Stop Homework

Real­iz­ing that high school stu­dents need a break from school work over the sum­mer, three Boston area high schools have severely lim­ited the amount of work teach­ers can assign, accord­ing to an arti­cle in The Boston Globe, Sum­mer plans: Fewer pen­cils, fewer books.

For the sec­ond sum­mer in a row, teach­ers at Need­ham High aren’t allowed to assign sum­mer home­work in most classes and even the tra­di­tional Eng­lish read­ing require­ment has been broad­ened so that stu­dents have much greater choice in what they read. At neigh­bor­ing West­wood and Weston High Schools, writ­ten assign­ments and his­tory assign­ments have been sig­nif­i­cantly reduced.

Accord­ing to the Globe, a spokesper­son for the Mass­a­chu­setts Sec­ondary School Admin­is­tra­tors’ Asso­ci­a­tion who infor­mally sur­veyed prin­ci­pals stated, “Teach­ers were not con­sult­ing each other about how much home­work they were giv­ing, and admin­is­tra­tors did not ques­tion the prac­tice until par­ents pushed back.”

While doing research for The Case Against Home­work, I inter­viewed the prin­ci­pal of Need­ham High, Paul Richards. He’s an edu­ca­tor who’s con­cerned about the amount of stress today’s stu­dents face, he’s in a posi­tion to do some­thing about it, and he is. But we par­ents shouldn’t wait for sym­pa­thetic admin­is­tra­tors to see the light. It’s up to us to ques­tion the prac­tice of over­load­ing our chil­dren and to push for change.

Posted in category Success Stories on July 31, 2006 at 11:02 am
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