Doc Meek

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I spent more than 30 years helping students at all levels overcome learning difficulties (including school problems and home problems). Except for senior high school level and beyond, homework added nothing and subtracting much from learning. Amazing, given that homework is an almost universal practice, even for students of very young ages.

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Homework often added to the learning problems, rather than relieving them. Sometimes I was reduced to writing a formal letter to the school waiving homework for troubled children. The school would sometimes counter by asking the parents to sign a waiver relieving the school of responsibility for the academic results for the child. They neededn’t have bothered, since the students inevitably did much better minus the burden of after-school and evening homework.

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The problem for students was that they would put in a trying day at school and then face a trying evening with homework, where parents were pushing for what they thought was best and the tired students dragged their feet. The constant battle over homework wore out the parents and the students.

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You would think it would be obvious to everyone that a struggling student in Grades 1-4, say, who faced an evening–every evening–of onerous homework would, in a sense, cease to have a real life. Children need more than school. They need sociality, sports, friendship and fun to grow as well-rounded persons.

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Amazingly, some studies show that elementary school students who do daily homework actually get poorer marks than those who confined their studies to school hours.

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Instead of homework wars, why not declare war on homework? The students benefit, the parents benefit, and the teachers benefit.

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This is a win-win-win strategy!

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