Teachers call for homework ban

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Choccy's picture
Choccy
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Mar 11 2008 00:15
Teachers call for homework ban

Teachers want homework to be abolished for primary school age children.
A motion for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference will also seek a Royal Commission to examine why children are unhappy at school.

BBC

They want to "scrap compulsory homework for primary-aged children and to limit the amount of time allocated to compulsory homework at secondary level".
Homework makes kids hate school, and places further strain on teachers - completely pointless artifact. can't see them actually banning it though.

revol68's picture
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Mar 11 2008 00:16

good stuff.

too late for my ass but still.

Choccy's picture
Choccy
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Mar 11 2008 00:25

me too, i wasted lots of my youth actually bothering to do it sad

the button's picture
the button
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Mar 11 2008 00:37

Never had homework at primary school. And I didn't have to do coursework at secondary school. There's a lot to be said for being old.

Choccy's picture
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Mar 11 2008 00:53

jesus I had loads of homework all the time
spellings, sums, pictures, then 11+ practice tests in primary school

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Mar 11 2008 00:54

I can't remember having homework in Primary, except for being given books to take home.
Never did much homework in secondary school either. I see the advantage of offering it but most of it is useless because setting decent homework would require teachers to work a week half as long to allow them to mark it and offer decent feedback. My students we discuss homework answers as a group because I don't have time to mark 150 pieces of homework a week and I certainly don't have enough time to explain to the students why they've got a particular mark.

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Mar 11 2008 01:09

Fuck I got stung in school!!!
I had homework everyday pretty much from p3/4 onwards a minimum of one per week per subject in secondary. I alwasy had fucking spellings and sums. And if you did the 11+ like we did you spent most of p6/7 shitting yourself and doing practice tests - well, I did sad

Marking homework is a pain in the ass. Standardised homework sheets and photocopied pages although absolutely shit in any qualitative sense are simply the only way a teacher can dish out homework and mark it to keep-up with department requirements (usually 1hr per week of homework per subject). Kids learn NOTHING from it but it's easy to photocopy and less-time consuming to mark.

I remember we periodically had to go through class books to check students were keeping-up and make sure wer wrote comments. My comments were given to inspectors as an example of "outstanding practice" - all I wrote was shit like "don't just describe what the lungs do - say how they do it", " don't just describe what a printer does, say how it does it" etc etc etc - outstanding practice my arse. Apparently those comments "really help students"
Of course the best comments were the really daft ones like:
"underline titles"
"use a ruler"
"label diagrams" (actually that one's fair enough)

jef costello's picture
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Mar 11 2008 01:53

We don't have the 11 plus. I think I took SATS at 11 but I mostly ignored stuff like that.

Choccy's picture
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Mar 11 2008 09:06

11+ was shite. I'd take all the homework in the world not to have to do that again.

revol68's picture
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Mar 11 2008 10:50

11+ was a piece of piss, though our teacher never put much pressure on us, infact you could almost say he didn't give a fuck. We did two practice papers in school in the run up to it and that was pretty much it.

Seriously though exams are far better than coursework and homework, it's just there infront of you for an hour or so, you ain;t going anywhere else so you just do it, coursework and homework just don't get done.

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Mar 11 2008 11:40

Homework is mostly shit, but there's a lot to be said for coursework, as long as it's spread out over the year. It's completely unfair to kids to judge their ability on their performance on one particular day. Saying that, I'd like to see a lot less external assessment, exam boards are such a pain in the arse.

The 11+ was optional for us, I never did it, seemed like a total waste of time.

Deezer
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Mar 11 2008 11:45

It would be fuckin brilliant for my kids and me and their ma if they got rid of homework for primary school kids. The whole thing is a fucking nightmare and turns the hour after school into a fuckin battle to get the kids to sit down and do their homework most nights.

Here, and my kids get far more homework than is in those guidelines for English schools mentioned in the article.

Victory to the ATL!

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Mar 11 2008 12:31

My girlfriend was telling me about someone on her team the other day, who had to take her 5 year old along to a parents evening and sign an agreement about targets. Five year olds signing what are effectively Appraisal targets. And they wonder why kids are so completely screwed up!

I don't remember any homework at primary. At junior I remember having to write out my times tables on the weekends because I had failed yet another test. Got a bit at senior but no way was it as much as they seem to get now.

Didn't the Bolsheviks ban homework at one point?

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Mar 11 2008 12:51
revol68 wrote:
11+ was a piece of piss, though our teacher never put much pressure on us, infact you could almost say he didn't give a fuck. We did two practice papers in school in the run up to it and that was pretty much it.

Seriously though exams are far better than coursework and homework, it's just there infront of you for an hour or so, you ain;t going anywhere else so you just do it, coursework and homework just don't get done.

Oh i fuckin breezed through it but we had a lot of pressure on us and I watched mates and my wee bro crushed because they didn't get it

petey
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Mar 11 2008 13:36
Demogorgon303 wrote:
Didn't the Bolsheviks ban homework at one point?

hmm ... which way does that cut ...

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Mar 11 2008 14:41

I never did it anyway....which meant I had to sit in dread and sweat every maths lesson in case I was actually asked a question.

Choccy's picture
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Mar 11 2008 14:43
guydebordisdead wrote:
Banning homework is fucking genius. It is such a bizarre thing to get, even at secondary level most of it is just given out because teachers are expected to give homework.

Yep that's why it's usually a rushed photocopy sheet.

petey
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Mar 11 2008 15:39

i just talked to the math teacher across the hall (your man is from wicklow, btw), and he showed me an article giving 6 justifications for homework (in Journal of Educational Administration 35.4 (1997) 348 - 370, in case you're in the mood for 22 pages of educationese) (i can find no link on the web). they are:

1: "improves pupil work habits"
2: "assists in knowledge acquisition"
3: "builds student self-confidence and a better feeling about school work"
4: "improves teachers' instructional practices"
5: "increases parental involvement"
6: "sets a positive school tone and increases the credibility of the educational programme in the community"

discuss. i'll start.
i assign hw for reason 2 (my hw either reviews what was taught in class or prepares for something i'm going to introduce, though actually i rarely give it for the second of those reasons) or reason 4 (to see if i'm getting across - not the same thing as #2).

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Mar 11 2008 18:21

damn i woulda got all A's in school if there was no homework, as it was it was always a borderline C. I think my only A in a math class was the one with 'optional homework', because i always got 98% on the tests but could never be arsed to do homework.

In fact it made me less motivated about school, because i would often skip to avoid having to tell the teachers that i hadn't done the homework.

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Mar 11 2008 19:20
newyawka wrote:
2: "assists in knowledge acquisition"

I sympathise with that in principal but in effect I find very little homework did this, as both student and teacher. Most homeworks assigned are thos ethat are easy to mark (i.e. box ticking type shit, or just simple answers) that don't really test any sort of proper deep knowledge of a subjkect but rather the ability to rhyme oif things done by rote-learning or copied.

Coursework, in agreement with madashell, certainly has a place and can genuinely assist in knowledge-acquisition (helps if you're interested though). My favourite courseworks I ever did were one on progression at gcse maths, and a biology a-level one. Oh and I did a sweet group project on the history of heavy-metal when I was 14 which was amazing - we even made a mixtape with Carcass and Morbid Angel on it!!! smile

While I was good at exams cos I was a crammer, still am, I actually retained far far more from coursework than I ever did from cramming for exams. The exam format is perfect for some people - it just doesn't test real knowledge but fits in perfectly with the rediculous amount of assessment targets schools and colleges have to force on students.

petey
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Mar 11 2008 19:57
xConorx wrote:
newyawka wrote:
2: "assists in knowledge acquisition"

I sympathise with that in principal but in effect I find very little homework did this, as both student and teacher. Most homeworks assigned are thos ethat are easy to mark (i.e. box ticking type shit, or just simple answers) .

why not just use a scantron, lazyass grin
i teach language and we give stuff that requires close correction, but then i have smallish classes.

actually #4 is really important. if i teach X and then set an assignment and the smart ones blow it, it's probably me

Pepe
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Mar 11 2008 23:52

I still get really angry when I think about how my schools told us that it was really important to do well in our SATs.

Quote:
5: "increases parental involvement"

does this mean getting your parents to do it?

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Mar 12 2008 11:38
Jess wrote:
I still get really angry when I think about how my schools told us that it was really important to do well in our SATs.
Quote:
5: "increases parental involvement"

does this mean getting your parents to do it?

Fuckin' A. I scored near perfect and i'm still in junior college.

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Mar 12 2008 20:51
Jess wrote:
I still get really angry when I think about how my schools told us that it was really important to do well in our SATs.
Quote:
5: "increases parental involvement"

does this mean getting your parents to do it?

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my dad for my O-level in maths. If they'd let him sit the exam for me, I might not have got a C. sad

Carousel
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Mar 12 2008 21:07
Quote:
It's completely unfair to kids to judge their ability on their performance on one particular day.

Unfair to compensate mediocrity though "continuous assessment" more like. Probably best to let people pick and choose, so the supergeniuses can attain high scores with minimum effort.

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Mar 13 2008 00:28

Thats crazy, i didn;t even know primary schools had any form of regular homework. I can't see any possible benefit that it would have at primary school except perhaps in modern langauges, but our education system is still too backwards for kids to be even learning french in primary schools.

Reducing the amount of homework given in secondary school kinda makes sense, but i always thought the main problem with homework was that you ended gettng homework for every subject in the week, this being more a problem with how the management structure in a school operates and/or lack of communication between departments than with the nature of homework itself. Hence why you get 4 hours worth spread over 5 odd pieces of work that all seem small and petty so you don;t spend any time doing them. Whereas if you had to spend 2 hours doing one piece which the teacher had more time to plan for, you;d probably put more effort into it and produce a much better standard of work.

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Mar 13 2008 01:51

See, I was at infants school in the mid-to-late 70s -- the high point of hippy shit educational theory. School was fucking sweet: we played with sand & water for the first couple of years while we were finding ourselves. If my dad hadn't taught me to read by sitting me on his knee & reading the local paper to me, I would probably be illiterate. smile

Deezer
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Mar 13 2008 17:23

ffs we taught all our kids to read before they went to primary school you illiterate bumkin wink