REFLECTIVE MOMENTS Is there value in homework, or home work?

The parental mantra in my home was: homework first, fun later. Of course, that was 50 years ago and certainly times have changed, customs have evolved, and systems are light years ahead of what was normal back then — or so we’re told. But opinions are still changing on the value of homework and whether educators put too much emphasis on assignments outside the classroom that students are required to complete. Homework is back in the news this month after an educational institution in Montreal banned homework for all its students, joining educators in some other parts of Canada with the same rule. In other words, work at home in those jurisdictions is now confined to tasks assigned by the parents — laundry, dishes, dusting, garbage detail and related tasks. Those things are definitely home work as opposed to homework. The opinion that supported the ban on homework is that there is little or no academic value in assignments done at home. Instead of academic value there is stress associated with students having to dig out their books after school For Moose Jaw Express hours when they might also be working at a fast food outlet or heading to the ball park or gym for sports events or the studio for music or dance lessons. So much to do, so little time — with records showing that some students were spending at least six hours a week on homework by the age of 15. On the other hand, proponents of homework say such assignments promote self-discipline and are essential in developing work and study habits. If my memory is up to the task, homework was not an issue in my lower grade levels unless there was a special project that required some specific assistance from the parents. Grades 1-3 breezed by with all our work completed at school. New teachers in Grades 4-6 had other ideas and occasionally we had assignments to finish at home: an essay on a world topic, a family tree that sometimes befuddled even the parents, a book report that required a book to be read after-hours. One of the reasons in those days for homework was lack of resources in the classroom — only one set of encyclopedias to be shared among six grades in our single-room classroom. “What’s an encyclopedia?” some might ask. That was the early days version of Google and Wikipedia. Encyclopedias came in at least 12, sometimes 24 volumes, sold door-to-door by salesmen, similar to vacuum cleaners and Fuller Brush products. They were expensive sets of books, sold on the instalment plan, with a yearly update sold separately, to keep us in touch with changes in world matters. A family with a set of these books was considered advantaged. They were the lifeline to being informed or left in educational darkness. We had a set in our home and frequently we got requests from other families to share information contained therein. In other words, study sessions took place in our home because the parents had a rule about not loaning the books. Then came Grades 7-12, in a larger school with more students and less one-on-one time with the teachers, resulting in nightly and weekend homework. That raised the question at home and at teacher-parent interviews of why teachers were deflecting their duties to parents when the big bucks were being paid to the classroom instructors. Back in those days, we didn’t know we were being “stressed” by the volume of homework we had to complete. I was “stressed” when my parents, waiting until I graduated, dispersed my set of encyclopedias to family members without any consultation with me. To make matters worse, “my” books were taken to the trash by those family members who said the information was outdated and irrelevant. So, homework or no homework — that is the educational question of the day. Maybe Google will have the definitive answer. Joyce Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net