Welcome to the home blog of the London, Ontario Chapter 1335 of Phi Delta Kappa or PDK International for short. PDK London is a partnership of London and Region educators who are committed to the cause of publicly-funded education in Ontario.
This year our chapter is focusing on a topic that is replayed night after night around the kitchen tables of the nation – homework! We want to hear what you think about homework! Is there enough of it in your child’s bookbag? Going project crazy? Home lives out of balance? Or does homework have a rational and meaningful place in schooling?
Whether or not you are a PDK member, educator, parent, or student, we would like to hear your views. You don’t have to be from London! Please – this is a fair play zone: personal attacks are not welcome.
Guest writers will be posted, but this site features three regular bloggers:
John Stewart is a retired elementary and secondary school French and German teacher who has taught at UWO’s Faculty of Education. John has served Kappans for over two decades at the local and regional level.
Ian Bennett is an innovative elementary school administrator with 25 years of service. He is presently the principal of London’s Lester. B. Pearson School for the Arts. Ian is the past-president of PDK London.
John Mombourquette has 20 years of experience as a Catholic teacher, secondary principal, and special education administrator. John is the current president of PDK London.
You’ll find that John, Ian, and John may not always agree about homework, but they share a passionate belief that publicly-funded education matters!
Click on some of the categories on the sidebar and see what our bloggers are saying. Better yet, write your own comment below! What do you think about homework?
This is a fabulous way to generate good discussion on a key topic.
I hope that part of the consideration of “homework” will be an in-depth discussion of different types of homework for different learning styles and aims.
Often the discussion of “homework” omits this critical part of the whole issue.
I have 2 school age children and 2 school aged step children. The different schools that they attend have different views on homework and I think there needs to be some sort of structured balance. One sheet of homework would be great, spelling words, math sheet, reading journals are all great so that us parents can see what they are learning at school. Some of the children get so much homework that they are in tears and exhausted by bed time. One of the children needs a paid tutor to get everything done and one child gets no homework. It is difficult to plan for dinner and an evening of family time with so many different possible homework schedules. I’d like some every night, but not so much that it upsets the entire family.
Chris McQuarrie
The idea of homework stems from countries where students are in school for four to six hours at the most. Their classes are 45 minutes long, consisting mostly of a lecture, a short quiz or test. There are five to ten minute breaks between each class. The students there, in most part, are walkers and do not spend 45 minutes cooped up in a school bus as most kids do in Canada. They need homework to make up for the short time spent in school. The importance of sitting down to study before going off to play is strongly encouraged by teachers and expected by families.
In my daughter’s elementary school in Woodstock, Ontario most children from JK – 8 are shipped in by school bus which they often board shortly after 7 so they can be in class by 9, needless to say classes end at 3:20, by the time they got home it is close to 5pm. How can we expect a child to happily do homework after being cooped up for so long? What makes things worse is that the building has very few windows and a small playground. The recesses has to be shortened so that most of the day is spent in almost windowless fluorescent lit classrooms.
When my child got home from school I did everything possible to get her outside running around and playing and homework was last on my list. We did practice the times tables from time to time, however besides that I felt her physical and mental well being was a lot more important than additional school work.
The schooling ways of doing things today are not in line with the present and future. Homework is definitely not needed in this new paradim that is being created. The past does not exist and the present is the only moment that is important and it does not need to be filled with endless knowledge that will never be of any use to these children. Wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from the adventures of peoples creations and their love for life and enjoyment of doing what they decide to do and love doing; not what others force on them by their old ideas of how they were brought up and raised. It does not work anymore.
As a parent and a teacher, I resent homework because I value family time. When teachers, administators, Ministry officials, and politicians insert homework into my family time, then they assume incorrectly that they have the right to do so and that the benefits outweigh the costs. The facts of the matter are twofold; that the practice of sending students home with assigned homework has a great deal of evidence that it is an infringement and unnecessary burden on the child as well as on that child’s family, and that there is at best highly dubious evidence that the supposed academic benefits for the child assigned homework outweigh all the other costs. Unless and until strong evidence is presented that the benefits of specific assigned homework outweigh the actual costs imposed, I would appreciate those who pay lip service to the importance of family values to practice what they preach, stop assigning homework, and respect my family time.
My experience with my 8 yr old daughter in French Immersion Public school has left me with mixed feelings about homework. My daughter is having trouble learning to read. She has been through some testing but, the consensus is that she does not respond to phonics. So, now it seems to have been left up to me to teach her how to read. I’ve been given some resources and she is in a modified program and we have a tutor but, we spend more than 2 hours each night working on reading !! Luckily, my daughter wants to learn, however, ther are times when I’ve had enough as well !
It is my understanding that the rule of thumb is 10 min of homework per grade.ie) 10 for gr 1, 20min for gr 2 etc. it seems my 8 year old gr 2 gets at least 20 min daily in addition to reading in English as he struggles to read English due to attending a French Immersion. I agree with the high educational expectations of a French Immersion school however am concerned that we will not be able to keep up. i believe in good studying habits but don’t want my child to miss out on play or dislike school and this seems to be an increasing theme.
I am really on the fence with the whole debate. I am a parent to an 8 year old, and am fortunate that he is a very good student, so his homework comes very easy to him. I know that for many parents, this is not the case. I also know that after working a very long day, the idea of coming home and fighting with my child for an hour to get the homework done is a very unappealing thought. I do like the way our school handles homework. Each Monday, there are 3-4 pages of work put into his homework binder, and this work is not collected until Friday to be marked. That gives us the opportunity to choose which nights to do the homework as well as how much on any given night. What doesn’t get done tonight, gets done tomorrow. This is also a great time management excercise for my son as he knows that if he wants to skip out on his work, then he has to make that back up the next evening. That in itself is a valuable life lesson, and one that adults face everyday. If there is going to be a streamlined homework process, then I think that this one is the best for acheiving a healthy work-life balance for both parents and students.
My son is learning disabled and I am a widow. The amount of homework that came home with demands from teachers that it be done a certain way was a tremendous stress on the family. What the teacher felt he should be able to do in a few minutes would take hours and both he and I would be exhausted and in tears. When the work was not done to the teacher’s satisfaction he was often humiliated or chastised by the teachers. I felt like I was being graded as a parent. He had been identified, he had an IEP but one teacher in particular, when I went to the first interview admitted that she had not even read my son’s file. I could have guessed because the goals she had set for John for the year were unreasonable given his particular disability – almost the same thing as saying I am going to teach your blind child to see this year. The best teacher he ever had ran a highly structured class with a very well established routine. She gave almost no home work and all projects were done in the classroom as a group. When there was a test, she only put the items on that she said she would, and the test was at the time and on the day she said it would be. She was predictable and highly organized. They went on fewer trips, spent less time doing fund raising or selling stuff and her class room was set up without a lot of clutter and mess – she operated a learning environment that facilitated success and there was virtually no homeowrk. My son improved a full reading grade level in her class, moved from a modified program to simple accommodations and worked at his grade level in math in her class. It can be done – but it might mean a little more preparation and discipline on the part of the teacher. I for one grew sick and tired of feeling like I was being ordered around in my off time by the teacher – I enjoy reading to my kids, have always done crafts and taken them to see interesting things, I do not need the classroom teacher organizing how I spend my time with my children and I certainly do not feel they are in any way qualified to evaluate my parenting or have a right to add to my stress by making unreasonable demands on short notice – we had a project once that was assigned on a Friday and was due on the following Wednesday – I worked that weekend. We needed $50 worth of supplies only available at a craft store, there needed to be paint and glue and drying time, my child and I were up till 2am the night before it was due trying to put the thing together, then I had to get a friend to drive her to school because I had to get to work and the thing could not fall apart lest she lose marks – this is insanity and it is an unreasonable strain on families the final insult is when the teacher then takes marks off because the glue was messy, or you did not have a platform that was the correct size – Seriously do you think that the house the car the children the world does nothing but take care of projects for school? If the idea of building some rediculous model of a pyramid was to help me actively participate then you failed, because what it did was put us all under a lot of stress and hate the school system. Many times I thought I was homeschooling only homeschooling would ahve been less stressful because I would not have the constant feeling of harsh judgement being doled out by the almighty teacher who I knew would give my child a hard time if I failed to comply with those unreasonable demands. Furthermore a child growing up with a widowed mom does not have a daddy to cut the wood and help to build a fancy chair, he has to figure it out on his own – grade 6 I believe – most of the other children had help from their dad’s or had sat and watched daddy do enough things they were familiar with what needed to be done. The class was not one on woodworking, it was science! My son did not even want to go to school the day that project was due because the projects the others built with engineer dads and handymen at their side were structurally sound and looked professional. Yes the teacher marked accordingly but he was ashamed of his project even though he did it himself and it only served to remind him of the fact that his dad was dead. Again more stress, mor tears more agony for the child and family. Our experience with the elementary education system with the exception of a few classes for both my children has been stressful, humiliating, heart breaking, and I blame much of that on homework and what looks like teachers trying to ram their way through a curriculum while making time for contests, and tournaments, and field trips and middle age feasts and all the fun stuff which by the way…I can do at my own leisure at home with my childrena dnwould if I were not busy doing these idioptic projects and piles of homework – Please, get back to teaching in the classroom and give me back my family time. Stop doing all that fun stuff that is my right as a parent – your job is to go through the work in the classroom. It can be done, I have seen it done successfully but it requires discipline and structure – Thank you very much!!!!!
I believe that excess amounts of homework do nothing but infringe on important family time and place added stress on the child. Children already have so much going on, that don’t need the burden of hours of homework every night. Until there is evidence that this benefits the child, I say no homework, or very little…certainly in the elementary years.