So I was listening to the radio today and the afternoon person mentioned how a school district somewhere will be implementing a policy about homework next year: teachers not being allowed to give more homework on a daily time allotment of 10minutes times grade level--total for ALL classes.
by the way, here is a link to the news i think they were referring to. TOO MUCH HOMEWORK
It makes me curious just how many people think TOO MUCH homework is being placed on students at the middle/high school level because I have heard parents complain of this before--their students are being too overwhelmed with homework in addition to their extracurricular activities such as sports, church groups, band/music/theatre and the like. I even have heard of parents of AP students complain of this--their student is being given the chance to become well-rounded and has to give up activities in order to meet the demands of their academic workload.
I get a bit angry just typing it out. While I can see some of the points being made for restricting total workload students take home, I don 't think all the factors are necessarily being taken into accout--such as: time management skills of students--I know many a students who does not make good use of time given AT SCHOOL to study and do homework. I also know of students who will honestly say that they would get their homework done faster if they weren't multi-tasking their homework with say--texting their friends. There is also my personal opinion that while there is a benefit to being a "well-rounded" individual--there is also an element to choosing activities in order to be one's best and not sacrifice time and effort being one is overly-involved.
I also wonder if this "two hour" time allotment for a high school senior includes practice time necessary for music or after-school practice hours for sports. And how well these seniors will be prepared for going to college and the invididual workloads they'll have there. I'm also curious to just how the school district thinks it's going to measure "time needed" for homework of students and how they will divide the time up between different classes.
Anyways, I would LOVE to hear some of ya'lls ideas out there. Do you think the schools have placed too many demands on students by way of homework? Have you ever heard of "too much homework" being a problem? Please discuss!
Posted by Anna at February 20, 2009 05:18 PM | TrackBack