Homework or no homework, that is the question

Sometimes I feel like living in two different worlds and I’m not talking about languages or culture in a general sense.  My girls attend a progressive education school that embraces the philosophy of constructivism.  Their learning is hands on, project based and cooperative.  There are no tests or grades on their work, just portfolio with samples of their work recording what they have learned.  After 6 years of schooling, my older daughter learned how to work with different people, motivate her teammates, resolve conflicts, and tutor her peers.  They don’t have much homework and rarely do any worksheets in school and after school.  With all the free time after school, they spend their time playing, baking, drawing, making crafts, and lately watching TV, going online, and playing video games.

 

Many of my Chinese friends have their kids attending private schools or prestigious local public schools.  Their children take tests, do hours of homework and worksheets, and go to after school programs to be drilled again in math, reading, writing, and Chinese.  They have grades for everything and think about applying for famous universities early on.  From what I learned by chatting with the parents, the learning in these schools is not cooperative but competitive.  In the after school programs, they often preview the math concepts for the next year during summer and then review the content and perfect their math skills during the year.

 

Coming from the traditional educational system in Taiwan, I have a hard time dealing with school without homework, and learning without rote memorization.  Therefore, we provide supplemental homework to enhance our girls’ arithmetic proficiency and have them memorizing multiplication tables.  We can’t do much with their language art since we are not English native speakers.  I read to them every day since they were babies, though.  By the time they were in 2^nd grade, they’ve become avid readers and are advanced in their reading skills.  It’s also fortunate that our girls can learn correct spelling purely from reading and word analysis.  My older daughter didn’t have any spelling tests until this year in 5^th grade.  When her teacher started testing the names of the 50 states and their capitals, some parents were questioning his methodology, considering it violating the philosophy of constructivism

 

I love how my girls enjoy going to school and are quite adept at dealing with social problems.  Their creativity is limitless and they are kind and helpful, quite different from what I had experienced at school.  When I was growing up, I gave up all my free time just so I could get good grades and eventually passed the test to get into a good high school and university.  I used to love reading but schooling took that away.  For a long time, I only read textbooks and avoid reading if it’s not going to be in the tests.  It was not until 20 years later, I started enjoying reading again.  I don’t want my children to walk the same path and experience the same loss as I did.  Yet, looking at them spending more and more time online and on watching TV, I cannot help but feel that something is not right.  I think that they need to learn a lot more basics now rather than wait until those basics become relevant later in their life.  Yet, at the same time, I don’t want them to memorize a lot of useless facts to pass the test and forget them afterwards.  All I want is to seek the middle ground, for them to enjoy the fun of learning as well as manage the pressure of examinations and homework.

 

 

Before the school was over, my husband told my older daughter that he was going to give her a challenge, doing 3 to 4 hours of homework every day, 5 days a week.  The workload includes reading, researching, writing essay, math worksheets, Chinese, and projects (my younger daughter has a similar challenge, but less work).  We also set a limit on their daily screen time.  At first, I’m a little hesitant because all their friends are going to enjoy summer without doing any homework.  Yet, as the first week passing by, I saw her showing pride in her accomplishment in completing a presentation or an essay. Mmmm, maybe this is okay….  As parents, we want the best for our children but we will never know if what we do are the best.  Even with the uncertainty, I still feel hopeful and that my girls are learning and accomplish more than what I’ve done in a less “painful” way.