Will there ever be a time where children's school homework be abolished?

Andy From Sligo

With better use of time management could homework be abolished for schoolchildren do you reckon? Some children take to it fine but an awful lot struggle and its hard for a lot of parent to get their children to do their homework, plus when kids are at home they could be missing out on recreation, or quality time with the family, sure you could say that the parents could sit down with the children and get bonding time then but us it the same?

What about if all school learning was done in school hours? .. What if it meant longer school hours?

Should maybe homework start around the age of 12 onwards or maybe only start getting homework in secondary school?

Just been watching a piece on the news about the pressure homework can cause children and prompted mec to write this.

Winterlong

Are you tripping Andy?

Laois_Man

If it's hard for a lot of parents to get their children to do their homework, then the fact that they have homework isn't actually the big problem!

TallGlass

Doubt it, looking back on it now, homework wasn't such a bad idea. Just a pity I never done it. I can see the point of it now, I just think the amount handed out needs to be more manageable and not 5 days a week for all subjects.

Or just go the way of college, either do it or not, I don't care it's your choice.

PucaMama

Homework is not a bad thing op

Jack the Stripper

Laois_Man wrote: »

If it's hard for a lot of parents to get their children to do their homework, then the fact that they have homework isn't actually the big problem!

Drinking cans maybe?

What a load of old bollox.

Nothing wrong with homework.

5-10 hours a week for primary and 15-20 for secondary sounds about right to me.

Should be decent exercises too, not just work for the sake of it.

If you let the little bollixes off the hook early on, they'll be rightly fecked come 3rd level time.

GLaDOS

Teaching kids to work by themselves and manage time is hardly a bad thing.

Nothing wrong with homework.

Barry Badrinath

JayZeus wrote: »

What a load of old bollox.

Ah leave him alone.

Andy just wants to do his colouring in. He hasnt got time for homework.

pjohnson

Problem: Parent cant get Child to perform task.

Solution: Remove task

Don't: Attempt to raise own child.

wakka12

Why should it be abolished? Most irish children have such easy lives already if they get any easier were all just going to turn into vegetables

cbyrd

I don't mind the homework, it's more about routine and getting them used to it. I've always done the straight in the door, shoes and coats off and homework out. No hanging around.

My eldest is 18 now doing her leaving and study is not a problem, my 14 year old is doing after school study Monday to Thursday so has it done by 6 in the evening too. My two younger are junior and senior infants and don't mind homework at all takes about 15 minutes.

Holiday time trying to entertain them is a pain in the butt.

diomed

There are lots of reasons why children should have homework:
it refreshes what they learn at school
it teaches them to solve problems
they learn to time manage
their parents know what they are doing at school
they learn about standards and achieving them

King George VI

I read somewhere that a school abolished homework and the students got higher grades. Or they abolished homework with the stipulation that any work the students didn't finish in school they had to finish at home. Can't remember which one but it's an interesting idea.

_Brian

Some of the biggest problems with homework stems from the parents. They seem to think teachers have full responsibility to raise their children and many would rather browse Facebook or be engrossed in soaps to bother engaging with their child and supporting homework.

It takes an effort to raise a child and that includes being involved in their education and supporting the homework. If nothing else it helps a parent understand their child's actual ability.

The_Valeyard

Homework on Easter Holidays?????????????

Jurgen Klopp

Whatever about reducing homework I'd much rather see a move to projects in secondary schools rather rewriting the same essays and answers over and over again to reproduce in the exam which may as well be labeled the memory test

retro:electro

TBH I think I learned more from doing homework than I did learning at school. My mam used to sit with me and help me and we'd make up stories and try innovative ways to learn things. I still remember how to spell certain words and certain x tables because she helped me. My teacher had no patience for helping me spell as I found it quite tricky.
I get that a lot of kids don't have that, but from experience the ones who refuse to do homework are the ones who need to do it the most.

Dirty Dingus McGee

King George VI wrote: »

I read somewhere that a school abolished homework and the students got higher grades. Or they abolished homework with the stipulation that any work the students didn't finish in school they had to finish at home. Can't remember which one but it's an interesting idea.

That was very informative.

freshpopcorn

_Brian wrote: »

If nothing else it helps a parent understand their child's actual ability.

That's a complaint I've often heard from teachers. Certain parents think their child is a genius.

josip

My problem with homework is that they don't get any over the weekend.
Gearing them up for a 4 day working week later in life

cml387

King George VI wrote: »

I read somewhere that a school abolished homework and the students got higher grades. Or they abolished homework with the stipulation that any work the students didn't finish in school they had to finish at home. Can't remember which one but it's an interesting idea.

Typical response of someone who hasn't properly done their homework. 3/10

freshpopcorn

josip wrote: »

My problem with homework is that they don't get any over the weekend.
Gearing them up for a 4 day working week later in life

They do in secondary school!

_Kaiser_

josip wrote: »

My problem with homework is that they don't get any over the weekend.
Gearing them up for a 4 day working week later in life

Well with advances in technology and automation and more jobs being outsourced to far away places a 4-day week (or less) may be more common than not at some point soon.

But yes, there's no harm in homework at all. As already said it reinforces the topics of the class, teaches kids to learn and study on their own initiative, and it keeps the parents informed of what's going on in school.

But as also mentioned above, a BIG problem is the notion in some parents that their children should be educated and raised by the teachers and the TV rather than they themselves taking an active role and RESPONSIBILITY (not something many people like these days I know!) in the upbringing of their offspring.

We've a generation who've been told that they can achieve anything, are special, and who will fall back on excuses when things go wrong for them that are unprepared for the reality and occasional harshness of life. Now we should "dumb things down" further by removing a valuable part of early education?

I for one (as the parent of a young child about to enter the school system properly) am seriously worried about some of the nonsensical proposals I've heard in relation to the "reform" of the syllabus - and from supposedly mature educated people!

WTF is going on in our society? Real Life is not bloody Facebook, Twitter, instant results and happy consensus. What's worse is that those countries that "we" smugly consider less advanced than ourselves will be the ones to reap the rewards of our "outdated" models, leaving our own kids further and further behind.

blueser

About 45 years too late!

the_pen_turner

I think the volume is the problem.
When we were in secondary school some of the teachers would give you so much homework that you could spend 6 hours doing it. A few of had to go to the principle about it. . We did evening study. By the time you got home and got dinner it was 7. 3hours of work and you would have 5 hours and you would still have to decide which teacher you could get away with ignoring

Badly Drunk Boy

josip wrote: »

My problem with homework is that they don't get any over the weekend.
Gearing them up for a 4 day working week later in life

I was just about to ask if there was a modern equivalent of the Sunday Night/Glenroe/Homework Syndrome. Obviously not...

LirW

Didn't go to school in Ireland but in my last 5 years in school I had 42 hours school a week. Plus we had a couple of projects, short and longterm and were quite occupied with it.
To clarify: I went to a school on the mainland where you'd not only do your leaving cert but get a diploma in a field, in my case it was Multimedia design.
Since a lot of my classmates had to commute over 1.5 hours each way and would come home between 7 and 8 in the evening we simply couldn't manage with much homework. Gladly we didn't get very much, because most teachers knew our schedules.
Especially in the last two years the workload was so huge that a lot of us even struggled to keep up with social activities.
Average age of graduating was 19 due to the additional year we had in this school.

Don't get me wrong, I do think in the early years homework is very very important.
But I think at some point you reach an age depending on the workload that can really impact your social life because a lot of teachers think their subject is the center of the universe and you're just drowning in work. Also at some point you reach an age where your parents can't really help you due to the tasks being too "complex". I never had any support in Maths at home because my mom simply was bad at it. She was helpful in a lot of other subjects though.

Capt'n Midnight

"There is no royal road to geometry."
Euclid to King Ptolemy I , around 300BC


So no there's no shortcuts. The child has to do the work.

Spanish Eyes

Finland does not have any homework, and the kids turn out to be VERY successful.

I think parents have enough going on with working fulltime, getting home in the traffic, getting the dinner on and then having to sit down and do homework WTF? Not to mention the kids doing a near full time working day aswell with homework. Too much already.

Anyway...

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005

Dirty Dingus McGee

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Finland does not have any homework, and the kids turn out to be VERY successful.

I think parents have enough going on with working fulltime, getting home in the traffic, getting the dinner on and then having to sit down and do homework WTF? Not to mention the kids doing a near full time working day aswell with homework. Too much already.

Anyway...

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005

Parents don't have to do homework.The children have to do it.

Dave0JV

The whole point of homework is to reinforce the lessons learned in class, so that they aren't forgotten. True, it's a pain to deal with, but it's kinda necessary in my opinion

Spanish Eyes

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

Parents don't have to do homework.The children have to do it.

I was too fekkin lazy to edit that. Touchay lol.

Spanish Eyes

Dave0JV wrote: »

The whole point of homework is to reinforce the lessons learned in class, so that they aren't forgotten. True, it's a pain to deal with, but it's kinda necessary in my opinion

Any comment on Finland's approach?

IvyTheTerrible

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Finland does not have any homework, and the kids turn out to be VERY successful.

I think parents have enough going on with working fulltime, getting home in the traffic, getting the dinner on and then having to sit down and do homework WTF? Not to mention the kids doing a near full time working day aswell with homework. Too much already.

Anyway...

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005

In fairness, there is a lot more to Finland's successful system than no homework. The whole system is different.

Spanish Eyes

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

In fairness, there is a lot more to Finland's successful system than no homework. The whole system is different.

Could you tell us more? We might in time (2107 LOL) emulate it for the sake of parents and children.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

JayZeus wrote: »

What a load of old bollox.

Nothing wrong with homework.

5-10 hours a week for primary and 15-20 for secondary sounds about right to me.

Should be decent exercises too, not just work for the sake of it.

Therein lies the first problem

If you let the little bollixes off the hook early on, they'll be rightly fecked come 3rd level time.

And therein liest he second: if you see hoemwork as merely a means to install discipline than you might as well just give them work for the sake of it.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

That was very informative.

How aboout this then?

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005

The problem is people think that more hours in school and doing homework automaticly mean a better education and more intelligent students, which is a bit od a fallacy.

EDIT - just realsied, story is already linked... oops

Dave0JV

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Any comment on Finland's approach?

It is an interesting concept, to be fair. However as the article does state, it's built around an entirely different culture and attitude to education to the one we have in Ireland and in the UK. What works there, probably wouldn't work here.

Spanish Eyes

Dave0JV wrote: »

It is an interesting concept, to be fair. However as the article does state, it's built around an entirely different culture and attitude to education to the one we have in Ireland and in the UK. What works there, probably wouldn't work here.

Why not? They are members of our wonderful EU family surely. And they are up there in the Arctic Circle (mostly) with dark nights and the Aurora Borealis.

They must be doing something right.

What is the difference between their culture and let's say ours?

milehip

When we are in the post-employment trans-humanist era there'll be no such thing as school. So yes is the answer.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dave0JV wrote: »

It is an interesting concept, to be fair. However as the article does state, it's built around an entirely different culture and attitude to education to the one we have in Ireland and in the UK. What works there, probably wouldn't work here.

I find that when people say that, what they mean is that it's too much of an effort to try here, so we'll just keep doign what we're doing. Easier.

Their cultrue is not that much different to ours and I fail to understand exactly what they do that works that wouldn't work here.

Samuel T. Cogley

Send the little bastards to boarding school, problem solved.

Luggnuts

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

With better use of time management could homework be abolished for schoolchildren do you reckon? Some children take to it fine but an awful lot struggle and its hard for a lot of parent to get their children to do their homework, plus when kids are at home they could be missing out on recreation, or quality time with the family, sure you could say that the parents could sit down with the children and get bonding time then but us it the same?

What about if all school learning was done in school hours? .. What if it meant longer school hours?

Should maybe homework start around the age of 12 onwards or maybe only start getting homework in secondary school?

Just been watching a piece on the news about the pressure homework can cause children and prompted mec to write this.

Give the bastards hours of homework I say. HOURS! Until their fingers are numb from writing. Until they're alone at night in their room painstakingly working through hundreds of maths problems long after the parents have gone to bed.

Seriously though, homework is important. How else do you put into practice what you've been taught in the classroom? Of course critical think is very important but a lot of learning is, let's face it, is learning facts or procecdures. Geography is fact based...so is science. You just have to learn the facts by heart.....periodic elements, laws of motion, the organs of the body, rock characteristics, rivers, mountain ranges, etc.
When I was in secondary school I was often up till 10:30 or 11pm doing homework and that was pretty much straight through from 4:30 pm with an half hour max break for dinner at 6pm with maybe a quick half hour tv break. It was pretty gruelling. Some teachers just piled on the homework not caring a fig about how much other teachers had also prescribed. Quality time with the family? At that age you would rather do homework than sit and talk to your uncool parents anyway

Luggnuts

JayZeus wrote: »

What a load of old bollox.

Nothing wrong with homework.

5-10 hours a week for primary and 15-20 for secondary sounds about right to me.

Should be decent exercises too, not just work for the sake of it.

If you let the little bollixes off the hook early on, they'll be rightly fecked come 3rd level time.

Agreed....I had so much homework to do in secondary that when I got to university (science based degree) it was actually easier than the leaving cert.

LirW

Seriously though, homework is important. How else do you put into practice what you've been taught in the classroom? Of course critical think is very important but a lot of learning is, let's face it, is learning facts or procecdures. Geography is fact based...so is science. You just have to learn the facts by heart.....periodic elements, laws of motion, the organs of the body, rock characteristics, rivers, mountain ranges, etc.
When I was in secondary school I was often up till 10:30 or 11pm doing homework and that was pretty much straight through from 4:30 pm with an half hour max break for dinner at 6pm with maybe a quick half hour tv break. It was pretty gruelling. Some teachers just piled on the homework not caring a fig about how much other teachers had also prescribed. Quality time with the family? At that age you would rather do homework than sit and talk to your uncool parents anyway

Don't wanna deny that homework is important. But I think is it really necessary piling the work on teenagers that they are spending years of their lives at the desk? I mean we all know how much of a difficult time the teenage years are, you as a whole person undergo so many changes and I fully understand that a lot of them can't be arsed to focus on school at that time, because, well... teenage years and f all.
But I do not really see the point in the vast amount of work a lot of them get. The reality is, it doesn't really prepare you for working life, let's be honest because you just see it as another annoying chore. Also your parents most likely go home from work and that was it, they don't have to think about work anymore. While as a student you go home, have hours of homework plus additional studying to do and in most cases your parents can't help you anyway at that point.

IMO homework and practice yes - but in a bearable amount and enforces critical thinking and makes you want to know more about certain topics.

Luggnuts

OSI wrote: »

It's impossible for a teacher to provide direct 1:1 tuition to a child in the classroom, so homework provides the opportunity for parents to work with the child to reinforce what they learned in class.

In fairness my parents wouldn't have been much use to me. Both intelligent humans (nurse and accountant) but what the hell did they know about calculus or french or the Renaissance? I just used to have my mother test me on verbs and vocab.

Dirty Dingus McGee

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

How aboout this then?

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005

The problem is people think that more hours in school and doing homework automaticly mean a better education and more intelligent students, which is a bit od a fallacy.

EDIT - just realsied, story is already linked... oops

It may not automatically mean a better student however I know from my own experience that if I didn't study after school I wouldn't have done so well in my exams.Study is necessary in order to get a better understanding of any subject and homework can be a part of that.

Luggnuts

wakka12 wrote: »

Why should it be abolished? Most irish children have such easy lives already if they get any easier were all just going to turn into vegetables

+1

You have kids in Third World countries whose lives are tough, happy but tough. They are only too delighted to get back to the village from school and dive into the books while mum cooks the rice and beans.

Luggnuts

King George VI wrote: »

I read somewhere that a school abolished homework and the students got higher grades. Or they abolished homework with the stipulation that any work the students didn't finish in school they had to finish at home. Can't remember which one but it's an interesting idea.

Lowering the standards of difficulty will probably produce a similar increase in grades.

man_no_plan

_Brian wrote: »

Some of the biggest problems with homework stems from the parents. They seem to think teachers have full responsibility to raise their children and many would rather browse Facebook or be engrossed in soaps to bother engaging with their child and supporting homework.

It takes an effort to raise a child and that includes being involved in their education and supporting the homework. If nothing else it helps a parent understand their child's actual ability.

I'd be inclined to agree. Most problems I encounter in school revolve around parents lack of interest until we get past a tipping point. Then its all 'why wasn't I informed'.

The gulf between the expectations of the child and those of parents can be huge (in both directions). A bit of a tune in to homework would give a better sense of what's going on.

For my own part I find homework to be very beneficial to my students once they do it. I can get a sense of where I need to pick up from in the first few minutes of class and be sure to pitch the class at the right level.

When kids don't do homework because parents give carte blanche to their offspring to do as they please you never get a sense of where a student is at until you do a test, usually at the end of a unit of work. At that stage any chance to remedy a shortfall is lost. Repeated over a few years and multiple areas and you very soon are looking at an under achieving student. Hard work beats talent.

Short version. Do your homework and shut up about it.