Hot Button: HOMEWORK!

I’ve been watching a curious pattern during this project. There has not been a lot of activity on the blog and I get email responses from less than 0. 5% of the subscribers on this list. However, the number of people subscribing to this list has been steadily growing, so it appears people are reading, presumably enjoying the content, and passing the messages along to friends and colleagues. Still, the lack of feedback has been slightly concerning.

All along, I’ve been saying to Ginelle (SOAR^®’s Office Manager and my life-saver during this project) that I would like to find the topic that really ignites people’s interests and pulls the trigger on some core, visceral issues that people are dealing with.

Well, it appears we have found one of those hot buttons! The post entitled, “Homework: The Great Homewrecker” has triggered more responses (via the blog and email) than anything else! Most of the responses support my personal feelings and experiences about homework, but it was interesting for me to see that I am not alone.

While I hear from parents every day who express complaints about homework, I am realizing that it is usually in the context of parental guilt. “I’m not doing enough.” Or, “I just don’t know how to manage all of this homework,” among many others. All of these expressions carry a tone of inadequacy; parents feeling like something must be wrong with them because they cannot handle this responsibility as well as their parents did, or as well as they should, or as well as their child’s teachers expect of them.

Perhaps maybe, the expectations are a little beyond what is reasonable. I’m just sayin’…

One of our subscribers, Hugh, posted this article as additional food-for-thought:  I think it does a great job of explaining homework’s implications in the home.

With that said, let me say this…as with most other things in life, I believe in moderation. Homework is not inherently evil and moderate amounts are great for building responsibility skills. Personally, I will attribute my success as a business-person to the “skill muscles” I developed while managing homework as a student. However, there could likely be such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Secondly, the author of this article calls for more funding in education. Additional funds will not cure the homework problem. Alternative, more efficient, models of delivering education that could reduce the need for so much homework, may likely be a better starting point. Again, I’m just sayin’…

Please do not mistake this as a slam on teachers. I am a teacher, Ginelle is a teacher, my husband is a teacher…my comments here are a reflection on the system. A system, I know, that frustrates many teachers, too!

-Susan Kruger

EB 092017