A Texas teacher is turning heads as she has made the decision to make a big change when it comes to her students’ homework. In fact, there is no formally assigned homework for her students this year. Brandy Young handed out a note
suggesting that families spend evenings doing activities known to improve student performance, like eat dinner as a family, read together, play, and get to bed early. “Research has been unable to prove that homework improves performance,” the note reads. CONTINUE
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A SIMPLE TRUTH
by Godfried Bomans (1913-1971)*
Today is the first Tuesday in September. Fatal day! When I was young it was the first school day after the Summer vacation and although my final exams are more than thirty years in the past, I still get cramps in my stomach and cold sweat pours out of my body by the very remembrance of that day.
In our town (Haarlem, Netherlands) the school year started with a solemn Mass in the famed St. Bavo Church. The physical education teacher would start the hymns with a loud, powerful voice and would continue on his own for at least one more strophe, when everybody else had finished singing. The History teacher placed a penny in the collection plate and with this simple gesture perpetuated his nickname as the “Miser” for one more year. And the Rector (Principal) trumpeted as usually into his large, red handkerchief, oblivious to the fact that with that action he once more confirmed his pseudonym as the “The Toreador.”
We gazed upon the backs of the teachers and noticed that their necks were markedly more tanned then had been the case before the Summer, but when they sat down for the Sermon and pulled up the pants legs of their gray flannel suits, one saw that their legs above the suspenders showed the ethereal whiteness of intellectuals who never managed anything more than a careful wading along the shore. In short, the new school year had begun.
And as I now contemplate what caused the constriction in our throats and the nausea in our stomachs, it was not, in the first place the thought of school by itself. Of course, the outlook was not pleasant. We realized that we would once again spend six hours per day in a brick building, where the teaching staff was instructed to impart as many facts as possible, while the understanding of those facts and the independent thought about the information poured into us, was kept completely out of the curriculum. Such a perspective, that at the very least would stretch out over six years (ages 12-18), although hardly encouraging, could be faced with the realization that almost all grown-ups spent their day doing things they would probably rather not do, either.
But what caused anxiety and pain was the realization that that was not all. After such a daily grind (and six hours sitting and listening is a task I find too heavy, even for adults) the work started all over again. And not just for a while, but for three and four hours and in the periods before exams and promotion to the next grade the extra time could easily stretch until midnight, or later.
This concept, which still exists, is called “home work.” The result is that the “normal” work day of a teenager is around ten hours per day.
I do not hesitate to say with complete sincerity, that the work day for Middle and High School students is a national disgrace and at the same time I voice my amazement that nobody, no Secretary of Education, no Member of Congress, has ever spoken out against this unbearable situation.
This complete ignorance for what puberty needs, this nailing down to a desk in school and then to a table at home for young people, who in the formative years of their youth need freedom of movement and exercise, persists … year after year.
And what amazes me most of all is that the parents take this in stride. How many times have I heard a father say to a child who just wants to relax, work on a hobby, or wants to participate in a sports event: “You better make sure you have finished your home work first.” It is the slogan in every family.
Does the man realize that the child has already put in a full day’s work? How would the parent feel if his employer came by his home late in the evening to give him some extra work? He would, rightly, tell him to take a hike. But why do we find obvious for ourselves, what we deny our youth?
Why is it that all parties in the debate are fully occupied with shortening the work week for adults and that nobody stands up and demands this for a sector of our Society that hasn’t even achieved an 8-hour work day. Why do we look upon the “normal” work days from before 1918 with amazed horror and wonder that man survived? But why do we allow the predicament to continue for our own children? I’m just asking. I don’t ask in order to create disharmony in millions of households; I ask it to highlight a problem under which millions of defenseless children suffer every day. And I also ask, because nobody else asks.
Of course, this problem should be solved by people more knowledgeable than I. I gladly declare myself their inferior. But what do these education experts do? They discuss splinters, not the plank. It is not a matter of how much Greek to add, or how much Algebra to subtract. That comes under the heading of “fine tuning” and can be discussed later.
The primary concern is the abomination of “home work.” As long as this unfair and unrighteous condition is in existence, every other overhaul of the education system is valueless. We are left with students that remain uninterested, no matter what is offered, simply because it is too much and too overwhelming. All this talk about the quality of education overlooks the most obvious truth: there’s something wrong with the quantity.
What do we expect? That a youth will be interested in something that robs him of his childhood and leisure hours? That he remain enthusiastic when he sees Dad read the paper after dinner and then spend a few hours in front of the TV set, while the child still faces four, or five subjects that simply have to be done by the next morning.
Really! Only geniuses, or Saints can achieve that. And, I’m guessing here, your child probably does not fall into either of these categories. But we daily confront our children with a task that exceeds their powers by several magnitudes.
The school bell tolls, but for whom?
* Godfried Bomans, Ph.D, earned three Doctorate Degrees (Jurisprudence, Education and Netherlands Literature) and has written poetry and more than 200 books (fiction and non-fiction) and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. He has been invested as a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau.