The school has started and was sung: the eternal debate about duties reopens. Many parents believe that they are excessive, that the school day is moving to homes, that they pressure children and that they should be suppressed.
That is precisely what the Spanish Confederation of Associations of Parents of Students (CEAPA), which represents 12,000 families of public centers, has requested request that duties be removed outside of the school day.
Too many duties ... and for what?
Parents who have asked for their elimination believe that the duties “generate institutional pressure towards the students”, since if they do not do so there are consequences that result in the lowering of grades.
It is estimated that a student of 1st ESO, this is a 12 year old child, dedicates 60 hours per week to school work. According to the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Spain It is the fifth country (of 38) that puts more duties. On average, children have 6.5 hours of homework a week versus an average of 4.9 hours.
It should certainly be reviewed, especially when it is clear that this method is not giving results in the light of the data from the Pisa report in which Spain goes very badly.
Also around the debate of homework, it has been said many times that they feed school inequality, since in many families parents cannot or do not have time or money to help their children with homework.
But there are parents want them to have homework
A couple of days ago I hallucinated with the comment of a mother in the WhatsApp group of my daughters' school. Seeing that they are almost not bringing homework, he complained that "the children are very calm this course" implying that they are doing nothing.
I replied that they already work many hours in school. The free time they have in the afternoon is to play, enjoy their childhood and learn other things that are not learned in school.… Whether practicing some sport, attending extracurricular classes or going to the park to observe the ants, it doesn't matter.
That need that some parents have to see the children always busy, from the time they get up until they go to bed, I can't understand it. My oldest daughter has lost hours and hours of doing much more constructive and enriching activities for a child for doing homework.
Would you like to have to keep working every day when you get home after your workday? Well, for children it is the same.
The duties cover a failure in the educational method
My daughters go to school from 9 to 5. Except the time they have to eat, the rest of the time they are in class: 6 hours a day. Isn't it enough time for them to learn, reinforce and practice what they have learned? If that is not the case, what is there is a failure in the teaching method that should not be supplied at the cost of covering children with homework.
Homework is not necessary to learn. There are many other ways to learn and strengthen knowledge, and the best way to do it is to through motivation, generating in them the need to learn, awakening curiosities, and not through obligation and pressure of a repetitive and systematic work.
