No More Homework?

I have started reading a book by Alfie Kohn entitled “The Homework Myth.” Admittedly, Kohn can be deliberately provocative in his writing, but you definitely get the idea that it is because he is passionate about what he writes about and not merely to get a rise out of someone. The premise for the book, as I see it, is simple. Homework is bad. I have only read the first three chapters, but he makes it pretty clear.

Yet he does not just state his position. No, he cites study after study to support his position. What? Kids need to practice at home? He cites research that indicates that there is little or no data to support long-term learning goals being served by homework. You say that homework is the only way they will learning something? Based on what, Kohn asks? The only correlation (not causation for the statisticians out there) he cites is between grades and the amount of homework done. What makes this a somewhat spurious correlation is that the grades are assigned by the teacher who assigned the homework in the first place! And on and on.

As a teacher myself I have always had a “homework component” to my grade (although I am giving serious thought to this as I read Kohn’s book). It stands to reason that students who do the homework in my class generally get better overall grades. Even students who perform the same on a test – a measure that should tell me who understands the concepts I want them to – will end with different grades based on who did more homework. Is this fair? If my assessment of how well my students can perform on the test indicates their level of understanding, shouldn’t this be what my grade is based on? What if one student needs to do 5 minutes of homework I assign to do well on the test while another needs 40 minutes? Should I arbitrarily assign 40 minutes of homework to everyone… and then grade them down if they only need to do a few of the problems to understand the concept?

I am curious to find out more about his ideas, and go on to read other books about homework as well. We assign homework in schools often because it is expected, it is what we did, or some nebulous reason like it “builds character.” How often do we really ask ourselves why we assign homework? More importantly, how often do consider the research (or attempt some of our own) when trying to answer it.

What is education for?

I have been having a conversation on another blog about education. (I am assuming the poster is a “he” for the sake of clarity.) His philosophy is that all schools, as they are currently configured, are what he calls “government schools” and, as such, are inherently bad. Regardless of what happens at each school he feels that anyone working at such schools are contributing to a bad system.

His solution? Parents are solely responsible for educating their children because they alone can decide what is best for their children. He wants the government to have no part in education, as they are little more than indoctrination camps. I got the impression that he would be open to schools that have no outside regulations put on them that parents were free to choose from, but that the responsibility is solely that of the parents.

I disagreed with his stance, although as a teacher he has lumped me in with all those who think they know what is best for everyone else, so my arguments made little headway. I do agree with some of his points, as I have seen classrooms and teachers that seem dedicated to little more than training students to parrot back what they are taught. I have always felt that it is both important to understand why we are learning something and how it can be applied. At the same time, I do feel there are certain facts that need to be known in order to make these applications.

For instance, knowing how to add in and of itself is not that tremendous. However, if you can’t add then there are many things you will find yourself unable to do well, from buying groceries, to balancing your checking account, to calculating how much paint you need to repaint your house. At the same time, you may understand what you need to do in order to complete these applications, but without the skill of addition (and many other math topics) you will be unlikely to accurately solve your problem.

The poster I conversed with, however, would return all education to parents on the grounds that they will take up the responsibility of educating their children. It does not matter if they are unwilling or unable to do so. In fact, my stating that opinion apparently shows my contempt for all parents everywhere. My feelings on this I will probably go into more detail at a later time.

Education should be about preparing students to be able to deal with an everchanging world. Problem solving and research gathering should be two of the most important skills that schools teach. Yes, it is important to have a core curriculum if only to be able to communicate with others in a meaningful way (ala E.D. Hirsch’s book “Cultural Literacy”) and so that students are exposed to enough variety to help them determine what is of interest to them and what is not. The problem is, and always will be, this type of education is a lot easier to perform then focusing on the two skills I mentioned. Additionally, teachers generally choose their profession because either they found success in the system as it is, or later came to value the system after their own struggles. Either way does not breed a group of professionals ready to change “what works” in their eyes.

Welcome to my blog…

Lately I have found myself reading more and more blogs, many are religion topics, often by atheists. In addition I peruse various mathematical blogs, some political blogs, and a few others. I find that I am attracted to the medium, and particularly the way to get feedback from numerous people on a topic you write about. I have found myself fairly active on one such blog. It has been fun to have a give and take argument with people. Doing it entirely online, through writing alone, is interesting and intriguing in a different way than having a face to face conversation.

Perhaps blogging is a throwback to the days when great minds (of which I am not suggesting for a moment I belong to) would have written correspondance on a various topics. However, with the current technology, this correspondance can now be carried on with many voices participating as well as occurring at a much faster pace. What would have taken months can now happen in days.

Of course the plus side to taking months is that more thought could potentially be put into each response. Yet, I think the many voices can more than make up for this.

I am not entirely certain where I intend to go with this blog. My interests are teaching, teaching math, math, religion – particularly Buddhism, although I am curious about paganism, atheism (for the atheists out there, I apologize for lumping you in with the religions!), and Catholicism – puzzles, the state of our country… oh, I guess I can say I have a lot of interests. For now, this blog will probably remain somewhat eclectic. We’ll see…