It's Halloween week, and I'm bleary-eyed -- not from getting ready for the holiday, but from helping my youngest son practice his Spanish presentation.
It wasn't a huge deal of an assignment. Just two minutes about someone deceased -- he chose President Kennedy -- for a Day of the Dead celebration in his Spanish II class. However, he also had homework for English, algebra, physics and Western Civilization -- on a weekend.
He's a freshman in high school, and it's been a rough transition for him. His four older brothers and sisters all went to public schools, and they were whipped into shape early by homework drills: endless math sheets, word searches, posters. I gave up ever trying to clean off the dining room table, because somebody was always doing a project -- or having a breakdown because a project wasn't done. Sometimes it was me having the breakdown.
These four older children all went to great colleges. Three have now graduated and actually have jobs, amazingly; the fourth is in her senior year and working on her college thesis. Good for them, right? And great for us, too, of course.
Did all of that homework get them there?
I have no idea. I never would have questioned the idea of homework -- it was drilled into my head, too, that you should always have papers to keep you busy, even if it meant staying up until midnight to get it done -- except that my youngest son went to a Montessori School. The Montessori philosophy was, hey, if you need to review something, here's some homework that can help you. Otherwise, go outside and play, cook dinner with your family, or draw a picture.
"He wouldn't be having so much trouble with high school if he'd gone to a 'real' middle school," my cousin grumbles.
Maybe. But the thing is, our youngest son isn't really having trouble with high school. He loves his teachers, comes home repeating incredible stories about Chinese philosophers from his Western Civ class or trying out new physics theories. He loves to practice Spanish. He is making friends and shaving minutes off his time at every cross country meet. He's a successful high school student in every way -- except for that struggle over homework.
The thing Montessori taught him -- and me, too -- is that there are lots of important things to learn in this world. Maria Montessori, in fact, had a theory that kids in early adolescence shouldn't even go to a traditional school, but to a farm school, where they could exercise their bodies as well as their minds and become truly engaged in the world. They should do community service and -- gasp -- hold down a small job, all as a way of stimulating intellectual curiosity.
Instead of doing homework, our son would rather be practicing flips on the trampoline, hiking with his dad and me, working in his father's wood shop, fiddling around on the bass guitar, and, of course, playing video games online.
"Computer games are ruining our kids," a friend suggests.
Really? Why? Because he's playing games online with a team of kids from Canada, Spain, Germany, and the U.S.? Because they Skype and learn how to work on team strategies together, learning about how each of them lives along the way? Is that why those games are bad?
"He's always fooling around," my mother argues.
I suppose that's what it looks like from the outside. Having been through Montessori, though, makes me question whether doing seven hours of homework on a weekend is necessarily more valuable than doing everything else that commands our son's attention.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm highly impressed by my son's high school instructors and curriculum. And, given what research show about brain development -- that our brains are the most plastic they'll ever be until age 16 or so, which means that whatever those brain synapses are doing during middle and early high school years truly impacts what kind of thinker your child will become as an adult -- I'm delighted that our son is stretching himself in many different directions.
It's just the homework that gets me. Why isn't it enough to focus on academics all day, and then give it a rest?
In the incredible documentary "Race to Nowhere," we see a series of students who have been crushed by homework, while parents and academics wonder how they can keep students engaged and inspired. Duh. If homework kills the creative buzz, why are we still letting it bleed into evenings, so that there's never time for a game of cards, never mind chess? Why do our weekends have to be spent figuring out physics vectors instead of hiking in the White Mountains?
The counter argument, I know, is that homework teaches accountability, reviews topics covered in class, and prepares your child for college. In college, though, students are older and more motivated to organize their time. (Plus, let's not kid ourselves, there's more free time in college than in high school.)
Meanwhile, what message are we sending by piling on the homework in high school?
Here it is: Stress is good for you, kids! See how stressed Mom and Dad are? That can be you, too! Stress is what you have to look forward to in college and beyond. Forget friends, fun, family, or even sleep! You'd better focus on school if you want to get ahead -- so that you can take on even more responsibility later!
Really? Is that what we mean by preparing children for a lifetime of learning? Sounds like the School of Hard Knocks to me.
Follow Holly Robinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hollyrob1
My son is heavily into a competitive robotics team and during the competition season he was putting in 35 hours a week outside of his regular schoolwork. I advised him not to take AP classes as a junior so the workload wasn't crushing. What's crazy is that I'm now questioning that decision now that he's applying to college. Will admissions officers give robotics as much weight as someone who took multiple AP classes? Who knows? We're about to find out.
My family deals with more family time by regularly eating dinner together, going to events, and doing non-academic stuff during the summers (with the exception of their reading assignments). Seems to work.
Assigning a lot of homework rarely translates into effective learning. Most adults are not highly productive after coming home from a long day at work.
I have found that homework is more effective when it is used as a way for students to reflect on what they have learned that day or to prepare them for new information the following day. Especially when you give students a chance to examine the new idea with respect to their personal lives and experiences.
Instead, give them a short and simple assignment that allows them to make personal connections first. For example, students often get hung up on the meaning of the word, classification, when they apply it directly to science before making a meaningful connection to their daily lives.
Therefore I ask students to take 5-10 minutes to simply observe and record how they classify things at home. It's something everyone does every single day without one realizing it. We arrange our closets in many different ways according to our personal preferences, is one simple way we all classify.
Students get really creative in a very short 5-10 minute reflection and they come to class prepared with working definition they can apply to a more challenging concept.
Homework is not over-rated, its just not often used effectively.
If Montessori is so great...then go there.
Truly mastering a subject / skill (such as playing an instrument at a professional level) typically requires something like 10,000 hours of practice until the skills are essentially automatic.
Steps to allow minimization of needless repetition will allow students who are trying to avoid homework and who are unduly self confident to avoid needed work - assignments could be broken into sections so that students could do an assessment section to see if they have mastered the material. If so, they can skip the follow-up/practice work. If they need the work, they would then do the additional work so that they can master the work.
If the student is taking a heavy load of demanding classes (IB/AP/college level) they are going to have a lot of homework. There is nothing wrong with this. My wife is still mad at me for allowing my daughter to sign up for 6 AP/IB/college classes this year.
If one wants to spend the weekends hiking ,,,fine,,,what do I care...but if one wants to learn to speak Spanish, then it is going to require practice.
It isn;t enough, because it isn't.
Why is beer fattening? Because it is.
The message is that learning and industriousness is what moves the ball down the feild. If it stresses you out so badly, then maybe you aren't cut out for academics.
I do agree that often homework is just unnecessary repetition, which causes a lot of kids to simply not do it.