
I’d say a moderate amount of math homework is good. In math, as with music, practice makes perfect.
While, with loveandlight, I feel that “outside reading” assignments are good, and well-chosen “classics” would be good assignments, the “classics” assigned are seldom well chosen. Many–if not most–are over the heads of even the brightest high school students, and they need to be treated as “guided readings” done and discussed in class. Good in-class readings would include “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Pearl.” Kids can understand them, and they’re very productive of classroom discussion.
Many other classics are very bad choices: “Silas Marner,” “Ivanhoe,” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” for example. Even old-school high-school lit teachers will sometimes tell you, in a burst of confidence, how much they detest these books. Some will even tell you they detest Walter Scott.
This is the inevitable result of reading “Ivanhoe” instead of “The Heart of Midlothian”–you will not often meet up with the like of Jeannie Deans or Douce Davie, “The Legend of Montrose”–love that Alan of the Bloody Hand, or “Rob Roy”–which features female characters that beat the stuffing out of modern “liberated women” in literature. You’ll seldom run across a better heroine than Di Vernon, and Helen McGregor is mean as a snake, a tribal war chieftainess who likes to throw people in the loch.
Not long ago, the local librarian and I were discussing the local high school’s “recommended reading” list. We agreed that it was hard to figure out what they were thinking when they put together the reading list; there were many selections that no adult could slog through and remain sane.
So what were they thinking? Bet they weren’t thinking at all. They probably downloaded the list from somewhere on the internet, and the teacher who passed it out had probably not read more than a couple of the titles himself/herself.
Sorry to say that I agree with anothernut. A few years ago when my daughter decided to quit playing the game I looked into self-schooling (aka home-schooling). The evidence is that anyone can learn everything they teach from K-12 in 18 months if motivated. In industrialized society there is no role for a child, so public schools act as glorified child care. But let’s face it. How many jobs out there do not require assembly line or cubicle thinking? The rut of General Ed. And the professions and executive careers are joyless, high-achiever competition. The rat race of AP and honors courses. So the schools are doing exactly what the system requires of them. There is really only one sane alternative. To walk away from it all. But then you end up in a sour world of malcontents, self-loathing religious cults, deluded utopians, homeless creeps, criminals, or one of dozens of other anti-establishment subcultures, all hopelessly compromised by industrialism. A few get lucky, make their million, and disappear. As Stendhal ended his books: “To the happy few.”
I’ve actually home-schooled some of my kids for a year or two at a time. One daughter had to be taken out of school for panic/anxiety disorder and returned to school after a year and a half.
I purchased a complete home-school curriculum for her and found that she worked really hard at it–until she began taking medication. After that, she was completely unmotivated. BUT IT DIDN’T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE!
When she returned to school, she was still performing above grade level, and really didn’t seem to have missed anything, even in math and science.
If I were home schooling again, I’d purchase a math curriculum. I would only purchase a science curriculum for chemistry or physics. Kids should have to do some writing–formal papers, if they’re older. I imagine all the info about how to do this correctly in on the internet. The schools no longer teach grammar, so kids won’t be missing anything in that department. The best way for kids–or anyone–to learn almost everything else is to read widely.
The schools actually teach so little that most kids will learn more that they would at school, even if you made no effort to teach them or provide them with a curriculum. About all they really need is a library card and internet access.
And, at home, a kid can learn all kinds of practical skills. (At least they could in my home.) One of my daughters helped remodel the attic into a bedroom, and learned to build walls, install wiring, hang sheetrock, frame in windows, etc. She did a large share of the work involved in building her own bedroom–and later talked her boyfriend into helping her build a closet.