Education, Education, Education...

I have blogged about my feelings on the subject of primary school kids doing homework before now(http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2005/11/homework-heaven.html), namely I think it is a total waste of time, and worse still something else to bash us poor beleagured mothers over the heads with. (Sound familiar Mad Muthas???).

The way my childrens' schools operate, they start getting homework in Year One. When they're FIVE, for god's sake. This usually consists of one sheet for practising handwriting (which we never get through without a huge row ensuing, along the lines of my hand hurts - I'm not bleeding surprised, are you?), a piece of maths (or numeracy as we now have to call it) and a piece of English (or in brave new world eduspeak, literacy). This is actually more then the older kids get when they go into the juniors. So for the past two years, as no 3 struggles through her homework on a Friday, no 2 who is two years older sits and contemplates her navel (or more likely plays with her new dollshouse) as the only homework she gets is spellings, which are so laughably easy, she never even has to learn them.

Years 5 & 6 I have discovered to my chagrin are, to paraphrase Cap'n Jack in Torchwood, where it all changes. From no homework we suddenly leap to homework three times a week and punitive measures if it is not completed. The kids get three lifelines a year, and lose one each time they forget to do their homework. When they've lost them all they get a detention. Last year, no 1 lost one for not bringing in some silver foil for a science project. And get this. It WASN'T her fault. I was busy sorting out packed lunches, she asked me to get her some foil (which sits on top of a cupboard she can't reach), I said, yes, yes, in a minute, and promptly forgot, Spouse was taking them to school and rushed them out of the door, so she forgot her blasted tin foil, and lost a life in the process. As the Yanks say, go figure.

Year 5's literacy homework also nearly did my head in being as it mainly involved writing a novel. Ok, ok, I should be pleased about this, but... every week no 1 wrote a chapter in class, it was marked, and then, GET THIS, the literacy book came home for the whole thing to be typed up on the computer. Because of course, we have to make things look good even if they're crap (actually it was rather good, but it wasn't tidy), so everything gets printed off from the computer and put in a glossy file under the mistaken impression that this somehow makes the work better. It doesn't. No wonder so many young authors think that if they present their work in a spangly fashion, with a myriad of different typefaces that clash wildly, it will make them noticed. (It won't - plain and simple is still always the best approach, and if you can't write making it jazzy won't fool an editor, but that's another story.)

Our children are being encouraged from the moment they can tap a keyboard that all they need to do is key any old rubbish in, and so long as it looks good enough they will be rewarded for their efforts. And most importantly of course, if they are doing a project, they must go to that fount of all knowledge, the internet. Never mind that they might end up plagiarising stuff, or that alot of the information they find comes from very dubious sources (like one of no 1's friends telling me solemnly aged 7 that she'd learnt on the internet that Mary Queen of Scots was Henry VII's daughter), the point is the internet is being held up like the Holy Grail, and no other source of information is good enough. I feel immensely sorry for the poor sods whose parents can't afford a computer, and believe me, even in leafy Surrey they do exist. I'm not saying computers should be excluded by the way, just they don't have to be the first point of call, and kids should be encouraged to interpret the information they get from them, not regurgitate it pe se.

Given those are my views, you can see how delighted I was to read in yesterday's papers that some think tank has come up with the notion that primary school children don't benefit from homework. Yay, yay, and double yay! I knew I wasn't alone in this thought. In the tv bulletin I saw the other night, I even heard a teacher say it causes too much stress at home. Too bloody right it does. You should have seen the steam coming out of my ears the other night, when far from having no homework (as is normal) no 2 suddenly announced one Wednesday night after she'd been to brownies, when it was too late to do it, that she had an art project to be completed the next day (or risk losing a lifeline - apparently this pernicious system has worked it's way down to year 4). However, she did get up at 6 the next day to do it, so I suppose she learnt something about the importance of deadlines.

I do hope that this report gets taken seriously. Our kids are over tested, over stressed and pushed enough at school, and since the advent of SATs and the National Curriculum, a lot of what they learn is less about the knowledge they gain and more about their ability to press the right buttons. Like rats in a run, if they can make the light go red, then they tick the boxes prescribed by an unimaginative and anti-intellectual government. By the way Nic, if you're reading, I am definitely not blaming teachers for this - the system is at fault, not you guys, who in the main do an incredibly difficult job in ever more complex circumstances. (That doesn't apply to the teachers who are currently teaching nos 1 &3 for their SATs tests in May, who are so caught up in the whole thing they can no longer see how barking it is to say about a child, as one of them said to me in September, she's only a 2b, she'll have to work much harder to get a 3, like I really care...)

The sooner someone says no homework for the under 11s the better say I. I never had to do homework at primary school and I seem to have ended up reasonably educated. And at least it will give me one less thing to clash with the sprogs on...

On the subject of my own homework. You will notice the counter still hasn't moved. I know. I know. I have had other work to do this week, all right. I hope to have achieved something by Friday....