Break

Laissez-faire term break, too loose? Not always. Our preoccupation with homework has deprived out children of what should have been some of the most nurturing experiences of childhood.

It's my daughter's school term break this week. When I say break, I mean it. A break without homework. Now that autumn is here, we chose to go outdoors. It's not hard to understand why the natural world is a child's favorite classroom. Can you imagine what we did at the last stop of our hike today? My daughter spent nearly an hour watching leaves.

With countless butterflies around, the leaf-eating caterpillars must have left behind lots of "footprints" for us to explore. Finding holes in the foliage gives rise to all sorts of patterns as long as we add a bit of imagination, much in the way that we name the constellation by linking up stars. My daughter studied those leaves the way astronomers viewed the richness of the sky - you can imagine a dolphin leaping out at you if you gaze at them for long enough.

Homework

Over the years as my daughter has grown from an infant to toddler to grade-schooler, I've read quite a collection of books on parenting. These books have given me a thousand suggestions, many of them insightful, and others somewhat run-of-the-mill. Rarely is there a book delving into pages after pages of academic papers, citing meta-analysis with critique. And no wonder: parenting isn't rocket science, after all.

I remember reading somewhere that parenting and plumbing have much in common. It's like stopping a leak in the dark with a duff torch while wearing mittens. You feel around to understand what's happening, make decision, and then after the event spend forever justifying it on the idea of sweet reason trickled over with a spoonful of authority. For that matter, anyone who have been in the dark can justify their authority and make claims nobody can challenge. And whether their claims are real or only in their mind, nobody knows because everything is in the dark.

I was lucky enough to have read The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn. As we all know, homework assignment can create havoc in the relationship between a child and his parents. And even when the parents feel squeezed by the homework (yes, conflict is inevitable), they still ask for more homework, and not less. All of these have to do with the myth that homework is good for their kids. That certainly does not have to be the case. Kohn hasn't reported, and I haven't found, any evidence that homework gives an iota of academic benefits for young students. Strictly speaking, we don't even have a whiff of research evidence to support or refute whether the assignment of homework fosters good study habits.

The takeaway: There is such a thing as too much homework.

Need I say more?