Modern Grade-School Pressures:
Too Much Homework, Too Little Freeplay
In 1981, kids ages 6 to 8 spent an average
of 9 minutes a day on homework in the US. By 1997, homework had nearly tripled to 25
minutes a night. At the same time, schools have been eliminating recess and creative
classes like art to make more time for kids to learn "the basics."
Obviously our more adventurous and divergent thinking kids are having a tough time with
this new way of doing things, not to mention their parents. I wonder if this is part
of the ADD equation. Active kids who could have "got by" twenty years ago
are hitting a brick wall of homework drills and more restrictive classrooms, and they are
acting out.
This is not a return to more traditional
times. Grade-school kids have never had this much homework in the history of the
US. In 1900 the Commissioner of Education testified before Congress against any homework
for children under age 12. Then, for 20 years, The Ladies' Home Journal instigated a
crusade against homework. Teachers were opposed to homework and the New York Times
editorialized against it. In 1930 the American Child Health Association classified
homework as a form of child labor. Some cities banned it. Sacramento
prohibited grade-school homework up until 1961.
There were two eras which changed
that. The first was the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in the midst of the
Cold War, which caused all sorts of competitive anxieties. A small amount of
homework became acceptable for young children. The second was the rise of the Asian
economies in the 1980's. Americans discovered that Japanese children were drilled
mercilessly and easily outscored Americans as a result, even as American's were graduating
from high school barely able to read.
Schools have adopted standardized testing
in order to raise standards, and kids naturally score higher when they do lots of
homework.
I wonder if Americans can set aside their
anxieties now that the Asian economy is suffering and the US economy is
booming. Filling young children with facts won't make them better
entrepreneurs or more inventive as adults. It doesn't teach them how to think.
It will make many of them hate learning, hate reading, hate school, and increase
stress levels for both children and their parents. I have a five year old that loves
to learn. He has been teaching himself to read using cassette-books from the library
and computer games. He also opens up his science experiment book and
methodically does the experiments in them. But when he brings school work home, it's
a major battle. I wish we could just skip the homework and let him learn what he
wants to learn while he's out of school. Because when he's out of school he is
learning! He knows far more dinosaur information than I will ever know, and he's
only five. His teacher may not be impressed with that, and it won't show up on a
standardized test, but perhaps he'll grow up to be a paleontologist, just as I became an
environmental scientist after making terrarium "ecosystems" out of little
plastic swimming pools as a kid.
One of the typical problems kids labeled
ADD have is doing their homework. They lose it, forget it, are sloppy, and generally
just have a tough time with it. If they didn't have any homework in the first place
it wouldn't be a problem, and one of the "symptoms" of ADD would
vanish. The adults of today didn't have much, if any, homework in grade
school. We survived and the country is doing fine.
"The mind is
not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited" - Plutarc
At the same time as homework is increasing, schools are
eliminating recess for young children. This flies in the face of studies, not to
mention common sense, that show young children learn much better after they have had
physical activity. Creative classes like art and music are also being cut to
make time for more reading and math. All of this is a reaction to our fear that
other countries are getting ahead us. Our we so insecure about ourselves that we
need to put our kids through such stress? Do people realize the anxiety which is
generated as kids struggle, and often fail, to sit still and to absorb all the information
which is being pushed into them at such a young age? It's almost like we're setting
up our more divergent thinking and creative kids for failure, and then blaming them when
they fail. Or rather, we're blaming their supposed brain defect.
I encourage parents to become active in their school system
and examine the way things are being run. If you think there's too much homework and
too little play time in the school's curriculum, then say so. And consider
homeschooling (that's what I'm doing).
Sources:
"Homework Bound" by Michael Winerip, senior staff
writer, The New York Times Magazine, January 3, 1999
