Let’s consign school homework to the scrapheap

Teaching is something I absolutely love doing, but one of the least rewarding things about teaching and institutional rules, is homework. Teachers hate setting homework because it is ‘learning,’ that can’t be guided, and usually takes longer to mark than is justifiable. Parents hate homework because the kids always want help, and to be honest, most parents don’t know what to say so they make up stuff so as not to show their fallibility. Kids hate homework, but not only because there are always other things they would rather be doing. Schools persist with the illusion of homework, maybe so they have someone to blame when sufficient learning doesn’t happen. They blame teachers for not setting the ‘right’ homework, parents for not ‘helping’ properly with homework, and the kids for not ‘doing’ their homework. The teacher’s thoughts are probably, and theoretically quite correctly, along the lines of: Classroom teaching is supported by the teacher themselves, and the processes of teaching, known as the pedagogy. Teachers spend all of their education and training, all their workshops and professional development, all of their guidance, counselling and educational psychological understanding, based on the premise that they will be working with their pupils or students face to face, individually or in groups, offering their unique brand of dedicated guidance. Homework then, flies in the face of good practice. Heck, if we can’t teach what we need to in class, we’re probably not good teachers, and homework isn’t going to help that. In fact it’s going to hinder effective learning. The other significant teacher issues with homework tend to be in authenticity and marking. Often a teacher will be presented with homework that is far in excess, quality wise, of the pupil’s usual offerings, some even in different handwriting, yet provenance can be like a jealous mistress, and more trouble than she’s worth. Marking too can be fraught with danger as the marking parameters may not allow for effort or improvement, which can lead to disparities between pupils who compare their assignments and see different marks. One would hesitate then, to be critical of any teacher who marks only on the basis of completion and not quality, yet that’s not how it should be. Parents, while not all, and maybe not all the time, pack their kids off to school to learn ‘stuff.’ Not how to make a bed, cook and omelet or change a tyre. No, real school stuff like reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, the three ‘R’s,’ and a bit of computers, some English language, “even though Arabic has been good enough for ten generations of our family,” and how to get a job. They send their kids to school, to do schooling, and expect that when they come home, they can help around the house. Doing school stuff at home just doesn’t seem right, does it? Anyway, over the years pupils and students come to regard homework with scorn, and even contempt. The reality is that any concept of value in regards to homework value today has gone, and I for one will be happy to see it consigned to the scrapheap forever. The practice, revision, and process elements of process have been subverted by Whatsapp and Instagram, and the emphasis on answers and results make the pupil responses utterly meaningless and not only irrelevant to, but harmful to, the process of learning. I don’t have all of the answers, but I would much rather be adjacent to the student when they do need guidance and support, I want to be a part of their scaffolding, omni-present during their academic learning process, and let the home be learning for life, that they can later integrate with academia to provide sustainable ‘life-learning’ experiences. petersen_ray@hotmail.com