HANDLING HOMEWORK

It’s been around since the beginning of time: nobody liked it then, and nobody likes it now. HOMEWORK. Do we really know how to use it effectively?
Researchers say no.
To give you an example, let’s look at the world of sport. People who play on athletic teams know full well that practice makes a better player. Practising is intended to strengthen skills and develop a level of competency so the game itself can be played well. It’s when the game isn’t played well, and the weaknesses of skill emerge, that injuries occur and the integrity of the game is lost. When hockey players resort to high sticking or violence on the ice the player is revealing his lack of competence in following fundamental skill requirements to play the game well. The game of hockey suffers, as does the player. To master any skill it must be 80% learned before practice is effective. (Charles Ungerleider, “Homework can thwart education”, The Globe and Mail, November 30, 2004.) Otherwise, the practice time is being used unwisely and the incorrect skills are being reinforced. In practice, when a player makes a play that is incorrectly performed the coach does not penalize the player nor sideline him. The coach takes the player aside, re-teaches the skill, and encourages the player to try again. And again. And again. For as many times as it takes to get it right. It’s called learning.
The same analogy can be used in the classroom. Do we penalize our children for having the wrong answer on their homework and say they can’t learn anymore? If we’re assigning homework in the first place the best educational evidence suggests that it must be used as a means of practicing and reinforcing beneficial skills. If the skills have not been adequately learned before the practice has been assigned, then it’s a waste of everyone’s time and may in fact be reinforcing bad habits. Educational research suggests that homework at the elementary level in particular does not correlate to success in school or high academic achievement. In addition to these findings, research has also revealed that for children in younger grades, the amount of time spent outside of school is best used to enhance other life skills that promote the development of a foundation for balanced living.
In spite of these advances in educational research, there continues to be a wide variation among the practises of educators at the elementary level. School is not immune to this variation. Some teachers recognize the limited effectiveness of homework and design their assignments accordingly. Others, perhaps unaware of the advances in their field, continue to assign more than ten additional hours of homework a week. The volume of homework assigned adds an additional concern. At this rate, both the young student and his family are overloaded and any intended gains in academic achievement are unlikely. Children may become irritable, complain of tummy aches, cry more easily, and even become sick to their stomachs with the pressures of superfluous tests and assignments. Their desire to learn will also diminish. Children are susceptible to burn-out just as much as adults. We know that children need to play and be involved in social interaction outside the classroom to become balanced individuals in mind, body and spirit. However, this is not a black and white issue. Some educational researchers believe that homework on a regular basis helps children manage their time, teaches them responsibility and ownership, and allows them to adopt healthy work habits for their future. In my mind, we’re looking for balance here. The whole point of the homework exercise is to instil confidence in learning. As such, the goal of each homework assignment needs to be clearly defined so the homework is done efficiently.
By not respecting that balance, adults run the risk of interfering with a major component of children’s fundamental growth and their successful journey into adulthood.
Before homework is assigned we need to ask ourselves: Do these students have the right tools to initiate this assignment on their own? Are they following a successful track that will ensure the project has a positive outcome? Are the students learning anything here that will aid them to build balanced lives and future academic success? Students who are assigned research projects outside the classroom, in most cases, do not understand the proper procedures for effective research. The goal of assigning such work is to teach children how to suss out material to find the salient points, to interpret the information in their own words, and to present the facts in a concise manner to give credit where credit is due. To achieve this end, the research should always be done during class time where the teacher provides guidance and the focus is on the process, not the product.
When we focus on the process, the assignment is supporting the development of the fundamental research skills and the associated abilities of critical thinking and writing. These skills will be useful throughout the learner’s lives. The impact of the alternative approach, a product focus, is not benign. These assignments do support learning. But the lessons are completely different. When a research project is assigned as homework without the guidance of the teacher, the students are developing their abilities in copying and plagiarizing the work of others. Perhaps worse, they may also be learning that they don’t have what it takes to successfully complete their assignments, but Mom and Dad will do the work for them. In the world of advanced education, the former lesson will get you kicked out of school. The latter will likely ensure that they never develop the self-confidence to pursue higher education. These are not the lessons that we want our children to learn.
I suspect most parents would agree.
We want our children to learn about themselves, their strengths and their weaknesses, so they can conduct themselves in a proud, confident manner. Does the homework they’re assigned reinforce that philosophy? In many cases it does not. There’s no room in homework for tears, anger, tummy aches or fear of failure. If that’s what our children are facing at school, then we need to ask our educators why their assignments are not supporting that philosophy and support them to find ways to change their practices.

"How do we begin to work our way out of the labyrinth of issues that surround homework? How do we put the issue of homework on the national political agenda and get politicians to move beyond mouthing the rhetoric of "family values" to actually doing something for families? How do we raise the issue of homework at our schools without being seen as meddling parents?
Perhaps our first step should be to talk to our friends. We are convinced that for many parents, homework is the classic instance of what C. Wright Mills referred to as a 'seemingly private trouble that is in fact widely shared and is thus in need of becoming a public issue'.

(C. Wright Mills, "The Big City: Private Troubles and Public," in Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 395-402.)

Parents might discuss among themselves some of the questions we have posed for future survey research. These include 1) how much time their children spend on homework; 2) what the nature of that homework is, and what they see as contributing to the child's intellectual development; 3) what opportunities are lost to homework - that is, what other activities or experiences, including recreation, conversations with parents or parents' friends, social life, jobs, volunteer commitments, and so on must be forgone in order to meet homework demands; 4) what impact homework has on the child's health, rest, and sense of well-being; 5) what impact it has on the friendliness and civility of family life.

(Etta Kralovec and John Buell, "What's a Mother - To Do?" in The End of Homework, How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 90-91.)
The bottom line? We want our children to love learning, no matter what it is. We want them to realize that it’s o.k. to make mistakes because practice does not always make perfect, but we don’t want them to be perfect anyways. We want them to be happy with themselves and with the efforts they make to be the best they can be.
Years ago as a student teacher, I had a wonderful practicum in Chatham at John McGregor High School with an English teacher named Mr. Hank Smit. One day, after I had finished teaching my lesson, he wrote me a note on the back of a bookmark and slipped it into my hands.
"Just remember," he wrote, 'You’re not the sage on the stage, but the guide on the side.'"
I’ve carried that bookmark with me throughout life, and it has helped me through many adult moments when I expected myself to know all the answers. The role of teachers and parents in life is to help children learn positive lessons along their journey of life-long learning. Any roadblocks we place in their way, in my mind, are not acceptable. We all need to feel positive about ourselves in this world of overwhelming negativity. Learning, and the privilege to do so, only reinforces the power of that very precious gift.


Resources:

The Case Against Homework, How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It, Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, 2006.

The Homework Myth, Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, Alfie Kohn, 2006.