Homework: A Necessary Evil

Homework is an emotive issue and a word that can strike fear and terror into the hearts of all stake holders; students, parents and teachers.

I would like to state my philosophy on homework early in this post. I believe homework is a necessary evil. Students need it to establish positive work habits and to develop key study skills that will assist as their education lives grow.

I have had a reputation (mistakenly mind you) of a teacher who tends to deal out a great amount of homework. I stubbornly defend myself against these charges. I would love to not have to assign homework each week. This would mean less marking for me to have to do. I would however, be doing students a disservice if I did not give them homework. They would not be developing skills that are going to be essential for them in the future if they do not do homework.

The school I currently work at has a sound policy in place regarding homework that I believe is effective and works very well. For each year level a student is in multiply by 10 the amount of minutes that a student needs to spend on homework each night between Monday and Thursday. Therefore a student in Year 6 should do 60 minutes homework a night.

Our weekly homework schedule is distributed on a Monday and is generally due Friday. The work is a combination of spelling, maths, grammar and either a literature or Inquiry Studies activity. Students are also given weekly Chinese homework. The flexibility of this type of system allows for students to complete their work whenever they want during the week. If they have an extra-curricular activity on a particular afternoon and can’t get homework done, not a problem. As long as the work is handed in completed on a Friday that is all that matters. Of course we encourage effective time management and spacing the work out throughout the week but this is not always possible.

On top of this work is the expectation that students will read nightly. This is a massive non-negotiable in my mind. Every 2 week students have to report orally to the class on the book they have just completed.

I am a tyrant in ensuring homework gets completed. Students need to understand that there are commitments they must meet and homework is one of them. In my class students know that there will be ramifications if homework is not completed. I follow these consequences through and therefore have a very, very low rate of homework incompletion.

Over the past 18 months the homework issue has turned almost full circle for me. My 9 year old daughter once she reached Year 2 started receiving weekly homework. A touch of the tyrannical classroom teacher obsessed with homework completion attempted to raise its head. My wife quickly quelled this beast reminding me that I am Alexandra’s father, not teacher, and my role was to support and assist her with homework tasks.

Alexandra tends to have a somewhat casual attitude with her homework. She is of the belief that it will get done eventually. I am learning not to push her but to let her take responsibility for her own work. This approach seems to be going satisfactorily at this stage but am I still hoping to intervene at some stage in her academic life.