Homework, especially in elementary schools, is a tyrannical burden on your family.
Beginning in kindergarten students are given homework packets and asked to read with their child everyday. You may be thinking, “What’s the big deal? Homework is part of school.”
Here is the problem.
Homework in elementary school has little to no positive effect on a student’s academic performance. But wait, there’s more. Besides being a waste of time, it is eating into time you could be spending on things that do matter: family outings, family field trips, a trip to the park, or just letting your kids free play are being replaced by sometimes hours of homework.
A recent facebook post shows the problem that this has reached.
On the second day of school a first grader came home with over an hour of homework. An hour!
The story is heartbreaking, but not completely unusual.
Even the National Education Association recommends only ten minutes of homework per grade with zero homework in kindergarten. This is over six times more homework than they recommend.
Learning should be fun. And until kindergarten it usually is. Many kids show up to school eager to learn. They are excited about the things they are going to learn and do, and the friends they are going to make.
But then reality hits. The kids realize that what they are asked to learn has nothing to do with their interests. They are asked to sit for long periods of time, contrary to their natural child development. Some are being told within a few weeks of starting kindergarten that they are already behind.
But there is hope.
Luckily, there are many new models being created that match a child’s natural development. They are not as easy to find as your local public school, but it is likely that there is one near you.
They are called microschools. These are low-cost private schools that do things differently. Instead of working against child nature, they work with it. These founders, many of which are former public school teachers, create a learning environment that uses a child’s natural curiosity to engage children in their learning. These amazing schools are changing the way we educate children.
Education Policy Analyst
Jon is the Education Policy Analyst at Libertas Institute. He previously taught fifth and sixth grade and served as an elementary principal in Weber School District for 14 years.