Homework ban
A local school in Indiana has enacted limits on the amount of homework teachers can send home for students. The AP reports:
Starting next year, the handbook at East Side Elementary School in Edinburgh, about 30 miles south of Indianapolis, will state that students should have no more than 10 minutes worth of homework per grade level. So, a first-grader would have 10 minutes worth while a fifth-grader could have up to 50 minutes.
Complaints from parents about homework time prompted Principal Richard Arkanoff to put a policy in writing. . . .
“Homework is something that puts a burden on the entire family,” Arkanoff said. “We’re in the business of helping the family, not burdening the family.”
. . . .
Arkanoff said it is important for students and parents to spend time together that is not stressful.
A nice warm fuzzy vision of local parents spending quality time with their children. This ignores the reality of most kids today.
According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, on any given day, 30% of all kids 2-18 will play a video game; those who do play spend an average of just over an hour (1:04) playing. In fact, Kaiser noted in an earlier study: “the average child spends about five and a half hours a day using media (5:29) — more than 38 hours a week. This figure includes electronic media (TV, videos, movies, music, computers and video games), as well as books, magazines and newspapers. It does not include any media used in school or for homework.”
Under the above homework limitations, a fifth grade teacher can give a child 50 minutes per day, or a total of 5 hours and 50 minutes of homework per week. That same child is engaged in non-school work “media” for 38 hours per week? Parents clearly are not worried about their “quality time” with their kids. What they are complaining about is that when the kids are doing homework, they have to bother their parents for help, or need supervision to assure that it gets done. The TV and the video games do not require any parental involvement.
