Stop Homework

Com­ing up on Mon­day.… I’ll be a guest on Dr. Dan Gottlieb’s radio show, Voices in the Fam­ily at 12 noon EST on WHYY, Philadelphia’s NPR-affiliate. In 2006, I posted a few pieces that Dr. Got­tlieb had writ­ten for the Philadel­phia Inquirer and I’m a big fan of every­thing he’s writ­ten. I can’t wait to get to talk to him in per­son. If you get a chance, tune in.

The Amer­i­can Sports Insti­tute is cre­at­ing a new, ground-breaking, wellness-based school (The Arete School) in Marin County, Cal­i­for­nia, and, to sup­port its efforts, there will be an all-day stream­ing telethon on the inter­net on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 28. The event will fea­ture lead­ing sports fig­ures and edu­ca­tors dis­cussing top­ics rang­ing from school reform to the keys to ath­letic and aca­d­e­mic success.

“The prob­lems plagu­ing America’s public-school sys­tem are well doc­u­mented, yet solu­tions remain frus­trat­ingly elu­sive,” says Dr. Joel Kirsch, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Sports Insti­tute. “Despite a pow­er­ful, nat­ural desire to learn inher­ent in all chil­dren, the vast major­ity of our nation’s stu­dents are dis­en­gaged in their aca­d­e­mic classes. In addi­tion, too many stu­dents are unhealthy and unfit, with child­hood over­weight and obe­sity at near-crises lev­els. We’ve devel­oped a new way for edu­ca­tors to con­nect with stu­dents that is being val­i­dated by cur­rent research, and is grounded in the per­spec­tives of great fig­ures through­out his­tory and in ancient Greek cul­ture. This learn­ing process has pos­i­tively impacted stu­dents from all major demo­graphic groups.”

Most of the guests, includ­ing me, are inter­viewed for 20 – 30 minute seg­ments. Some of the other edu­ca­tors and edu­ca­tion guests are William Damon and Denise Pope of Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, Charles Hill­man of the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois, Fer­nando Gómez-Pinilla of UCLA, John Ratey of Har­vard, Alex Fil­ip­penko and Stephen Miller of UC Berke­ley, David Sher­noff of North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity, Brian Storts of the San Fran­cisco Art Insti­tute, Cal­i­for­nia State Sen­a­tor Tom Tor­lak­son, Mar­shall Smith of The William and Flora Hewlett Foun­da­tion, three moms rep­re­sent­ing Val­lecito Ele­men­tary School in San Rafael, Cal­i­for­nia, three advanced-placement stu­dents and their par­ents rep­re­sent­ing Tamal­pais High School in Mill Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, three San Fran­cisco Bay Area stu­dents, and futur­ist Alvin Tof­fler, author of Future Shock and The Third Wave.

The Web-a-Thon will be web­cast begin­ning 8:00 a.m., Pacific Stan­dard Time, on Feb­ru­ary 28, via the fol­low­ing web­site addresses:

KGO-TV: abc7news​.com
KGO-Radio: kgoam810​.com
San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle: sfgate​.com

All of the seg­ments are archived here.

In the last two weeks, Stan Gold­berg, a pod­caster from the Bay Area who is bet­ter known as Senior Dad has inter­viewed two par­ents involved in try­ing to change home­work pol­icy in their com­mu­ni­ties, Amanda Cock­shutt and Tracy Mason.

Amanda, who wrote a guest blog entry last June, and whose let­ter to a local news­pa­per I posted last May, is an incred­i­bly artic­u­late speaker. It’s worth tak­ing the time to lis­ten to her inter­view. She talks elo­quently about the prob­lems with home­work, how she has approached the school, and some of the prac­tices that have been changed as a result of her advocacy.

Recently, I’ve been fol­low­ing Tracy’s orga­niz­ing efforts in San Marino, Cal­i­for­nia, here and here. You can hear Tracy, who is also very artic­u­late, speak for her­self here.

Last year, Senior Dad did a four-part series on home­work, where he inter­viewed Alfie Kohn, John Buell, Har­ris Cooper, and me. And here’s a very recent inter­view I did with Christina Lem­mey of won­der years radio. Christina is the mother of 2 girls, ages 10 and 5, and their school expe­ri­ences have formed the basis for her podcast.

Yes­ter­day, the CBS Nightly News picked up the story of the home­work ban at The Oak Knoll Ele­men­tary School in Menlo Park, Cal­i­for­nia, and asked whether Oak Knoll is at the fore­front of a home­work rev­o­lu­tion. I hope so. After a short ad, you can watch the story here.

Since The Case Against Home­work came out in late August, the book has been dis­cussed in dozens of news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, and I’ve been inter­viewed count­less times for radio, TV, and print media. The recep­tion from audi­ences every­where has been fan­tas­tic. After almost every radio show, the hosts have told me they’ve received more calls than on any other recent show.

Sev­eral weeks ago, I was invited to my home­town, Toronto, Canada, for a day of media appear­ances. I had a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with Steve Paikin, the host of The Agenda on TVOntario.You can watch our 15-minute con­ver­sa­tion of Octo­ber 23, 2006, here:

Also sev­eral weeks ago, I was inter­viewed by Stan Gold­berg from San Fran­cisco, Cal­i­for­nia, who hosts a pod­cast called Sr. Dad. He inter­viewed Har­ris Cooper, Alfie Kohn, John Buell, and me in sep­a­rate, very lengthy inter­views. You can lis­ten to them here.

And, if you want to read any of the media cov­er­age of the book, just google “Case Against Home­work” (in quo­ta­tion marks). You’ll see that this book (and Alfie Kohn’s The Home­work Myth) is shin­ing a spot­light on a wide­spread problem.

Many peo­ple have told me that they didn’t get a chance to see my co-author and me on the Today Show. So, since you asked, here’s the clip of our appear­ance on the Today Show on August 31, 2006: