Less Homework Means More Learning

In today’s world of homework, classes, and sports, when do our kids get a chance to just be? Perhaps even more importantly, when do they have a chance to pursue their own interests without adult intervention or control?

Vernon Barford junior high school, in Edmonton, Canada, changed its policies in 2006, and decided to give its students less homework. As a result, tests scores improved. So did morale.

The concept of our schools assigning too much homework is not new. In 1999, Time Magazine’s cover declared, “Too Much Homework!”, subtitled with, “How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” A surprisingly outspoken piece, The Homework Ate My Family, calls parents to arms in the homework war, encouraging them to allow their children to have a stress-free childhood.

A sprinkling of schools and parents might have learned from those who have been warning us against the alluring draw of homework, but there is still a pervasive cultural bias towards filling our children’s time with it. According to the Vancouver Sun article, a parent complained about the new Barford Vernon homework policy, that his son “still had an hour in the evening with nothing to do.” When did having an hour of “nothing to do” become a bad thing?

The Vancouver Sun also profiles Carl Honore’s new book Under Pressure—Rescuing Childhood From the Culture of Hyper-Parenting, where he discusses the role of homework and other time filling activities as commentary on our achievement-oriented and hyper-scrutinizing parenting culture of today.

If you are interested in a deeper discussion of homework specifically, another book by Alfie Kohn, called The Homework Myth, discusses the disadvantage to homework and why it is has become so important to us in today’s educational atmosphere.

In a world where more=more, it’s refreshing to see attempts at moderation. It’ll be interesting to see if this becomes a trend.

Chelsea Link, 18, Homeschooled, Accepted to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, U of Chicago, and Northwestern

Chelsea Link says this about her extraordinary, yet relaxed, life: “I think I’ve had a pretty normal high school experience . . . just without the high school.”

Another interesting quote by Christopher Watson, admissions dean at Northwestern, “We haven’t changed the way we review applications, but the way home-schoolers are submitting applications has changed,” he said. “They’ve become very good at taking out the question marks.”

Perhaps it’s a combination of the two? Northwestern may not have changed it’s admissions process, but other universities have.

Congratulations Chelsea! Reading science magazines and playing music is a fine way to go through childhood.

Not All Homeschoolers Support Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee

Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee have been in the news quite a bit, pandering appealing to homeschoolers. Now, I am not uniformly against either candidate. They do have some interesting perspectives. However, one thing I know for sure, they are not “the homeschoolers’ candidate”. There is no such thing. Period.

Homeschoolers are not a unified front politically. We don’t even agree even on fundamental educational ideas.

Doc is for Hillary. She made a button. She encourages everyone to make their own button. Show the world that homeschoolers aren’t all the same.

That’s an important lesson for anyone new to homeschooling - even if it our local groups indicate otherwise, we are not homogeneous. We are an incredibly diverse group of people. I was surprised in the beginning. And sometimes I’m still surprised by the variety in opinions, perspectives and practices of our nation’s and world’s homeschoolers.

So, it’s not at all surprising to me that not every homeschooler is in support of Paul and Huckabee. In fact, I would be disappointed if we all agreed on one candidate, simply because he allegedly is taking the homeschoolers’ side. There’s a lot to think about. A lot more than whether or not the presidential candidate wants to give me and 1% of other Americans a tax cut, or even recognition. There’s a lot more to what a president does. Homeschoolers, with such a diverse range of perspectives on money, government, social security, the war, oil, the budget, health insurance, and many other political topics, shouldn’t be agreeing with one another. It means we aren’t thinking if we all agree.

And that’s one thing I can say for sure - we’re thinkers. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have made the decision to go against the grain and homeschool in the first place.

Update: Here’s a list of other blogs on the same topic.

Is It All Really About Money?

So, I wonder - what’s wrong with letting a kid control their money, even if they are incompetent? Even if their parent is incompetent? Why is it that money makes the difference?

We probably don’t know but the very tip of the iceberg. I’m sure there are many, many details of this case that we aren’t privy to. Knowing that our opinions are based on minimal data, what do you think of this girl’s assets being controlled by the government, even though she is the one who built up the business?

Is this really about money? Or I’m wondering now, if really, this is about relationships. And isn’t it always about relationships? If this family were connected and working together, would this be an issue? Is this about money, or about how, when there is a breakdown in family cohesiveness, it’s the government that comes in and is our parent for us?

Because it seems to be, that’s what the government did in this case. They are the “real” parents, sweeping in and saying, “Well, you guys obviously aren’t getting along, so you’re going in a time out, and until that time out is over, we’ll put your toys up here on the shelf.”

What do you think?

I Am Your Teacher, You Will Be Assimilated

You know, I won’t even make a comment about this article. Just read it. I can’t believe the NJ newspapered publish this article as “News”.

School Choice Increases Services for Parents/Kids

Some would say that an increase in parental control in school is a bad thing. I mean, isn’t there a group of mysterious “those parents” out there who are always causing problems, and who don’t really care about their kids? Right.

So anyway, school choice. I’m on the fence about it. It’s one of those ideas that I really, really, really support. While the possibility that public funding and/or corporate monopolies are going to screw up and/or take over causes me concern.

This post about school choice in Michigan gives me hope. Sometimes, we do have to take the bad with the good. And it may be that in order to move forward with allowing more parental/student control of education, and changes in schools, we have to work within our commercially based society. Meaning, realize that when schools have to attract students to fill their seats, they will use every tool available - including using school money to advertise.

But hey, if it turns out that the schools can use that money to advertise and *still* manage to offer more services and more flexibility to appeal to parents, then hey - kill two birds with one stone: We get kids a better education, and we prove once and for all that more money does not mean better schools.

Free Online College Courses

MIT started the inevitable trend. Now, iTunes is jumping on the bandwagon. (If you have iTunes, just go to the iTunes store in the program, and select iTunes U.)

The iTunes classes are great for the visual and audio learner. Some are podcasts, others are videos of lectures.

Personally, these vids put me to sleep. Give me a book and a good conversation w/a pro over coffee. But hubby, when he saw this iTunes selection, he nearly lost it. “OMG, this is AWESOME!”

This is only the beginning. I’m tellin’ ya, the internet is changing education and the way kids think. Heck, it’s changing the way adults think. It’s changing the way we access knowledge.

HT: Mark

And More News of the Obvious…

So, yesterday, they discovered that tutors help kids learn. Today, they find out that tests don’t measure a person’s true ability. What will they find out next? This is going to be a week of incredible discoveries. I can just feel it.

Hey, One-on-One Instruction Works!

So, here’s some interesting news that I bet none of you would ever have imagined to be true, in a million, billion years: Kids in public school who receive tutoring learn more math and English. Wow! Amazing!

I wonder, what would happen if they gave every student a tutor?

Some teachers don’t like the idea though. Because the tutors don’t have to have a teaching credential. Forget that it’s actually working. Forget that the students seem to be benefiting from it.

I have to admit that this is one thing that NCLB does good. Since, it was because of NCLB that these failing schools had tutors at all (publicly funded BTW). But why not give it to all schools? Every school should have a tutor. And, perhaps, when it’s clear how much uncertified tutors help kids learn, they’ll admit that parents who teach their own kids don’t need to be certified.

Granted, the tutors in the schools are probably working with a very school-oriented approach, but hell, IMHO, whatever works baby. Whatever works. And this, seems to be working.

But, really, I want to know - why is anyone surprised?

No Diploma For You!

The high school in Galesburg, Illinois apparently thinks it’s the soup nazi from Seinfield. The administrators have decided not to award diplomas to five of the kids who graduated - because they didn’t like how the audience was cheering for them.

Were these kids’ constitutional rights violated? No. Was the school doing anything illegal? Probably not. Did the audience know the consequences of making a lot of noise during the ceremony? Yes.

Does any of that make it OK for the school to demand 8 hours of community service in order for these 5 kids to earn their diplomas? Absolutely not.

The school administrators decided to implement a standard of conduct at the graduation ceremony so that they would not have to manage a disruptive crowd. Apparently, the year before, the crowd was so loud, it was next to impossible to hear names being called.

So, their solution - try to control all the kids, their parents, their friends and everyone in the audience by punishing the student in front of the entire room. Five times they did this. Publicly humiliating former students in order to control the behavior of a group.

I understand that they needed a solution. Unruly crowds can make an unfun procedure like graduation even more unfun. But really, these are school administrators. They are guiding the education of our children. Couldn’t they come up with a better solution than public humiliation and withholding the paper that says a child has graduated?

First of all, public humiliation is not an effective mechanism for controlling behavior. If anything, it will make people angry and or over-excited. And the next year, the juniors who will be graduating will be less likely to trust the administration. Perhaps they will ask for a copy before, or make a plan for every single person to get a huge applause, or some other such thing. Haven’t these administrators been around high schoolers? They don’t just sit back and go “Ok Mr. administrator, we’ll behave so you won’t humiliate us.” They don’t care.

And for the girl that is upset she didn’t get her diploma - big friggin’ deal. Walk away. Show them how much this doesn’t work by saying, “I don’t need your piece of paper.” And really, how many people even know where their high school diploma is? If they do, how often does it come out of the dusty file folders in the garage? 8 hours of service to get the paper? Not worth it. Hours and hours of deliberation and interviews and working with a lawyer and all that comes with using legal action to make the school change their minds? Not worth it.

Shake your head at the school, girlfriend, then move on, homeschool when you have your own kids, and use this as a wonderful story on how you made your decision.

I think an easier solution for the school would have been to 1) give a reminder at the beginning of the ceremony (and even a reminder that the kids could take home with their graduation information) 2) if the crowd went nuts, stop the ceremony and wait until it’s quiet before calling out the next name, reminding the audience, again, to keep the cheers short, and 3) allowing an extra hour or two in the schedule to accommodate the yelling.

But, this whole thing is not about the students. It’s about a process. Getting the kids through as effeciently and quickly as possible, with as little fanfare as possible. If it were about the kids, then each and every kid who crossed the stage would be appreciated, and allowed their moment to be cheered by their loved ones. But it’s not about them - it’s about the process. The system. Even in perhaps the most important day for many of these kids, it’s still more about what the school administration needs than what benefits the kids.

At least at Galesburg High School.