The Homework Myth Chapter 8 - BGUTI

The only kinds of study skills that students would have to do homework to acquire ... are those useful for doing more homework.

This chapter starts off with this great quote. I also like the chapter title - Better Get Used to It. At this point in the book though, I have to say that I am torn as to how I feel about the subject.

While I was reading I thought back to my own days as a student. I did homework as it was assigned up until 9th grade when a friend of mine asked me why I was doing it. So I stopped. I kind of wish I hadn't. Who knows what would have been different, but I would like to think that I would have been better off somehow.

I also thought of how Kohn talks of "family time" as a reason for why homework is bad. But what about those families who do not have "family time"? I don't have kids of my own, so I don't know what it is like for families at night. I do feel for parents who have difficulty making forcing their kids to do homework. I am sorry if I have been (and I have) the catalyst for that fight.

But I am sitting here now at around 8:00 at night wondering what my students have been doing since they got home. Are they reading, watching T.V., playing online, playing with their toys? I asked my class today what time they go to bed, and one girl said 8:00. One boy said 6:30. He said that his dad wakes him up at 5:30 every morning though. For sure I have one boy who goes home and plays video games all night, all though his mom said that he has been more motivated to read and study more English. His mom also seems more interested in helping him. I wonder though if it is OK to assign homework to keep kids busy. Won't they find something else that is easier [and more fun] to do?

Are passion projects the answer? It is not something that i have tried, but I would like to.

This chapter also discusses a few other reasons given by teachers for giving homework: establishing good study habits to prepare them for the future, and giving them the skills to cope with bad situations. Ugh. I have used these justifications myself. I was a part, well an observer, of a conversation some of my in-laws were having last night. One father,a doctor, was [drunkenly] telling his 6th-grade son to get motivated and start preparing for the standardized tests. I wanted to cut in and ask him how he expected to motivate his son this way. I also wanted to ask him how he really felt about the tests. I'll bet that he would say they are terrible, but it's the way it is.

He is right: it is what it is. How can it be changed, especially in a country as resistant to change as Japan is?