Homework is rubbish

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. 

Comments

[TDK]

Surely homework is practice rather than learning. I think that a subject like maths requires a certain amount of practice before the ideas become clear.

That's not to say that I completely disagree with you.

[sean]

It would be a lot easier if it was just expected that parents go thru their children's school work for that day for 20-30 minutes to see what they have done and talk to them about their day, like most parents probably do already.

[Bishop Hill]

Exactly. All I need on top of what we have already is to get a look at what they've done during the day or week.

[Bishop Hill]

TDK

I agree that practice is required, but if the kids are in school all day, they should be doing it there.

[Frederick Colbourne]

I agree. Time spent in school should be sufficient.

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.