Homework keeps the brain active Spending more than two hours a night doing homework is linked to achieving better results in English, math and science, according to a major study which has tracked the progress of 3,000 children over the past 15 years. Spending time doing homework showed benefits, but the effects were greater for students who put in two to three hours a night, according to the study published by the Department for Education, UK. A child easily forgets and switches to something else the moment their attention is taken off one thing. Some holidays are really long, taking for example the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, with so many parties and travels. Children are subjected to a different life that is more fun and relaxing. They have a few weeks before getting back to school. Holiday work helps recall what was learnt in school, apply some of the knowledge that was taught and develop an educated child - not just a child who thinks school is about passing exams and moving to the next class. Homework is a valuable resource for teaching, allowing students to practice, and in doing so, learn the unit material. One of the main goals of homework assignments is to create opportunities for students to interact with their parents and take time to learn about what makes themselves and their families special. Homework creates a kind of bond and a like thinking between a child and his parents or siblings. It is easy for a child to understand something that they have been taught in class and re-explained at home. Homework helps establish healthy study habits, routine and responsibility. It also reinforces information learned in school. It’s never too early to give your child these skills. You don’t expect to have your child watch TV all morning, play football in the afternoon and watch TV in the evening then get back to school, fit right in and bring back home wonderful results. You build the culture of good studying habits then they will apply it throughout their lives in school and later in the job market. As students complete their assignments, they become more interested in and responsible for their learning. Homework places demands on children that help them develop mental skills. It demands that a child concentrates, follows directions, organises materials, solves problems and works independently. In conclusion, studies comparing students who completed homework versus those who did not indicate that homework can help improve performance on unit tests. Findings were observed for students in grades 2-5 as well as in high school students. In looking at results across several studies, the average homework completer had higher unit test scores than 73 percent of non-completers. Thus, there is good evidence that doing homework not only reinforces concepts introduced in class; it may bolster academic achievement as well. patrick.buchana@newtimes.co.rw Children need a life! I’m very sure the debate on whether homework should be abolished in schools can be greatly welcomed by students, but not academicians. Pupils or students spend over 12 hours at school learning per day, I don’t see the logic in giving them homework at the end of the day. They are children and they need a life too. They need to get involved in other activities like socialising with their parents or siblings. To some extent, homework, especially the new trend of embracing technology where assignments are being allocated and done online, is greatly affecting how our children are interacting. Nowadays, teachers send the assignments online. On reaching home, the child just sits on the computer and only leaves it if they are going to have dinner or sleep. Gone are the days when children listened to fantasy stories from their parents. They are getting a lot of crap from the internet. I’m so sorry to say that somehow, our children are operating like robots following specific routines. Therefore if we want an interactive generation and its related benefits, we need to revise the homework issue and let children be children. A publication by Irena Barker titled “Is it time to scrap homework?” showed that Homework is a nightly curse in thousands of homes and a cause of nerve trouble, sleeplessness and family friction. The author indicated that homework greatly promotes social inequalities because it ingrains social inequalities between pupils: clever, motivated children in higher sets or at better schools tend to be given more homework, while less able, less motivated pupils are given less. The result is a further widening of the attainment gap. Taking for instance a child whose parents were not able to go to school, how is she or he going to execute his or her tasks that they received from school as homework? In such a scenario, this will affect the child’s learning process especially when his or her friends are bragging how they were able to finish work with their intelligent mums or dads. This debate has actually reminded me of how in primary we used to fight amongst ourselves on whose parent had the best signature. Our parents always had to sign against our homework and write a comment as proof that they had monitored us. I’m guessing instead of wasting time trying to impress others with signatures that weren’t even ours, we could have read a book or two and then relax at home. Every kid deserves that. doreen.umutesi@newtimes.co.rw
