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Welcome parents and staff of Cederbrook Elementary. I appreciate all of you being here tonight. It is standard practice at our school, indeed, at most schools everywhere, to issue daily homework assignments. Beginning in kindergarten, students are assigned tasks that typically take about 15 minutes to complete. With each grade level, the complexity and quantity of the assignments increases, to a maximum of about 2 hours per night for our grade eight students. Recently, this practice has been called into question. Spearheading this debate is parent and child psychologist Jaime Lee. According to Lee, numerous studies have pointed to the detrimental impacts of daily homework. Indeed, increasingly in her practice, she is seeing these impacts. Many of her younger clients are experiencing high levels of stress, poor physical health, and feelings of isolation, with the long hours of homework after long days at school being the primary cause. According to Lee, these results are not surprising when you consider what children are giving up in order to manage their daily workloads, time with family, time with friends, time for themselves. For Lee, a child’s time after school should be unstructured. She contends daily homework leads to an overemphasis on academics that fails to address all of the developmental needs of children. Arnold Blake, president of Cederbrook Elementary’s parent council, disagrees. For Blake, homework time is quality time with his child. In fact, sitting with his daughter while she does her homework is one of their favourite times of day. He appreciates knowing what his daughter is learning at school, what interests her, and what she finds challenging. Additionally, Blake believes this one-on-one attention, in the comfort of her own home, is crucial to his daughter’s learning. While, initially, his daughter struggled at school, her academic performance has gotten much better since Blake became more involved. He believes that her daily assignments have played a large role in this change. While Blake acknowledges a balance must be maintained, he does not feel his daughter’s development has been adversely impacted. In contrast, he has seen an increase in her confidence, a fact which has benefited all aspects of her life. In consideration of both perspectives, perhaps something we need to consider is the frame of mind of parents and children. If both the parent and child feel positive about the task, I believe homework can be a great way to improve grades and involve parents in their child’s learning. However, if either party feels negative, a fifteen-minute assignment can easily turn into a two-hour disciplinary nightmare. This would clearly be counterproductive. I’ll now open the floor for discussion.
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