Reason #17: No Homework
I don’t believe in homework. Yeah, I know, shocking – because I was a teacher!!! Truthfully, I always hated the fact that I was required to assign it and hold my students accountable for it daily. I just don’t believe that after 6-8 hours at school, children should have to come home and work for another 1-2 hours at night or on the weekends. All that time in school should be more than necessary for a child to have to sit and work. Kids need to play and have fun. Children who spend long days at school need to have an enjoyable evening with their family, bonding, laughing, running errands, playing sports, or whatever the family wishes to do in their precious few hours together before bedtime. Parents who send their children to school shouldn’t have to homeschool – which is basically what they’re doing when they have to teach their children at night (because the teacher simply couldn’t spend one-on-one time with their child that day). I’ll admit that when I was a teacher, there were many days when I’d assign homework and hope that a parent could re-teach a concept for me, because I was well aware that a poor kid just “didn’t get it,” and the rest of the class simply had to move on anyway. I would desperately hope that the parent was patient with him and supportive at home, but many times, the parent would complain to me that their evenings were filled with tears and frustration. And I would feel pity and helplessness, because that’s not what I believe schoolwork or family relationships should be like! But, there was little I could do – my hands were tied by my administration’s time constraints, the needs of the other 25-30 kids, the endless hours of paperwork, and the ridiculousness of the standardized state testing. Teachers do the best they can, I know I did. But I really just don’t agree with the idea of homework. I recognize that fact would be a big problem if I sent my children to school, lol!
