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.
Sounds like someone doesn't want teaching and grading to interfere in their other life.
Dhu plus dhu is nine, man. That what is we learning here in skul. Hay Surviving is on, glad no horeswork tonight.
Is this story a spoof? Did I slip into a coma and wake up on April 1st?
It's from Britain. Britain is a place that is like an experiment where you take America and soak it in liberalism, wash it in socialism, and rinse it in political correctness and see what happens. What has happened is the place has gone stark raving mad. Let that be a lesson.
That's the prollum. Mooooooo.
I imagine a music college that has abandoned reading music, and practice; it only encourages the students to play what's in their hearts....if they feel like it.
That would be some senior symphony recital!
There's an allegory there, I think...somewhere.
Hmmm. You are unmasked, m'thinks: somewhere along the way you surely must have been burdened with Orthography, Sytax and Rules of Grammar. Y'know what means I?
Nobody learns "anything" unless they want to. Homework is useless and MOST teacher-lead classroom work is, for most children actually detrimental to their education. Why will neary EVERY CHILD say that they HATE school? Fear! They are scared of their teacher's disapproval, ridicule from their peers, their parent's (often unreasonable) expectations. So, they learn answers to questions by rote - after taking a test on these items, the answers; and more importantly, the QUESTIONS, are quickly forgotten.
The child-led, seemingly "directionless" learning is what happens in a Montessori school. Think about it: if you are trying to teach children to speak properly, why does the TEACHER spend so much time talking? Why are children told to "shut up" in class?
Think back to early education in this country - the one-room schoolhouse with children of all ages therein. The older children helped to educate the younger kids by example
It astounds me that conservatives gripe so much about the educational system and teacher unions, but think so little about the ways children really learn and grow. The way we "teach" children is ineffective at best and harmful to their intellect and socialization at worst.
I think it is high time that our "skrewls" discarded the bullsqueeze they try to force-feed kids, and instead worked to help kids learn to love learning for learning's sake - rather than to please some adult with a good grade, or the totally useless "gold star to take home to Mommy."
Gee, I wonder why conservatives value learning the way it used to be done in the US when students actually learned what they were sent to school to learn. We have turned out scientists, invented more than any other nation, our technology cannot be beat, usually. When someone does beat us we improve it and make it better.
In the last 50 years, since liberals started controlling schools the education of our children has deteriorated. We think that throwing money at schools and introducing new techniques that actually make children stupid will somehow solve the problems the libs have made. Lood at the nations Sat scores and tell me we are doing well! These are not the results of conservatives, they are a direct result of the dumbing down of American schools by liberal BS. Homeschooling? The reason so many conservatives do it is because the liberal ajenda in our schools teaches our children NOTHING, not to mention history is being rewrittten, falsely, to try to convince students America is evil. If conservatives were to take over our schools, start TEACHING subjects again you would see our students reach the levels they once did in this country. You can keep the British BS, we get enough liberal crap here without any outside help.
I would have been more articulate but I am so pissed that I am not at my best right now. Liberal jerk.
I really hope you weren't referring to me as a "liberal jerk". I may be a jerk, but I am a LONG way from liberal.
You are correct: the schools are a mess because the liberals have had their way in the educational system for too long. It will take a long time to reverse this trend - too long for MY kids.
I'll be homeschooling, probably using the "unschooling method" that I referred to in my original post. The idea is to engage kids with challenging, real-life examples and exercises; rather than the by-rote busy work of the last 50 years. When you let kids learn at their own pace, with loving encouragement and ocassionally the "board of education" you will produce kids with higher intellect and a profound love for lifelong learning.
Personally speaking, I know for a fact that I have learned more valuable information OUTSIDE a classroom than I ever learned in one.
I don't agree with most of the changes proposed here. However, research has shown no benefit to homework before the high school level. It's just a way to keep kids busy with government assigned brainwashing, so they don't have time for things they or families want to do.
Kids should learn at their own pace; which pace will be accelerated [or enabled] if they have certain tools that can only be developed through rote learning...times tables, eg. A blend of the concepts is better than either concept by itself.
Good luck with your homeschooling. Best thing I ever did.
I am still unsure as to the exact methodology we will use, or whether or not to use a curriculum of some type. I still have a few years to go before I have to "decide" on that.
However, we will be homeschooling - and I will try to be as free-form as possible while still getting the job done. My sister is a Montessori teacher, and homeschools her own from a Christian perspective. She has some great kids.
You can argue whether or not homework should be given out.. but he actually puts the nail on the head.
Democrats think that they can improve education with more money.
That's now what is needed.
The kids that succeed in school now do so because they want to. They see a purpose to homework.. they see a reason to learn.
All the money in the world can't make that happen. The question is.. how do we get kids to do that. Some parents choose to homeschool which works. But ideally the point of homeschooling is to get parents invovled and they certainly are through homeschooling.
His greatest task will be getting parents to give a dang.
Good. That's the first thing Britain has done right since the Beatles. Homework is useless. Adopting longer class periods allows the students to complete their work at school. Of course, one would still have to study for tests at home sometimes.
Some textbooks, algebra for instance, are not intended to be read but to be worked through problem by problem. Can't 'manage information' until there is information.
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