Oh, and I completely agree, it should not be expected of the parents to do the kid's homework. Yes, helping a little if the kid has a question. But I don't think the point of homework is for the parent to be that involved. In my opinion homework is so that a kid can recap on what has been learned at school and then for the teacher to see the next day how well the kids grasped the lesson. The homework might show that the lesson needs to be re-addressed.
And homework should not be marked!
Last edited by sunshine_sieben; January 11th, 2010 at 01:37 PM.
Okay I am going to throw this one out to you all....
As a primary school teacher we not only teach children to read, write, spell, think (well we try to), add, subtract, all that jazz, uomputers, sport, health, HSIE, I could go on and on......we also teach them about sex education, child protection, road safety, interpersonal skills and all the other things that parents have requested that teachers should now be responsible for educating about. I could go on and on about how crowded the curriculum is.
Homework shouldnt be given to teach a new skill, it should be there to consolidate the skill learnt at school.
Teachers are the main educator in a childs life but parents need to play a role as well. Teachers set homework to enhance the child's learning. Parents need to take responsibility for their childrens education as well.
I agreee that some of it is not necessary but I know at my school, homework has a purpose and is meaningful.
Apologies for this being a bit rambled. I totally get where you are all coming from (and I can tell you I dont enjoy marking homework either) but just wanted to point out the other side of the story.
i am a high school teacher. I don't set a lot of homework as i think most students should be busy doing things like playing sport, doing dance/drama after school.
I do ask that they all watch the news every day (first 5 minutes and the weather) or read the front pages of the herald/look at it and the weather report online-and we have regular discussions about things that appear that are relevant to our studies.
Any homework i set is usually as part of a unit of work and is an extension of what they are doing in class-ie as part of your assignment you need to find x y z, and can do this bit at home. I also see homework as separate from study for high school students.
Alibaby - For myself I am actually really looking forward to helping DS with homework. But my concern is that how many hours do we expect our children to be involved in active, concentrated study rather than absorbing activities that will have a learning aspect to it too? I want to DS to be balanced and happy, not just academically complete. If that makes sense?
I hate homework and I am a teacher, I also hate it as a mother!!
Trust me many teachers hate it as much as you guys do but we are almost forced to give it for the parents! So many parents whinge about not enough homework its not funny, I wish all of you guys were at my school when I taught the older grades!!!
I'm also a high school teacher and not only do we have parents asking for homework, the majority of our students are also seeing tutors/going to classes after school. These tutoring classes can last for hours.
It has actually got to the point that we have to set assessment tasks to be written within class time as we cannot trust that tutors are not helping/actually writing the tasks for the students.
I suppose my point is that some parents believe that additional work means better results in the HSC.
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