Well, it’s been over a week since I linked to Alex’s post and unwittingly started a movement. For those of you following along, I was interviewed for a National Post article on the weekend and since then the phone has been ringing off the hook. I’ve done some talk radio and I have CTV Edmonton chasing me around BC, trying to get me on camera. This week I’m in Prince George, working at my real job, running a World Cafe and an Open Space meeting for the Urban Aboriginal Strategy in British Columbia.
But many people are calling and emailing about this homework ban thing, and we seem to have struck a nerve. What has been really interesting to me is that without exception, every journalist and producer that has called (and we’re talking twelve or more at this point) has started out by talking about how much they hate what homework does to their kids and families. Usually when they call they get interviewed by ME, for the first ten minutes or so, so keen am I to hear their story. It has really strengthened my confidence in our decision to unschool, although I appreciate that that isn’t for everyone.
Some of the nicest emails I have received have been from the authors of the two books that were recently published and which started this all off. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth wrote to lend his support to whatever was going on, and I told him I’d send people to his site, which is a rich source of material about learning and working. So go read Alfie’s stuff, especially if you are thinking seriously about what is going on in school with respect to teaching, learning, testing and evaluating and you are wondering how to make a case for change.
And then on a more practical level Sara Bennet, co-author with Nancy Kalish of “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It” wrote today and told me about the blog she is starting up at stophomework.com. For those of you that have written to me asking “what can we do?” Sara is the person to get in touch with. Their book even gives examples of emails to use with teachers and principals to get a homework ban going in your school.
And if you are tired fighting with the education system, you have many many options. If you are interested in unschooling as an option, which is what our family does, you can visit my own set of unschooling resources for some reading to get started.
This whole “Great Canadian Homework Ban” is actually just a provocative way to get people to really think about learning. We take so much for granted about the way the school system operates, and there is so much fear connected to success and failure in school that I believe strongly that we are creating a culture that blindly accepts some cultural story about what works and what doesn’t. The bottom line, in my own experience, is that every child has their own learning needs, and every parent can help meet those needs by keeping a few basic questions at the top of mind. Think about the school system, and what it teaches. Read John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, David Albert and others and think about the kind of learning environment that will best serve your kids.
And for all those who say “if kids don’t do homework they will just play video games” (which seems to be the last line of the crumbling defense) I challenge you to do three things: get rid of the PlayStation, cancel your cable subscription and intentionally spend time with your kids co-creating a list of things you could do together. Like any drug, it’s hard to kick, but you’ll be glad you did. Tell them that the deal is, you’ll support them NOT doing homework if they will engage with you to create real learning experiences outside of school, together. And then take all the free time you’ll have and enjoy one another. It’s not THAT hard to do.
PS…and because it’s a movement now I made a little seal (up above there, with the busy beaver as our mascot, too busy for homework) which you can steal and post on your own blog. Better yet, print out a sheet of them as stickers and plaster them on unfinished homework assignments. Now THERE’S an activity guaranteed to get kids and parents working together!
[tags]homework[/tags]
Last week I was working with a team of business school professors meeting in their annual retreat to plan their teaching for an integrated introduction to their MBA program. The professors themselves come from all facets of the business world: logistics, accounting, organizational behaviour, ethics, marketing. The often use the terms “hard” and “soft” skills, but only in reference to the stereotypes they are trying to confront in their students.
It’s always interesting to me to see where “hard” and “soft” skills blur, because in practice they truly do blur. In general “hard” skills refer to those practices in business that are about the external world: financials, accounting, finance, market surveys, logistics. “Soft” skills are associated with human resources, relationships, learning, personal development and ethics.
There is a false dichotomy in the business world between these two skill sets, and one of the professors obseved that one can be a good manager knowing hard or soft skills, but one can only be a good leader with both.
I have been thinking about this when today Rob Paterson posts an interview he did with the staff of silverorange, a tech firm in PEI. In the interview there was a great short summary of what it looks like in the real world when hard and soft skills blend:
Do you have a financial plan at all?
“Yes and no – most business plans are also based on a fantasy that you can predict the future in detail. Most also set tight goals when the environment is shifting that is also very risky. You can get trapped doing the wrong thing very hard when the environment has changed.
Instead, we set broad goals. (here is a link to Dan’s view of how best to plan for the future) In the context of never being able to know the future in detail we…(quote from Dan’s post) have no master plan at silverorange. The cat is out of the bag! We do however have broad goals and ideals that factor into our daily, monthly, and yearly decisions. We always have these goals and ideals in mind. We also make decisions the good old fashioned way. The necessary people sit as equals and hammer it out. Often the conversation becomes heated, in the good way. When we are done the best decision has been made for us.
When I look back over the past seven years of silverorange I see a route that has veered its way around tremendous obstacles, some we saw coming, and others we had no idea that we were dodging. Our process of quick, frequent, and small decision making has led us down a safe and secure path.
If I was an investor I would know that you pulled your cash flow projections out of your ass. I wouldn’t care. I would look for the following:
- What are the overall goals & ideals that you are striving for?
- Has you surrounded yourself with a team that can hammer out good small decisions?
- Are you willing to have your idea bend, warp, & mutate based on frequent, small, decisions?
I propose that we all change to process and people based business plans. One, maybe two pages at most.”
The religion of scientific materialism has privileged data over intuition, but the silverorange team is calling for a change, for a balance. It’s great to see this happening in business, and in business schools.
[tags]Rob Paterson, silverorange, business skills[/tags]
A few days ago I posted an entry on why banning homework would be a good idea. Today, after an interview with a reporter and a nice session with a photographer, we’re on the front page of the National Post.
Reporter Anne Marie Owens contacted me after I posted on the topic and followed up on some of the comments over at Rob Paterson’s blog (where all the good conversation is on this stuff). Anne Marie used a couple of us to illustrate a nice review of recent research on the topic.
Those that read here know that we engage in life learning with our kids, sometimes called unschooling. Amanda Cockshutt is the other parent quoted in the article and she is campaigning within the school system in New Brunswick to have homework reduced. At Rob’s blog she tells her story:
Homework has been a revolting experience for us the past year. My son was in grade 2 last year and would routinely spend an hour on the “20 minutes” the teacher assigned every night. Boring? Unbelievable. When I approached the school about it, I got a huge great justification of the process, with the usual arguments about making good habits… What really got me though, was the suggestion that after 20 minutes we stop and send a note that it hadn’t been completed, after all, it was the process not the product that was important. Now, I’m no raging capitalist, but I know that we live in a product driven society. I also know from my experience teaching university, that I don’t really care how long the student took to complete the assignment, it was the product that was graded not the time it took. If the lesson that students are to learn is that they can call it quits when the time is up, then we are sliding down a very slippery slope indeed.
What’s useful to know is that there are options. If you’re in school and you think homework is worse than a bad idea, you might be surprised to learn that many educators are actually on your side, as Anne Marie’s article points out. And there are lots of teachers and local school folks that are thinking carefully about all this.
And of course, there is always the option to do what we do and unschool, homelearn or life learn. That’s a whole other trip, but one that I have never regretted taking. It’s a rich and deep experience creating and supporting autodidacts and life learners in our family.
Thanks to Alex for getting this idea started all the way from Denmark, and for Rob and Matthew and Amanda and Anne Marie for hosting and engaging in the conversation.
[tags] homework, National Post[/tags]
From whiskey river
Only to a magician is the world forever fluid,
infinitely mutable and eternally new.
Only he knows the secret of change.
Only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness
to become something else
and it is from this universal tension
that he draws his power.
My friend Alex Kjerulf today has a post about homework that I am in complete agreement with. He points to this TIME magazine story which, to an unschooling parent, is no news at all.
I already don’t send my kids to school, which we can do here in Canada. It’s called unschooling. BUT if for some reason my kids did go to school I would do what I have advocated others do and that is, I would refuse to allow the school to assign them homework. It is not simply the fact that kids are overworked. There are four other reasons why homework would be banned at my house.1. They learn nothing from doing it. It is not homework that reinforces an idea or a skill, it is developing a passion for something and then having the time to follow it through that does the trick. Homework is a waste of time.
2. Schools already steal six hours or more a day from a child’s life. If they can’t do what they need to do in six hours, it is not my child’s responsibility to gives them more time. It seems to me that homework is not for kids to learn, it’s for schools to shift the responsibility. Teachers don’t get marked on how useful classroom time is, but kids get marked on whether they did their homework or not. That means a lot of classroom stuff that isn’t working is allowed to continue as long as kids do their homework.
3. Homework is an infringemnent on family time. Many of the big media that would otherwise say that homework is important also decry the fact that kids aren’t spending enough time talking with their families. It is not possible to create an atmosphere of deep family connection when parents and the kids are all working three or four hours a night at home. You need many hours together, playing games, reading books, fixing the house together, going to movies, conversing and cooking for friends to have a healthy and balanced family life. Being together only on weekends is like getting a two day pass from prison.
4. Homework robs children of the time they need to develop real skills and passions. When I was in school for example, I taught myself music theory and theology during my grade 11 year. I wasn’t taking either of these subjects at school, and I set aside a lot of homework to learn them. I failed several exams at Christmas 1985 because instead of studying, I was writing four part harmony arrangments of Queen songs and reading Martin Buber. Both of those experiences have stayed with me long after I can even remember what classes I took at school that year, and both continue to be useful in my life.
So, as we enter another “school year” my radical proposal is that those of you who want that time back with your kids, claim it back. And once you’ve gone a year without homework, it might give you the steel to rise up next year and opt out of standardized testing (which in British Columbia you can do, you know…with the support of teachers too, who really know the costs of this stuff).
And don’t forget parents, you need to set the example. Leave work at work! It’s no good having kids come home expecting some family time and have you under house arrest by your boss too!
Update: Rob Paterson has taken up the call and there are some great comments in his post from folks campaigning to ban homework in Atlantic Canada. I weighed in on a second post he has made
Update: A commenter at Rob’s site pointed to a nice post from Brian Alger from a couple of years ago on this topic as well. There’s nothing new about this, obviously!
[tags]homework[/tags]