Another week and another column dedicated to issues from my students’ persuasive papers. This week, we’re going to tackle the old homework topic.
Every year, I get to read essays about how students shouldn’t have any homework at all. This is a topic that has likely been discussed by every generation of students since public education began. The most common argument against homework is that school ends at 3:00, so that means there shouldn’t be work expected after that. Many kids will cite the fact that their parents don’t have to work after they clock out.
And while that’s true for many, it’s not for all. I know most teachers bring work home many nights. Of course, kids say that if we didn’t assign that work, we wouldn’t have to take it home. However, the work is more than just correcting papers. It’s often planning units and preparing materials. Early elementary teachers don’t usually assign much work outside of school, but they likely spend the most time outside of the school day preparing!
There are plenty of other jobs where adults have to come home and complete work. Plus, just look at our farmers! There are no office hours there; you work until the work is done. The harder you work and the more focused you remain on the task, the sooner you get done.
That has become part of the philosophy in my classroom. There is a plentiful amount of time given most days to either finish your work or have a great start on it… IF you’re working hard… IF you’re focused on your work… IF you’re seeking help when you’re confused. That’s a lot of IF’s, but the students who follow that structure rarely have to worry about much outside of class.
What people have to continue to realize is that education is a top-down process. We have to give students the opportunity to get to a point in their learning that they are prepared for a post-secondary option if they so choose. I don’t know of a college that doesn’t assign homework, so we need to prepare kids for that most of the way through the K-12 system.
I’ve heard about elementary schools doing away with homework altogether. That’s simply a bad idea. It doesn’t have to be a ton of work and it shouldn’t be, but it needs to be there. If you don’t gradually acclimate students to some outside work, when that work inevitably arrives, they will struggle. You can find all kinds of studies that show how much time should be spent on homework for each age.
We have to give kids chances to work on things on their own. Guidance is good, and that’s what I hope to provide with class work time. However, they also have to work at it for a while too. Don’t just give up right away; that’s another lesson homework teaches.
Listen, I fib a bit when I say some kids might not have to worry about work outside my class. I always have some long-term assignments in the hopper. Kids have a week to complete blogs, they have a couple weeks to finish parts of their quarterly novel, and on major assignments they’re given a timeline near the start. And away they go! You’re likely to have to read your book at home or finish up your blog outside of class.
But those shouldn’t take too much time on a nightly basis. It is out of line to expect my middle school kids to sit down to three hours of homework every night. But as education moves more to a “guide on the side” approach instead of a “sage on the stage” you might see less homework. Should it ever fully disappear? Not until colleges stop giving it out!
So when my students argue against homework, they struggle, as they do in many of their persuasive papers, to come up with rationale that works against the reasons given for having homework. One reason I see often is that they’re busy and don’t have time. I understand that; kids are in various extracurriculars and have church obligations. They might even want to spend some time with their family!
However, I turn that argument around on them. If you’re not going to have time tonight because of a game, faith formation, etc., then why are you screwing around the last ten minutes of class? That ten minutes spent working hard now means ten fewer minutes you have to worry about it later. I also walk through study halls quite often and see students “busy” watching videos while ignoring the fact that they have an assignment due to me at the end of the day.
We all, schools and families, need to do a better job of working with our kids on time management and figuring out priorities. I’d really like to watch the latest season of my favorite show too, but I have chores to do and papers to grade and columns to write first. Then I can sit down and turn on Netflix.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is gongoozler, which means a person who stares endlessly at anything out of the ordinary, as in, “The gongoozler never got around to his homework once he spotted the albino robin outside his window.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!