On the highly popular website, boingboing.net, Cory Doctorow gives a rave review to The Case Against Homework. He also discusses his own schooling:
I was lucky enough to attend excellent, publicly funded alternative schools through my educational career. We had homework, but we were also given a lot of time for free play, and a lot of free rein to choose our subjects and design our curriculum — I remember spending half of the fourth grade working my way through two or three math textbooks and the other half designing and writing a parody of MAD Magazine, to the exclusion of all other work. The next grade I followed the class for most of the semester, except when I didn’t. In high-school, I took a year off, moved to a little house in Mexico, and wrote stories. All of this stuff contributed more to my learning than any amount of worksheets and homework ever could have.
Coincidentally, I attended the same publicly funded alternative school–SEED in Toronto, Canada–albeit many years before Cory. And, like Cory, I attribute my nontraditional schooling (including the end of high school, college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and law school at Rutgers, Newark), to my love of learning. All of those schools allowed students to figure out what they wanted to study, find mentors for themselves, and engage in independent study. I only wish today’s students were allowed that same time to engage in pursuits of their own choosing.
Stop Homework 