More on homework

[TQNELSON@aol.com]

The arguments on homework continue.
 
 
Del  Nelson

When "We the people...."
Have been replaced by profits, money,  and greed
It is time to start over!

 
 (From the Sept 12 Washington Post):
 
 
 
As Homework Grows, So Do Arguments Against It

By _Valerie Strauss_ (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/valerie
+strauss/) 
Washington  Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; Page A04  
 
The nation's best-known researcher on homework  has taken a new  look at the 
subject, and here is what Duke University professor Harris Cooper  has to say: 
Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework -- except  
reading and some basic skills practice -- and yet schools require more than  
ever.      



High school students studying until dawn probably are wasting their time  
because there is no academic benefit after two hours a night; for  
middle-schoolers, 1 1/2 hours. 
And what's perhaps more important, he said, is that most teachers get little  
or no training on how to create homework assignments that advance learning. 
The controversy over homework that has raged for more than a century in U.S.  
education is reheating with new research by educators and authors about  
homework's purpose and design. 
No one has gone as far as the American Child Health Association did in the  
1930s, when it pinned homework and child labor as leading killers of children  
who contracted tuberculosis and heart disease. But the arguments seem to get  
louder with each new school year: There is too much homework or too little;  
assignments are too boring or overreaching; parents are too involved or  
negligent. 
"What should homework be?" asked veteran educator Dorothy Rich, founder of  
the nonprofit Home and School Institute. "In the biggest parameter, it ought to 
 help kids make better sense of the world. Too often, it just doesn't." 
In the nation's classrooms, teachers say they work hard to conform to school  
board policies and parent demands that do not always match what they think is 
 the best thing for children. 
Yet teachers themselves don't uniformly agree on something as basic as the  
purpose of homework (reviewing vs. learning new concepts), much less design or  
amount or even whether it should be graded. And the result can be 
inconsistency  in assignments and confusion for students. 
That is part of the reason some educators and authors are making new cases  
for the elimination of homework entirely, including in the new book "The  
Homework Myth," by Alfie Kohn. 
Kohn points to family conflict, stress and Cooper's research as reasons for  
giving kids other things to do to develop their minds and bodies after school  
besides homework. 
"I am always fascinated when research says one thing and we are all rushing  
in the other direction," Kohn said. 
For those who can access the web site for the article it is: 
_http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100908.html?sub=AR_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR200609110090
8.html?sub=AR)