Posted on 01/20/2005 9:13:17 PM PST by FreedomCalls
All 12-year-olds at a comprehensive will be told today that homework is being scrapped because teachers have better things to do than mark it.
Dr Patrick Hazlewood, the head teacher of St John's in Marlborough, Wilts, who has already scrapped subject teaching, will not put it quite like that, of course.
He will tell them that, to make their schooling more "relevant to life in the 21st century", they are to be given responsibility for "managing their own learning".
Parents, who were told on Monday, are confused because, according to school policy, "regular homework is an essential element of learning and contributes to the development of sound study habits". They are also asked to say if they think their child has been given too little.
St John's sees itself as at the forefront of radical educational change and Dr Hazlewood is testing a futuristic project devised by the Royal Society for the Arts which rejects the notion that a teacher's job is to transmit a body of knowledge to pupils.
The project aims instead to encourage pupils to "love learning for its own sake" and the project is intended to replace the "information-led, subject-driven" national curriculum with one based on "competences for learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing situations and managing information".
The point of schooling, the RSA says, is to acquire competence not subject knowledge. It believes that exams only impede pupils' progress.
At St John's, which has 1,450 pupils aged 11 to 18 - 250 of them 12-year-olds - replacing first-year subjects with "cross-curricular projects" of the kind that used to be popular in primary schools was the first step. Allowing the pupils to mark each other's work was the second. Scrapping homework is the third.
"Homework, like the national curriculum, is a dinosaur," Dr Hazlewood told The Telegraph. "It is repetitious, generates marking that is often just a load of ticks and causes conflict at home.
"I want to give pupils responsibility for, and ownership of, their own learning. I want parents, many of whom are disengaged, to become pro-active partners in the process."
The national curriculum drove teachers into the ground and created a "society of damaged learners". He added: "The time has come to let sunshine flood through the classroom window and place the learner at the centre of all endeavour."
A mother who asked not to be named said: "My daughter has always taken pride in her homework. It gives her the push she needs.
"But Dr Hazlewood told us that it is a waste of time. Of course, he knows more than me but I am very worried about it."
The Department for Education said that homework was "an essential part of a good education". At the same time, its "innovation unit" is helping to pay for the RSA project.
"I want to give pupils responsibility for, and ownership of, their own learning. I want parents, many of whom are disengaged, to become pro-active partners in the process."
Doesn't sound socialist to me. Sounds like something Newt Gingrich would say.
While homeschoolers support the rights of parents to direct their children's educations, "unschooling" in it's purest form is controversial even among many homeschoolers.
The more common scenario is that homeschoolers have some more directed studies (math, science, history, etc...) and the child explores other areas in an "unschooling" way... reading for instance. My kid has some required reading, but is free to read anything he'd like, and that is a wide range of material. He likes sci-fi books, and reads them to his heart's content with our blessing.
I don't know any homeschoolers (personally) who are fully onboard with "unschooling" for every discipline.
But they aren't just eliminating homework, the point of the article is that they are also eliminating the mandatory national curriculum and instead teaching "competences for learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing situations and managing information". In other words, no more hard facts, just touch-feely "how to relate" type classes.
You missed the part about scrapping the national curriculum (a set of facts all students should know) and eliminating tests in favor of teaching "relating to people" (PC talk for learning all about minorities). If you let the students "manage their own learning" they will end up not knowing at all who Oliver Cromwell is but very thoroughly acquainted with Laura Croft.
Which is the whole point of the national curriculum. Here is a set of facts and data that every school child should be familiar with and problems that every shcool child should be able to solve before graduation.
Certainly not the only thing I stressed with my kids, but I didn't neglect it. With some creativity, it can be made 'fun'. Some of the crap I made them learn by rote was, in and of itself, not important [succession of the British kings, eg.]; but the ability to utilize memory was enhanced. They've been served well by that particular skill.
Memory can, and should, be trained. (my philosophy fwiiw)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
