too much homework?
That’s right — schoolchildren do too much homework.
They do too much of a lot of things, I think. There are a lot of insecure “super-parents” out there who put their kids in every extra-curricular activity under the sun and then complain that their kids get too much homework.
They sit in class too long. Whoever surveyed the current state of the attention span of youth in this age of the Internet, video games, text messaging, and cell phones and then decided that the practice of “block scheduling” — where students sit in a single class for 90 minutes at a time — is a fool. Fifty-minute classes every day, featuring topics limited in scale with perhaps time to work on a short, to-the-point homework assignment, are appropriate and will get the job done.
Even worse — the school I taught at determined that freshman students who did not do well on the Kansas Math Assessment should have a math block every day. That’s ninety minutes a day. And yet the remedial math classes at colleges and universities are typically those with the largest enrollment.
Block scheduling remains wildly popular. I’m having trouble figuring out why.
Keeping chunks of instruction shorter and more pointed has several benefits. First among these, I think, is the fact that it will easily separate hard-working but less-talented students from losers. After all, if a student can’t manage twenty to forty minutes a night thinking about the topic du jour, then he ought not to pass or be granted a high school diploma. Shorter topics and more pointed assignments are within the grasp of students who will eventually understand but may require more time.
Another is that they are easier for teachers to plan. Fifty minutes is typically enough time to cover one topic, or one aspect of a larger theme, in some depth and to ask probing questions about that topic. For those of you who have never taught (and even for those of you who have) who think, “Fifty or ninety minutes, what’s the difference?” I tell you: try it sometime. Try to keep a classroom of students younger than sixteen in this day and age occupied productively for ninety minutes.
I wish you luck. I couldn’t do it.
Something else needs to change: the modern public school’s apparent focus on social engineering and on series of cultural narratives and a return to areas of basic study — the three “R’s”, if you will. I’m not talking about drill (although almost anything worth doing requires practice), I’m talking more about a return to basics; universals that will benefit every student in this society, regardless of “membership” in a race, “class”, or other “subgroup” (the term actually used in the profession to refer to ethnic or “class” groups). Cutural issues need not be scrapped entirely with this approach, either.
The one “R” that is lacking the most is — wait for it — writing. (You expected me to say “‘rithmetic,” didn’t you?) The evidence I cite in support of this point is the entire contents of the blogosphere. The best writers are, in my opinion, those who try to convince their readers, who may or may not already be predisposed to their suggestions, of something using rational arguments. Do the biggest blogs do that? Some of them do. Many do not. Why do huge numbers of people flock to places of irrationality and invective? Sometimes it’s escapism — I freely admit I get a laugh from or vent some steam on sites like that on my own blogroll. I know the difference between that and a persuasive argument, though. A lot of people don’t. I think their public school experience is one reason why.
One more thing: There is no reason — none — for students to receive specific job training while in grade school. The grade school experience is meant to prepare students to be contributors to society — in effect, to prepare them for all jobs. That’s why a focus on what I’ve called basic universals is essential.
Public education is a worthy goal of this society, which despite whatever flaws you may find in it is an unqualified success. Minor tweaks are not enough anymore. Public education in the age of state standards and “No Child Left Behind” is a “top-down” system, run by bureaucrats rather than educators. If the teachers had the power — in a “bottom-up” system — I believe that a system like the one I’ve described would arise. Any education reform you consider in the future should take this into account.
09.20.2006 @ 10:31
90 minutes of maths every day? That sounds to me like a “you were bad at this once; we will make you never try your hands (and brain) on it again!” sort of measure. Uh-huu!
Apart from that: Is it 90 minutes with or without a break?
09.20.2006 @ 12:02
Unless you were lucky enough to have “third block,” which includes the lunch period, it was without a break.
And your assessment of its effects on students was more-or-less dead on.
09.21.2006 @ 09:05
Say about German schools whatever you want, but you never have to go through 90-minute-lessons without a break there. Although it’s just 5 minutes, it still does a lot. It is different at university, though. There it’s simply up to the teacher. And where this “you do not like bacon? So it will be bacon every day for the next 2 years! Breakfast and Lunch!”-thing must lead… well, not hard to imagine.