Bishop Hill
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a trade union, has called for homework to be scrapped.
The cynics among us would probably assume that they just didn't want to do the marking. The extremely cynical might point out that they don't anyway.
I'm cynical on many things, but actually this is not such a bad idea. Certainly the baby Bishops are knackered when they get home from school and we tend to have great crises over getting anything done. I'd rather they were out playing in the garden.
Interestingly, one book I've seen on helping children with their studies said quite plainly that homework was a waste of time and that you should just do it for them. I certainly can't see much point in "make up a sentence including the word "today" (or "yesterday" or "birthday"). Is this useful?
The downside I would see in the plan would be that I would have absolutely no way of gauging my children's progress. Seeing their homework is as much information as I get. But I'd certainly be willing to trade regular reports for no homework.
Reader Comments (5)
That's not to say that I completely disagree with you.
I agree that practice is required, but if the kids are in school all day, they should be doing it there.
Years ago, when I was a school teacher in Canada, I never set homework. Instead of spending time marking homework, I used the time to prepare lessons for the following day.