Childrens is tender ... we don't want to do anything that might bruise their little egos ... or cause teecher any extra work!
Childrens is tender ... we don't want to do anything that might bruise their little egos ... or cause teecher any extra work!
As a former teacher still married to a teacher, I can tell you that this teacher is more right than wrong.
The school day is long enough. Kids shouldn’t have to bring it home with them. Plus, homework ruins the entire family’s evening, and in some cases, weekend. Do away with it.
Actually, the teacher’s plan makes a lot of sense.
The school system isn’t supposed to rule a family’s life. We HIRE them to teach our kids. NOT dictate like tyrants. No homework.
Quality time with family (which this teacher is advocating) teaches far more than grinding away at gobs of repetitive homework. Very good call, assuming the classroom time is well spent.
While one can’t really make a terribly intelligent comment about the wisdom of the policy without knowing what grade level is involved, the “read together” is a hint—I’d guess somewhere in the K-4 range.
And eating dinner together—i.e. have an intact family, and “play together”—i.e. interact beyond the level of electronics—is good advice as well. Being a good reader from an intact family may not be enough to get you into a Japanese high school, but it will put you on the path to be in the top quarter of U.S. high school graduates.
My response:
“Thank you for your decision which has become notable simply because it is sensible - something sorely lacking in public schools.
In light of your decision, I ask that you spend your classroom time doing things that are proven to correlate with functioning in the real world. These are, as always, reading, writing, and arithmetic. School is not an ideological day camp therefore you can leave out any ‘units’ on the joys of homosexuality, the dangers of climate change, and if my child so much as mentions white privilege one time you & I will be having a very early, unscheduled parent-teacher conference. Enjoy the school year.”
In fact, forget about that too. Just skip the whole school thing altogether. That learning stuff is just so old fashioned and outdated now by the new age, feelgood, "everyone is a winner" stuff anyway.
Just give them all A's... No, better yet, give them all those little grad caps with the tassels and they'll feel really super about themselves.
Ya' know? We could sure save a lot of money instead of wasting it on teachers and classrooms that don't want to teach anything but dopey reading and counting numbers and all that.
They'll figure everything out on their own eventually anyway, right?
I think reading books - of the child’s own choosing - is a better way to spend school nights.
Homework every night is not preferable, but neither is the 9 to 5 mentality. College certainly doesn’t work that way, nor do many types of jobs/professions.
I’m really surprised at all the comments here. I assume most of these posters are much younger than me. We are producing a nation of idiots. Reducing the amount of homework will only make them dumber.
Yeah! Then you can get into... 
some serious drinking & football watching without the rugrats interrupting!
The schools aren't afraid to assign the children homework - beginning in kindergarten. Assignments include reading, handwriting, arithmetic and memorization of Bible verses. Parent involvement is required; in fact, parents are required to sign off on their children's assignments.
The results are impressive. Our third grader can already read better than many high school graduates. The two first graders can read and do addition and subtraction better than many grade school graduates.
The teachers are kind, loving and adored by students and parents alike. The school has a long waiting list of applicants.
In other words, as my old pappy used to say, "a little hard work never hurt anyone ... and might actually do you some good."
Some teachers don’t want parents to know what they’re children are taught and some homework assignments have lead to the involvement of parents objecting and protesting . No homework solves their problem ,,,, think about that a minute .
I hate to be the recalcitrant one on this post, but the teacher is full of it.
My son has been in a private, independent school since he was two. By the first grade, he had already had two years of foreign language and was doing an hour of assigned homework a night.
Now, he is entering ninth grade and will have 3-4 hours of homework per night. He also plays on the Varsity football team, is an active Eagle Scout, is in student government, was in a school play, and will wrestle and play hockey this fall/winter.
He is an A/B student in school and had the opportunity to take the SAT early through Northwestern University last year due to high standardized test scores.
He is not any different than the rest of his classmates. They all just learned how to budget their time and work hard starting at an early age. Based on the matriculation and scholarship dollars, I think the edge they get from a rigorous homework schedule is an outstanding way to progress through school.
When I was in grade school, I don’t remember having homework each night.
I attended school in a more rural area and got my degree, complete with excellent grades.
Eating dinner as a family, spending time together as she advocates is exactly what kids need.
I grew up in Catholic school and in and around good families. Then I taught in a Catholic prep school in a good neighborhood. -Sixth through tenth grade kids.
This teacher is living in a dream world.
Here’s my research. There are two parents for each kid. There is a lot of socializing and not a lot of class participation in at least one quarter of any class kids will look for and do the very least amount of work possible. They find that to be their life’s goal at that age. Parents will assist that effort in at least a quarter of any given class. Parents will not do what the teacher tells them to do for their students success in class in about a quarter of cases including getting the kid to class on time first period. They certainly do not take direction from teacher regarding family life, where the teacher has no business directing or commenting. Absenteeism is a problem. The busiest kids do the best. The kids in sports and scouts are the kids that score consistently higher on everything. Kids learn during their alone time with homework. A lot of the best performing students thrive on and depend on cheating. Serious studying for boys especially doesn’t happen until year two in college when they realize they’ll soon have to provide for a family or end up a loser therefore study habits are what high school teachers are to focus on. The material is secondary. Kids at puberty are normally breaking away from their parents. Spending more time with them at a teachers direction is not going to happen.
The middle and high school boys would take this direction and factor in more time for other selfish non scoop endeavors NOT yay! more time with family
My research shows some teachers lay on so much homework that they discourage learning, achievement and encourage cheating. Many if not most teachers favor certain kids and do so in light of the kids family position and how much they donate to the school and also how much the student helps that teacher have an easier job, and are not honest with themselves about this favoritism, and forgetting the real job of raising kids not to be schmoozers
Teachers can take themselves way to seriously like this one Parents don’t listen to the teacher for any more than five minutes any more than the student does
Twenty to thirty minutes of homework in a core class per day. No “did we have homework last night I didn’t know that” keeps them involved. Some of them will do the homework some will fudge it some won’t do it and their parents are un-reachable. The parents who show up are not the parents you need to see
But they will not spend more time with their kids over a direction from a teacher. Most will read this BS direction as the teacher doesn’t want to do any homework grading and my kids SAT scores are going to dive over a lazy teacher living in dreamland
This memo,surely,is straight from this teacher’s union bosses.And we know how much the bosses of teachers’ unions,NATIONWIDE,care about preparing kids to compete with kids in Japan and South Korea who study 12 hours a day,6 days a week,50 weeks a year.