Guest Blog­ger: Vic­tory in Toronto

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.

When I started to write this it was intended to be a “how to” guide for any­one who wanted to repli­cate what we have achieved in Toronto. But when I read it it seemed preachy.

I guess what I really want to com­mu­ni­cate is, just start. Every sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent, every school board is dif­fer­ent, and every com­mu­nity is dif­fer­ent, but just start somewhere.

Most of us con­vince our­selves that we are either to busy or lack the exper­tise to take on projects like these, and it paral­y­ses us into inaction.

Large orga­ni­za­tions count on this inac­tion to do want they want but, large orga­ni­za­tions react to pub­lic pres­sure, and school boards are no dif­fer­ent. But you have to start some­where, so just do it.

The vic­tory in Toronto was the result of many tal­ented and pas­sion­ate peo­ple putting in their time and effort to come to what has been described by some as one of the most inno­v­a­tive home­work poli­cies in North America.

I have been uncom­fort­able tak­ing any credit for the new pol­icy, but as some­one pointed out, I got the ball rolling. So, I guess I can take credit for that. I made a two minute pre­sen­ta­tion in front of a sub-committee of the Toronto Dis­trict School Board that started the process in motion. I started somewhere.

So I guess the ques­tion you have to ask your­self is, are your kids worth two min­utes of your time? Just Start!

Posted in category Guest Bloggers, Moms (and Dads) on a Mission, Success Stories on April 20, 2008 at 9:13 pm
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6 Comments on “Guest Blog­ger: Vic­tory in Toronto”

  1. FedUpMom says:

    Mr. Bruni — con­grat­u­la­tions! This is won­der­ful news.

    For those of us in the US, the big hur­dle is NCLB, which has every­one run­ning scared of any reform that they think (incor­rectly) might bring down the stan­dard­ized test scores.

    April 21st, 2008 at 7:34 am
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  2. Frank Bruni says:

    Thanks Fedup­Mom

    For those of you look­ing for inspi­ra­tion and sup­port. look no fur­ther than Sara Bennett’s book, “The Case Against Home­work”. It was my inspiration.

    Fur­ther, my cor­re­spon­dence with Sara has been, with­out a doubt a real boost, espe­cially when things were not going as I had hoped.

    Sara is my hero! — enough said.

    April 21st, 2008 at 7:53 am
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  3. Vera Goodman says:

    Thanks to Frank Bruni for tak­ing the time and effort to orga­nize for dis­cus­sion around the topic of exces­sive home­work. It is impor­tant for busy par­ents to become con­cerned about this inva­sion of fam­ily time.

    I am an edu­ca­tor in Cal­gary, Alberta who has writ­ten a book called Sim­ply Too Much Home­work! What Can We Do?

    We are orga­niz­ing par­ents in Cal­gary to form a Home­work Reform Move­ment that we hope will spread across Canada. Inter­ested par­ents can e-mail me at vera@readingwings.com or by phone at 1−800−411−9660

    May 4th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
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  4. wtf!!! says:

    aww im your hero thanks
    <3

    May 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
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  5. harry hindle says:

    I JUST GOT “IN PRAISE OF SLOW” AND AT FIRST GLANCE I SEE THAT MY EDUCATION, SOME 60 YEARS AGO INVOLVED INTERMIDABLE HOURS OF HOMEWORK. The teaach­ers that inter­ested me most made edu­ca­tion and their respec­tive sub­jects come alive because the asked me to inves­ti­gate for myself. They encour­aged me to look, ques­tion, search, look deeper, and I WAS NOT AFRAID TO SAY THAT I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE HOMEWORK QUESTION.
    One teacher asked me if I belonged to a library. I saiid “Whats a library?” He, later that evening took me to a nearby libraryen­dorsed me, showed me how to use the facil­i­ties and pointed me to the shelves con­tain­ing the boioks I needed to com­plete the home­work task. When HE MARKED THE HOMEWORK HE ASKED ME TO READ IT TO THE CLASS, com­ment­ing that it was the best paper he had ever recieved from any class in that sub­ject. THAT’S EDUCATION
    I later read “Deschool­ing soci­ety” by Ivan Illich which rein­forced my belief that tar­gets were a poor way of mea­sur­ing the “won­der fac­tor” in dis­cov­ery. The use­ful­ness of young­sters being coached in skills that could be used in life, being taught by par­ents, grand­par­ents, skilled and semi­skilled jour­ney­men, and women in the local com­mu­nity had great appeal to me.
    I have only in recent times begun to fathom the coom­puter I am using, and I have never before sent in a mes­sage, so for­give me if it is inap­pro­pri­ate but I SUBMIT IT ANYWAY.
    Harry.

    November 15th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
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  6. Leigh says:

    Thank you Frank Bruni for your work! My child attends an ele­men­tary school Toronto, and her teach­ers have always sup­ported out deci­sion to not com­plete home­work assign­ments, with the excep­tion of inde­pen­dent research projects that cap­ti­vated our child. Unfor­tu­nately for the teach­ers and prin­ci­pal, a seem­ing major­ity of par­ents demanded that their chil­dren be assigned MORE home­work. I hope that the new TDSB pol­icy will make it a bit eas­ier for the teach­ers to deal with the var­ied expec­ta­tions of parents.

    The parental demand for more ele­men­tary school home­work puz­zles me. On aver­age the par­ents at the school or well edu­cated, well paid pro­fes­sion­als who have a clear grasp of Cana­dian cul­ture and the eng­lish lan­guage who could eas­ily help their child learn at home. Why do they expect the school to be respon­si­ble for all aspects of their child’s edu­ca­tion? Is it not the par­ents’ respon­si­bil­ity to round out their child’s edu­ca­tion where they feel it is lack­ing? Sit­ting down and read­ing with your child, or hav­ing them count out the change at the store is far more valu­able to a 6 or 7 year old than hav­ing them per­form repet­i­tive, dull drill work on a pho­to­copied work sheet. And shouldn’t learn­ing instill excite­ment rather than dread and boredom?

    March 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
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