The Analects and “Homework”
Some day, I hope to get around to a review of The End of Homework – a manifesto for a long-overdue rebellion.
Until then, a haphazard thought: Where do we get off calling it “homework”“?
“Schoolwork” is work you do at school. Homework should mean doing the dishes or raking the yard. Depending on the assignment and your point of view, this thing we mistakenly call “homework” is
- Schoolwork you didn’t get done, and your 504 plan says you have to get recess, so your teacher makes you take it home
- A math worksheet some misguided soul who hasn’t heard about calculators thinks will finally pound the multiplication tables through your thick skull
- An overpressured teacher’s response to “accountability” and the upcoming multiple-guess tests that will determine whether her school is acceptable
- A belief that since a certified professional can’t cover everything he’s required to cover during his work day, maybe parents can do it when they get home from theirs, coupled with an apparent assumption that a six-to-seven-hour work day isn’t long enough for a nine-year-old
- A notion that family dinners, play time, and parent-child relationships are all dangerous activities, best extirpated before they inculcate bad habits
- A theory, based on some Greek myth no one can remember, about a guy named Responsibilius, that homework builds character.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone …. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
From The Analects of Confucius, Book 13, Verse 3 (James R. Ware, translated in 1980)
(Worth looking at in its fuller form, and with the Chinese )
Well, I’m open to suggestions as to a correct name for “homework.”
* School Spill?
* Daily Evening Student Punishment? (DESPerate)?
* “That stuff we used to fight about every night, before we took control of our evenings"?
Comments
Add a comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I have another suggestion: Homework is work that needs to be done individually, banished from a school setting where everything has to be done en masse. I think it’s fair to ask a student to write a paper. But when are they going to be able to work on a paper during the school day, if students are always moving together as a group in lock step during class?
Interesting contrast: the strategy English classes take to this problem is to push the individual work into home time. The strategy art classes take is to make class time more individual, each student working on a unique project at a unique pace.
NPR ran a story about a school in Englewood Colorado, where students built a full-sized model of Thoreau’s cabin. The project incorporated every facet of traditional curriculum in holistic fashion. In this case, homework became an extention of naturally inspired interest, a continuum instead of disruption, where each student contributed unique perspective as part of a collective goal.
This seems a model for education at any age…
“The continuum reminds us that ideas have fuzzy boundaries, and that most things are not black-and-white but a matter of degree.”
Well, still grappling for a name for it: Following Paul, is Homework = One Work? If only it were – so often parent involvement comes into the evening’s School Spill – as often as enforcement as real help.
I think Paul’s insight about how different classes handle individual tasks bleeds into a very large question about school structure: Almost any modern work setting worth thinking about involves a continuum of settings: very individual desk work, ranging from intensely creative to management drudgery; highly varied team work, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes across continents; integration of the focus of related teams, sometimes with conflict, often with a need to work with specialists where part of the expertise isn’t shared; simultaneous work on more than one project or more than one component of an overall project, where the project has threaded components, which do or don’t occur in necessary sequence; the paperwork of project management; work media from the back of napkins to self-building project wikis – where can any of that be taught in traditional school structure?
Another example: In a teacher-driven, curriculum centered, convergent process setting, how can you possibly teach creative problem solving? It gets huge lip service, but reduces to work sheets with essentially convergent answers with no “feel of the real.”
The project Audrey mentions is a perfect counterexample. If an integrating, compelling school project leads a kid to bring home her thoughts or burn the lamp doing some research at home – not an assignment, but a personal need to learn and understand – that seems perfect. Of course that isn’t homework either, it’s more like “homeplay.”