The answer is a 100% YES!
Education is one of the rare ‘no switch-off business’ and school education is much more so. Children are formally expected to continue the ‘business of learning’, initiated or choreographed at school, outside of school too. Homework is the critical connect between schools and the outside world; in the form of activities such as reading at home, exercises, projects, play, observing parents’ lives as well as the cultural elements of the neighbourhood.
Education is one of the rare ‘no switch-off business’ and school education is much more so. Children are formally expected to continue the ‘business of learning’, initiated or choreographed at school, outside of school too. Homework is the critical connect between schools and the outside world; in the form of activities such as reading at home, exercises, projects, play, observing parents’ lives as well as the cultural elements of the neighbourhood.
A better homework will be to require students to pre-read the content of the syllabus ahead of the planned sessions in class and to revise the contents of the classwork of the day. A significant part of the assignments, experiments, activities or projects should be done as classwork.
In the Indian context, this ‘flipped homework and classwork’ would transform the educational quality and de-stress homes (parents as well as children) in ways we cannot even imagine now. For example:
a. (Compulsory) Reading as the primary homework content across subjects means pushing harder for a reading revolution
b. Tuition-free homes – there would be no compelling need for tuitions because tuition would not even be a distant solution for support in reading as homework; tuition is often sought to get all homework questions and activities neatly and correctly done.
c. Putting an end to ‘negative parenting’ as parents cannot make the projects or write book summaries on behalf of children.
d. Teachers will be able to ‘see with their own eyes’ the actual solutions and projects done by every student and devise the best strategies to help every student.’
e. Reading as the primary homework’ is surprisingly child-friendly too! Children’s response to our flipped class experiments has been a success beyond words in some ways; for instance, lower the class, the better the reception to the idea of pre-reading content before the scheduled session in class but the majority of Class IX and X students finds pre-reading to be really difficult!
Say YES to new-age homework and NO to the current practices of homework. And START NOW for your child!
