UK school bans homework

[calpurnia]

Thought you people might be interested in this...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_ne...396578,00.html

'Let me explain,' says Hazlewood, who has been headmaster of St John's School and Community College, a 1,550-pupil comprehensive for 11- to 16-year-olds for the past nine years.

'Traditional homework is boring, irrelevant and all too often the source of family conflict,' he says, crossing his legs at the ankles and propelling himself forward by jutting out his knees in opposite directions like a camping stool. 'I have spent the last four years re-engineering our school's curriculum for the 21st century and one thing I have become very much aware of is that homework is a 20th-century concept whose time has long gone.

'Pupils should not be sponging ideas off their teachers: they should be taught to have their own ideas'.

[Artisan]

I have taught in a school that disallowed homework. It made it nearly impossible to do anything other than very simple activities in class. You do not have time in a 45-mn class period to cover topics in-depth. You cannot complete a larger scale project or do research with only 45-mn class periods to work. (I teach high school.)

I am against homework "just because". I don't believe in busywork. But there are circumstances under which it is necessary.

[Bethla]

I think homework is a pain. My son brings home a couple of stupid dittos every night to do. I don't really see the point. I don't believe kids should have homework until they are in the upper grades such as high school. Even then I think it should be minimal.

[CharlieBrown]

My chilkdren attend a montessori elementary school and don't have homework. It is great!

[Greaseball]

Count me in! One of the requirements for a school I choose will be no homework - unless it is infrequent, and is interesting and meaningful. There is a difference between a science fair project and "do problems 1-10 on page 8."

One of the schools I looked at says they do not use textbooks. It is a public (free) alternative school. I don't know if they do other homework, but I've always thought textbooks and workbooks were lame too. If I had to learn from a book, I'd rather search the library for books that are right for me than to just use the book the school provides.

Our local Montessori does not assign homework, and those students still learn things, graduate, and get into college.

When I was in high school, we were assigned busywork that was not even graded. For example, we would have to do 50 math problems and then when the teacher called roll, we were to hold up the sheet of problems and that's how we would get credit for doing it - the teacher never went over it and marked the wrong answers or anything like that. So I tried an experiment - when my name was called, I would hold up a sheet of homework from another class, or a drawing, or a blank sheet of paper and I still got credit for it.

If they're going to give out fake assignments, I'm going to do fake work.