Stop Homework

Today’s guest blogger, Frank Bruni, the father of a 12-year-old seventh grader, lives in Toronto, Canada. Frank was a driving force in pushing the Toronto District School Board to review and revamp its homework policy. You can read Frank’s other guest blog entries here and here.

Just Start
by Frank Bruni

On April 16th 2008, Toronto Canada became one of the first jurisdictions in North America to pass a substantive homework reform policy.

The policy reduces the homework burden on middle school and high school students and all but eliminates homework in the elementary grades. In addition, homework will no longer be allowed during vacations.

The new policy mandates that teacher’s co-ordinate their efforts and that the homework that is sent home is “clearly articulated and carefully planned” and “require no additional teaching outside the classroom”.

This policy is a major breakthrough for those of us who have been advocating for homework reform.
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Today’s guest blogger is “FedUpMom”, the mother of a 10-year-old who attends a public school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. This is FedUpMom’s second post; you can read her first entry here.

More from FedUp Mom

In my last entry, I wrote:

1.) “Your daughter is lazy and stubborn; you are emotional and over-involved.” Absolutely right. And those are our good qualities!

I meant this as a joke, but like a lot of jokes, it contains a kernel of truth. When you bring any complaint to a school, the principal and teachers will immediately try to persuade you that it’s all your fault. In the past, I’ve tried to defuse the situation by admitting that I might be partly at fault, and my child might be partly at fault, but the school is also at fault. This has gone over like a lead balloon. Actually, the only thing I’ve ever said that’s gained me any traction at all was this gem:

“We’re going to apply to private schools.”

This is the best advice I can give to anyone struggling with their public school. Find a promising private school and go ahead and apply. First of all, you might get lucky and get your child in to the school; you might even get financial aid. Second, your public school will know about it immediately because you will need official transcripts from them. In our case, as soon as we started the applications process, the public school became totally accommodating. This is especially effective if your child has some desirable quality, for instance, good scores on standardized tests.

2.) “A lot of our parents want more homework!”

This used to slow me down, but increasingly, I see it as a red herring. The bottom line is that nothing a parent says makes the slightest difference in how a public school is run. Parents don’t make policy. While it may be true that some parents want more homework, the school has no way to know whether they’re in the majority, and they make no effort to find out. And if some parents want more homework and others want none, how about an official opt-out policy?
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Today’s guest blogger is “FedUpMom”, the mother of a 10-year-old who attends a public school in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

My Life as a Homework Protester
by FedUpMom

My life as a homework protester began last year, when my daughter was in 4th grade. The straw that broke the camel’s back was an assignment which came home every week: look up 10 spelling words in the dictionary and copy out the definitions. My daughter is a slow writer and this added up to an hour’s misery. I was furious. I went to her teacher and said, “the definitions homework takes my daughter forever; we’re not doing it.” He said, “Oh, if it takes her too long to write out, she can look it up on the internet and print it out. That’s what a lot of the kids do.” This might be quicker, but it’s still pointless, and I pity the tree that gets killed to provide the paper. I said, “if the goal is that my daughter should know the meaning of those words, we will discuss the words with her and make sure she knows the meaning. Then we’ll write a note telling you what we did”. He agreed. Right there my child’s homework headache was cut way down.

Next, I went to the principal to talk about homework overload. I wanted to send a survey to the parents, asking how they felt about homework: the principal rejected the idea on the grounds that it was “too adversarial”. (You want to see adversarial? Go visit some of those parents at 7:00 p.m. when they’re trying to get their kids through a mountain of homework.) Then she touched on several themes that would return every time I talked to her.

1.) “Maybe you can arrange for less homework now, but I’m warning you, when she gets to 5th grade, she’ll be required to do a lot of homework, and she needs to be prepared”. Now that my daughter is in 5th grade, Ms. Principal warns me about the heavy homework load in 6th grade. Is my daughter supposed to spend 4th grade learning how to handle 5th grade, 5th grade learning how to handle 6th grade, and so on forever? When does she learn something that’s worth learning for its own sake?

2.) “Your daughter should join the after-school homework club.” This is a cop-out. Kids have better things to do after school.

3.) “Your daughter is lazy and stubborn; you are emotional and over-involved.” Absolutely right. And those are our good qualities!

Today’s guest blogger, Kerry Dickinson, gives an update on her organizing efforts in Danville, California. Kerry is the mother of two middle school age boys, a former middle and high school teacher, a current part-time substitute teacher, and a stay at home mother. She, and Julie Kurtz, the mother of two teens, a Mental Health Director, and a licensed marriage and family therapist in the San Francisco East Bay as well as teacher at a local Junior College, have been actively working to change homework policy in their community. Kerry wrote about their initial organizing attempts in a November guest blog entry and she also wrote an op-ed in her local newspaper.

Update from Danville, California
by Kerry Dickinson

In November, 2007, Julie Kurtz and I took an informal, email survey about homework among parents in our school district and received 60 responses. The survey asked questions like, “What percent of your child’s homework do you feel is of a high quality and what percentage is of a low quality? How much time do your children spend on homework? How do you define meaningful homework?” We compiled the results and presented them to the Director of Instruction for Student Services in our school district in the San Ramon Valley. We also gave the Director of Instruction research articles on homework and other information related to homework.

Not long after, the Director of Instruction informed us that the SRVUSD (San Ramon Valley Unified School District) would be forming a homework task force to reevaluate the current homework policy. And, I was invited to participate on the task force. I accepted the invitation because Julie’s full-time job prevented her from participating. The task force includes 19 people – a sample of parents, teachers, & administrators. It has met several times since the beginning of the year and will continue to meet until May, most likely, when a new policy will be presented to the public and to the Board for approval.

In the meantime, one of the local newspapers, the Danville Weekly, has written two pieces on homework to keep this issue in the public’s eye. You can read them here and here.

Julie and I are very hopeful that the new policy will be better than the old one and that steps will be taken to insure implementation of the new policy, hopefully beginning next fall.

Today’s guest blogger, Frank Bruni, the father of a 12-year-old seventh grader, lives in Toronto, Canada. Frank, who has been quoted extensively in the Canadian press, has been a driving force in pushing the Toronto District School Board to review and revamp its homework policy.

A Father’s Epiphany and Homework Reform
by Frank Bruni

Last year, when I was sitting in the doctor’s office with my 11-year-old son, the doctor said, “he should get more exercise.” I thought to myself, “and when he would do that?”

It is hard to describe the impact that that day had on everything that would follow. I started to think about how our family manipulated our lives around homework. In fact, we rarely made any decisions about how we were going to spend our free time without taking homework into consideration. I remembered my own childhood and could not recall having as much homework as my son. He was missing being a kid. It bothered me - it bothered me a lot.

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Today’s guest blogger, Diane Hewlett-Lowrie, has worked for 20 years in a variety of environmental education positions in Scotland and the U.S. and she currently lives in New Jersey. She has a special interest in how children learn and believes in nurturing the development of the whole child. She and her husband have one son, age 6, and their experience with homework to date has been that it is pointless, causes stress, has no real merit and takes time away from much more valuable activities at home. This piece started as a letter to the Superintendent and evolved into this essay, which Diane has sent to the school Principal and her son’s first grade teacher, and is planning on sending to the Board of Education and a variety of magazines. Diane has been a guest blogger before. (If you would like to be a guest blogger, send me your proposed submission.)

We don’t have time to do that; You’ve got Homework!
by Diane Hewlett-Lowrie

We are a very active family. We take walks, cook, kayak, swim, visit friends, parks and museums and we read avidly – for pleasure. Imagine our shock as we began to realize that we would have to give up those “luxuries” because our son, at the grand old age of 6, has homework!

When our son started first grade, I asked the parent of a former first-grader what the homework was like. It took a half-hour, she said. A half-hour not counting the time needed to persuade her daughter to start the homework, or the time for the arguments to cease and the tears to stop. Yikes!

After a full day in school, Iain gets home by 5 o’clock. He needs at least ten hours sleep, so our bedtime routine – bath, reading books, singing songs and talking together – starts at 8 o’clock. This means that, on a weekday, we have three hours per day as a family. One of those hours is necessary for cooking, eating and cleaning up. This leaves about two hours for everything else. In those two hours, I would like him to play and develop skills other than reading, writing and arithmetic (after all, he has a full day at school for that). In those two hours, I would like him to simply enjoy being a child!

In those two hours, I would like to teach him how to cook his favorite meal and clean up afterwards. His Dad would like to show him how to hammer a nail, paint a door and play the guitar. We both want him to be able to ride his bike, explore his world, learn to swim and enjoy good, old-fashioned, free playtime with his friends. Which of these activities will be sacrificed when the homework burden increases to an hour a night? Two hours?
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Today’s guest blogger, Diane Hewlett-Lowrie is the mother of a six-year-old son. Diane works in education and interpretation with the New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry. She grew up in Scotland and believes in nurturing the development of the whole child. Her experience with homework to date has been that it is pointless, has no real merit and takes time away from much more valuable activities at home.

The Experts Tell Us
by Diane Hewlett-Lowrie

Eat healthy food.
Play a ball game with your family and friends.
Cook your own meals from scratch using fresh organic produce.
Don’t eat take-out food regularly; the trans-fats/sugar/carbohydrates, etc. will kill you.
Have sit-down family dinners at least four times a week; it helps communication and keeps your kids off drugs.
Allow your kids an hour every day for unstructured play and interaction with the natural world.
If you’re in first grade, get at least 11 hours of sleep so you can concentrate in school.
Cherish the time with your children while they are young. They grow up so fast.
Reduce stress in your family - enjoy some down time and relax together.
Get at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise every day.
Read to your child for 30 minutes every night.
Get a good night’s sleep.

I’m sorry; we don’t have time to do that, WE’VE GOT HOMEWORK!”

Today’s post is an op-ed published in the Contra Costa Times on November 15. It’s written by Kerry Dickinson, who was Monday’s’s guest blogger.

Homework is Culprit
by Kerry Dickinson

I was both thrilled and perplexed with the front page article “Healthy development tied to nature” on Nov. 8. I’m thrilled because our family loves being outdoors and we know that nature is good for the mind, body and soul. I’m delighted that this article promotes riding one’s bike or walking to local schools and stores. That’s great for the environment as well as for one’s own health.

I am perplexed, however, that the writer mentioned video games as one of the main reasons kids stay indoors. It’s true that after school activities such as video games, sports, or music lessons do take up a considerable amount of time, time that could be spent playing outdoors. But let’s not ignore the fact that children are spending one to three hours on homework after school each night and sometimes more on the weekends. Add homework to after school activities and it’s easy to see why children spend so little time outdoors.

As parents we have a choice about our children’s extracurricular activities. But we DON’T have a choice about the homework they are given. I would much rather send my boys outside to play after school than nag them about doing their homework.

Imagine a time when you came home from school and the first question out of your mother’s mouth was “Who are you going to play with today?” instead of, “How much homework do you have today?” Chances are, that time was 30 years ago when you were a kid.