The excess of duties is a reality that more and more families complain about. Four months ago, and just as an example, one mother reached nearly 100.000 signatures on her petition through the «Change. org ". His message was clear and resounding: boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 should not have homework to take home. During school hours, enough tasks are carried out so that they have to extend their hours even more.
If we think about it, our children already have "adult" schedules. They are unable to disconnect from classroom tasks, their leisure time is limited, homework erodes his childhood in the face of excessive pressure that forces them to get to bed in time, without having enjoyed a few hours of leisure, or simple rest. They "forget" to be children to be people affected by "multitasking" or multiprocessing, a dimension whose effects have serious consequences on the child's brain. We talk about it in «Mothers Today».
Duties in excess, when we cross the limit of the pedagogical
It seems that we have reached a point where many schools forget a vital aspect: children need to play to grow. However, today most schools and their teachers conceive study and school work as a priority that should be extended beyond school hours.
The current problem that many children live would be, broadly speaking, the following.
- They do not feel a disconnect between the classroom and home. The two scenarios become spaces where you can achieve goals, accomplish tasks and feel the anxiety that many times, they cannot fulfill what is asked of them.
- Children's schedules are hardly different from those of an adult. Sometimes many parents are surprised by the fact that all subjects establish a certain number of assignments.
- There is no consensus and agreement between different curricular areas when it comes to regulating or prioritizing a specific type of homework. The music area guides its duties, as well as the plastic, social, language and computer science areas.
- Finishing classes means for many children, starting other extracurricular activities. If we add to this the issue of homework, the level of stress to which they can fall is worrying.
- Families become that indispensable support when carrying out homework. They supervise, attend and help. It is therefore "an obligation" that in many can exceed us. In fact, Family stress due to excess duties is very common in our society.
Consequences for the child of excessive homework
Francesco Tonucci, one of the most interesting educational psychologists of our time, is clear about it: homework is a pedagogical mistake and an abuse. The reason? The reality is that the objectives they seek are not always achieved.
- Homework would be useful for those students with learning disabilities or who need to reinforce the instrumental areas. However, in many cases these students also need help at home to fulfill them, and not all families have the time or are not able to offer the support that the child needs.
- Children who suffer from excessive homework throughout Primary, lose their childhood. Our children need the game to learn and grow, beyond the teaching hours a child should have as homework "accumulate experiences, feelings and positive emotions."
- At present, the only thing that their brains integrate is the stress of reaching some goals: doing those problems, those multiplications, doing that writing, doing the social diagrams and answering the natural questions ... After that, you will only have time for dinner , and in many cases, poor sleep because they have not been able to answer everything.
- We must bear in mind that children's neural structures are maturing in these very important early stages. Allowing a child to grow up with the same pressure as an adult causes anxiety, inattention and emotional management problems. You have to consider this.
Homework yes or homework no?
Homework is convenient but always in the right measure and oriented towards one goal: to reinforce the areas of learning, especially the instrumental ones, but without vetoing the moments of leisure and growth of the child outside the classroom.
In 2012, the OECD (European Organization for Economic Cooperation) carried out an interesting study on the subject of duties, reaching these conclusions:
- Spain, after Russia and Poland, are the countries that put the most homework on students between 6 and 12 years old (more than 6,5 hours a week in many cases).
- A greater load of duties, greater rejection by children. To this, we add the support of the parents who deal with the fatigue and - boredom - of the children to fulfill their tasks. Little by little he falls into a cycle of stress and discomfort.
- The Spanish Confederation of Associations of Parents of Students (Onion), is against the duties and denounces that they have become "an extension of the school day."
Possible solutions
Above all, we need a consensus between educational organizations where teachers, professors, psychologists and the associations of mothers and fathers reach a logical and, above all, pedagogical agreement.
The axes on which we should reflect would be the following:
- Homework should not be a substitute for class assignments, but rather a complement to reinforce what has been learned focused in another, more playful, more interesting way.
- When a child sees his schedule full of homework, he automatically becomes stressed and motivation and interest decline. Homework should never be a source of stress or anguish.
- Homework should be aimed at reinforcing what has been learned, helping the child to train in effort, organization and time planning. Now all of it it can be accomplished as long as the tasks are ATTRACTIVE AND MOTIVATING.
- An idea to keep in mind, and already carried out by other European countries, is to make use of the «research projects»As a form of duty. The child is asked to investigate a topic. That topic can integrate all areas of the curriculum. Something like this can increase your interest, make you autonomous when it comes to seek information and see himself as an ACTIVE AGENT of his learning.
The duties that our children bring today the only thing they generate is dependence on the family to realize them, frustration, low self-esteem and a high level of stress. We need to reformulate this aspect. The excess of homework is not pedagogical, but affects the child's own health (and their families).