M K Bhan
Work! Work! Class Work! Then School Work! After that HOME WORK! Oh God! Can you help me in defining and understanding why these different works have been created for innocent children of such a tender age like me? I have been totally confused by my teachers on one side and parents on the other. I want to learn different skills at home from my mother and enjoy the company of my father during morning and evening walks. I want to watch my Mom cooking in the kitchen and preparing a cup of tea for my Dad. I want to play with my little Bro and help him in drawing and building blocks. Don’t blame me later on if I am not able to prepare and present a cup of tea before my teacher or visiting guest. On listening the child’s woes, God replied,” My child, you are nowhere wrong, fault lies within the education system. There is a crystal clear logic that whatever you do in class or at school is the class-work and school-work respectively and obviously helping and working with your parents at home is home work. It is a big issue already with the education department and I can’t interfere because of legal complicacies.” The helplessness shown by the God further discouraged the Child and question regarding the relevance of home-work remained unresolved in the world of children.
Home-work is a process through which a student learns to inculcate the knowledge independently and use intellect for expansion of his mental zones. Home-work is not in any way putting an extra burden on the students, it is to help them reinforce what they have already learned at school so that they memorize the learned things and keep a close tap of all happening around him. The purpose of assigning home-work is that children are able to absorb the content effectively and just copying from books or cramming up things does not help out. Home-work should be kept for specific purposes like-recapitulation, inculcating good study habits and discipline aspects.
The existing education platform is increasing child’s dependency on the elders around him. The excess home-work given to the student needs to be completed at home by the parents or elder sibling. Even some parents avoid their involvement and engage tutors for this specific purpose just to escape from their responsibility. Parents must understand that substitutes can’t replace them. Home-work has become impractical because of internet and other electronic media, where search engines provide oodles of information that can be copied and pasted. Teachers are putting fewer efforts in research work to enhance their knowledge and provide extra information about the topic in-hand for widening the intellectual and visionary dimensions of their students.
In US, an average student across all grades on average does less than one hour of home-work on daily basis. Time can fluctuate in case of senior class students depending on the work load. According to European guidelines, home-work given to students as per their age group ranges from 45-90 minutes per day for classes I-VIII and 120 to 150 minutes for classes IX-XII. In general, home-work should be headed out within the reasonable limits according to the child’s age. Home-work should not be assigned for the weekends and holidays because this quality time is meant for the child to use it according to his choice for taking rest, doing leisure activities, playing games etc.
After spending 6 hectic hours in school, writing multi-language pages, preparing for periodical and regular examinations, completion of tutor’s assignments and so on, makes him clumsier and inept and sometimes whole education system gets messed up. Of course child studies enough, but, could not reach near the fundamentals of the chapter or topic undertaken by tutor or teacher. Under these circumstances a child couldn’t get any free time to refresh their energies and finally lose passion of his childhood. It is the responsibility for all of us to keep quality time of evenings exclusively free for our children, let it be a rejuvenating time for them, so that the following day proves highly productive and relevant in their lives.
The ratio of class-work and home-work should be 3:1. Schools should take the responsibility of sharing the maximum work load and put a limit to assign excessive home-work to children. Undoubtedly education prepares children for life and under the existing circumstances where the focus is on higher grades and neglecting the value system is likely to bring educational disasters in future. There have been schools working on the novel lines with the concept ‘No Home-Work for children’ is really working and paving a way for other schools to re-thinks for a change in the existing system of education to make learning stress-free and enjoyable. Having no home-work means providing extra time to children and parents for staying together and keeping family unified in all respects. To avoid the disintegrated and sedimentary life-style of your child, it is necessary that parent, teacher and school work together as a unit for making learning a holistic experience. Academic excellence in the absence of physical fitness, awareness and confident personality has no relevance. Time has come now to re-visit our frame of mind and decide new parameters for our children. Let ‘Living a purposeful and passionate Life’ replace existing model of ‘Managing and passing the Life’.
If a child has to face the teachers at school and parents behaving as tutors or teachers at home, then where this child will go to find the parental love and pleasures of life? Please remember, pleasure in the work puts effectiveness, efficiency and perfection in his work. Let’s make his home-work pleasurable, enjoying and rewarding. As a parent do not demand excess of home-work for your child because of your personal engagements, problems and disturbances. Don’t assign extra home-work to innocent child as punishment, think of his innocence, emotions and tender age. Allow child to recapitulate and practice himself of what is taught to him in school. If he fails in this process, be sure that problem is not with the child, but somewhere else. ‘Practice makes a man perfect’ is a workable axiom not only for the children, but also for the teachers as they have to work constantly with the children in teaching-learning process.
We have to accept that ‘Assigning project as home-work’ and ‘working on project with children in classes’ makes a difference in learning and understanding a concept.
We all have to accept the relevance of home-work in light of the facts that, home-work may be given just as a refreshing revision work and allow the child to decide and prepare a schedule for himself for completion of different assignments. Let parent play the role of a parent only and not as tutor, coach and terroneous law-maker. There is no fun in assigning excess of home-work which can’t be done in a proper way with clear understanding by the child. Why parent will do the home-work for their children and teachers merely play the role of authorized signatories by putting tick marks and their running signatures in those note-books? Why home-work note-books restlessly travel from study-room to dining-room and finally succumb in bed-room? Let’s recall our own childhood before treating ourselves as adults and stop encroaching in the small world of children. Please spare your children at least for few moments and let them introspect through the spiritual window of their lives. Before preaching about the relevance of home work, give them some freedom if you can, to enjoy and understand their ‘SELF’ and this ‘NATURE’- after all it is their ‘Right’ and above all they are ‘Spiritual Beings’.
The author is Director/Principal SGGJ Model School, Sunderbani (J&K)
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