Homework is a Bad Idea

An Idea Not Well Thought ThroughDepending upon the school in question, children can be subjected to homework as early as kindergarten, and certainly this burden has been imposed on every child by the third grade.

At the elementary school level, especially, this is a bad idea because young children are known for having a very short attention span. They have already been forced to sit still for approximately 6 hours at school, with usually only 2 short recess breaks and lunch.

Any teacher can vouch for the restlessness that occurs by the end of the day. By the time school is out, the kids just want to go home, relax, and be a kid ! It is the rare child who enjoys homework, and whose parents do not wage battles of one degree or another over the subject.

Typically, the child will arrive home, have a snack, possibly a short play break, and then be sat down to do their homework. I doubt there are many parents who will not agree that this can be a traumatic time. The child has already been exercising his or Cheap Oakleys her brain all day at school. They need time to digest the material, not do busy work at home.

Busy work, you say? Yes, that is exactly what homework is. Especially the sort of homework that involves copying out Oakley Sunglasses Outlet questions already printed in the textbook. This is a waste of time, paper, and face it, a cause of frustration, extra tiredness and sloppy penmanship. Little hands tire and cramp up easily.

If you look at school as a child's "job," and compare other jobs held by adults, you will soon realize that there are not very many jobs that require the employees to take work home and continue to work on their own time. The teaching profession is one of the exceptions, but they can reduce their own "homework" load by not assigning homework to their students ! Look at all the extra paperwork and 'correcting' that would eliminate!

An Exercise in FrustrationThere is another even more practical reason for eliminating Oakley Sunglasses Cheap homework. The common argument in favor is that the homework is intended to reinforce the day's lessons.

That's a nice theory, but it is something of a straw man defense. If the lesson was presented well, and the student understood it, they will remember it.

If the lesson was not understood, then what happens at homework time? The student is lost, has no idea of the concept, and will practice and reinforce errors instead. Now, extra time and work must be done to reverse this problem, the student will have suffered wasted time, some degree of mental trauma in having his/her work red penciled, and depending upon thier personality, a possible blow to their self esteem.

I hear the response to this suggestion already! "Well, that's what the teacher is there for! The student should ask if he does not understand!" In principle, yes, that is true. But there are extenuating circumstances. Any or all of the following could be true:

The student is very shy, and does not wish to ask questions in class, for fear of ridicule by classmates and appearing "stupid" in the eyes of his peers.

In the above case, some students may elect to wait until after class to ask the teacher in private but this is not always possible. For example, their parent may have told them to be home by a certain time, or is waiting for them in the pick up queue a common scenario these days.

For whatever reason, real or imagined, the student may feel a personality clash with that teacher, and feel that she is not liked by the teacher, engendering an atmosphere of mistrust or fear.

The student may not actually be aware that he did not understand the lesson. He may think he understands, but in fact, may have missed some salient point, or misinterpreted something the teacher said. So, believing that he understands, sees no need to ask for clarification.

There are also a few teachers out there who should seek a different line of work! (See paragraph below):This happened to me in fourth grade: the teacher, a man, had zero patience, and held the opinion that asking questions meant you had not paid attention. His "answer" to any student's legitimate question was to severely scold that child, including slamming and breaking pointers down across the student's desk. The fellow's face would get Cheap Oakleys beet red, he'd be yelling at the top of his voice, and the entire class was intimidated. I coped by trying very hard to be invisible. This was a crucial year for learning the foundations for advanced math later on; fractions, percents, etc. Thanks to this teacher, I failed to master any of it, and to this day, I "suck" at math.

Parental Help?Another nice idea, freely tossed about, is that parents should help their children with the homework.

Humbug, I say! Parents, especially today, often are both working, and the evenings are chaotic with all the tasks related to running the household, getting dinner, and getting kids to bed on time. Since they have worked all day, they are tired. Asking Discount Oakley them to sit (and often do battle) with the kids to get the homework done is an added stress they do not need.

Besides, they've already "done their time" in school, paid their dues. Parents are the first teachers their children have, when it comes to learning to talk, tie their shoes and brush their teeth. When it comes time for schooling, however, the majority sends the little moppets off to school.

To be sure, parents should, indeed offer any help requested about lessons the child has studied in school, and be supportive of learning in general as a lifelong process. But help with actual homework? No. There are simply too many opportunities for strife and too few for positive ends.

Home schooling families are still a small fraction of the educational experience. As I often said when I was going through this battle with my own children, "I send them to school to learn. I'm not a teacher I don't have the temperament for it. If I had wanted to be a teacher, I'd have gotten a teaching credential and/or home schooled the kids!"

Teaching Methods Keep Changing

Additionally, many parents have no idea of today's teaching methods. Just look at the so called "new math" craze that was being taught in the 1970's and 1980's. Most of us had no clue what in the world this was about it was a totally foreign concept of how to teach. Many parents I knew could not decipher this strange new way of complicating simple addition and subtraction. It was not only my particular math deficit other parents not so "mathematically challenged" as I had similar difficulties.

The slope never ends. Play Slope Unblocked for a fast-paced, heart-pounding challenge. Just try not to fall