Pencils Down? French Plan Would End Homework.

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Ninja'd

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http://www.npr.org/2012/12/02/166193594/pencils-down-french-plan-would-end-homework

In the name of equality, the French government has proposed doing away with homework in elementary and junior high school. French President Francois Hollande argues that homework penalizes children with difficult home situations, but even the people whom the proposal is supposed to help disagree.

It's 5:30 p.m. and getting dark outside, as kids pour out of Gutenberg Elementary School in Paris 15th arrondissement. Parents and other caregivers wait outside to collect their children. Aissata Toure, 20, is here with her younger sister in tow. She's come to pick up her 7-year-old son. Toure says she's against Hollande's proposal to do away with homework.

"It's not a good idea at all because even at a young age, having individual work at home helps build maturity and responsibility," she says, "and if it's something they didn't quite get in school, the parents can help them. Homework is important for a kid's future."

Toure lives with her son, her little sister and her mother in public housing near the school. On the surface, it seems just the sort of family environment that might put a child at a disadvantage. Yet Toure says she sits down with her son every night, even though she's in law school and has her own studies.

"Poor people want homework because they know that school is very important, and the only chance — the only possibility — they have to give their children a better life is if their children succeed at school," says Emmanuel Davidenkoff, editor-in-chief of L'Etudiant, a magazine and website devoted to French school and education.

An Educational Divide

Davidenkoff says the Socialist government doesn't seem to understand the concerns of the working and middle class and in the name of equality, got it all wrong.

"Mostly, wealthy people don't want homework because when the kids are at home, they make sports or dance or music. They go to the museums, to the theater. So they have this access to culture, which is very important," he says. "In poor families, they don't have that, so the only link they have with culture and school is homework."

Elisabeth Zeboulon sits in her office over the playground. Today, she's the principal at a private, bilingual school in Paris, but she spent most of her career in French public schools. Zeboulon says the centralized French education system doesn't leave much room for trying different teaching methods.

"The kids are very different from one place to another, from one school to another, and we don't have much way of adapting," she says. "And whenever they start saying, 'Well in this place we could do this, in that place we could do that,' then you have a lot of people coming up and saying, 'Look, it's not equal.' "

Infusing Happiness

Cutting homework is just part of an effort aimed at making primary and secondary school a happier, more relaxed place for children. The school week will be lengthened — currently, French children have Wednesdays off — but the school day will be shortened. Kids get out so late here there's no time for extracurricular activities. Basically, French school is a grind, says Peter Gumbel, author of a scathing book on the education system in France.

"There's an enormous amount of pressure, and it's no fun whatsoever. There's no sport or very little sport, very little art, very little music. Kids don't have a good time at all," he says. "And it's not about building self-confidence and encouraging them to go out and discover the world. It's much more about, sit down and we'll fill your empty heads with our rather dull and old-fashioned knowledge."

There's another big reason the French government is making changing school policy a top priority, Gumbel says.

"The French are discovering — to their horror — that their performance internationally has been declining over the last 10 years. The French actually are performing [worse] than the Americans in reading and science," he says.

This is a huge shock, Gumbel says, to a country that long considered itself an education pioneer.
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Mandatory comment: wut?

*sees Motshekga making notes*
 
What if they replaced homework with a 2 hour prep session every day? Like you get in hostels, only for everyone.

The thing is, you need some sort of homework, because kids need practice to apply lessons that they have learned. But, no reason it has to be done at home.
 
Cutting homework is just part of an effort aimed at making primary and secondary school a happier, more relaxed place for children. The school week will be lengthened — currently, French children have Wednesdays off
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LOL. Typical socialists. Lazy about everything.
 
Aissata Toure, 20, is here with her younger sister in tow. She's come to pick up her 7-year-old son.
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She clearly didn't have enough homework when she was at school. :erm:
 
I went to a no-homework primary school .. can't remember the exact times but there was an extra homework period after school for the day where everyone did their homework for the next day. Bonus was never having to take your books & stuff home.

Was a splendid idea & look just how great I turned out!
 
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Khan Academy has an interesting idea regarding how to teach. They prefer to offer up videos explaining a topic, that the student can watch at home, while the homework gets done in class with the teacher present to help if the student has any trouble grasping the subject.
They have also turned learning into a game with achievements like one would get on Steam, PS3 or Xbox, and this system allows people to learn at their own pace, instead of the pace being decided up front by people creating a syllabus for "generic student"
It allows people to move ahead through the course work faster if they are capable, or take their time if they are having trouble understanding.
 
Some homework is good I reckon, you need practice. In high school we had way to much homework, I just refused to do so much stuff, so I either copied or said 'I did not have time' which ended up in caning which I would take over killing myself with homework. Only homework I really concentrated on was math & science.
 
There should be homework, but it should be the more right-brain, more creative oriented version of the dry, analytical course work learned during the school day, along the lines of what Mouse posted. The presentation, materials, tone, etc. of homework should be designed to stimulate creativity, some degree of passion and some degree of self-generated interest, instead of being just more dry, stultifying, factual data after a day at school learning dry, stultifying, factual data. Passion and interest facilitate learning. Developing that at school can be difficult and perhaps not the right place for the former anyway. School should be a place to present the factual material, home the place where the student, in a relaxed home setting, can start to develop a personal, passionate interest about the material away from the mildly stressful, somewhat chaotic school milieu.
 
I always did my homework during class or during lunch at school so I didn't have to do it in the afternoon.
 
Ninja'd said:
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/02/166193594/pencils-down-french-plan-would-end-homework



Mandatory comment: wut?

*sees Motshekga making notes*
Click to expand...

Seems like government dictating to people on the basis of fairness. Next up, let's blind everyone because some people are born blind.

Yes it makes sense to disadvantage others because some people don't have it as well.

What's worse of course is the audacity and fascist approach of this guy to this. But the French wanted this, let China, which is not banning homework but increasing it, prevail. Viva La France! Viva Karl Marx!
 
i never did any homework, even though i was supposed to. My woodwork teacher used to cane me every Thursday. When he started collected homework, i would just get up and go stand by his desk ready to get caned. No idea how i ever got matric. The other teachers didn't bother. Although I remember my English teacher(very hot :D) asked me to do a speech because I never had a year mark. Cant remember the mark, but I passed.

My teachers where shocked every year when I passed. Stunned when I got my matric. But then again it was so p**s easy. I always thought homework for those who wheren't so smart :D

And when I got my degree, at my graduation, my dad was grinning and he said to me "How the f**ck did you manage that ?"

PS, I have to admit though, I regret not trying harder. These days I am addicted to knowledge. So much to learn. I wish I had started earlier. I have desire to get degrees etc. just want to know things :D
 
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zippy said:
i never did any homework, even though i was supposed to. My woodwork teacher used to cane me every Thursday. When he started collected homework, i would just get up and go stand by his desk ready to get caned. No idea how i ever got matric. The other teachers didn't bother. Although I remember my English teacher(very hot :D) asked me to do a speech because I never had a year mark. Cant remember the mark, but I passed.

My teachers where shocked every year when I passed. Stunned when I got my matric. But then again it was so p**s easy. I always thought homework for those who wheren't so smart :D

And when I got my degree, at my graduation, my dad was grinning and he said to me "How the f**ck did you manage that ?"

PS, I have to admit though, I regret not trying harder. These days I am addicted to knowledge. So much to learn. I wish I had started earlier. I have desire to get degrees etc. just want to know things :D
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Julius that you? :p :D

Most of the stuff in school was boring that's why I only did my math & science homework, the rest of the stuff I could not give a toss about, I did not even have text books for many of my subjects for the last two years.
 
It's 5:30 p.m. and getting dark outside, as kids pour out of Gutenberg Elementary School in Paris
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They finish school at 5:30pm and are still expected to do homework, WTF!
 
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