Monday 28 July 2008

Homework

'A new report from the General Teaching Council for England suggests that although many parents would like to be involved in their child's learning, they don't think they have the right knowledge and skills to properly do so.' (Times, and, no, I can't be bothered to sort out that mess of a sentence from a 'professional' writer.)

The whole point about homework is that it substitutes for the lack of hours in the school day for repetition and for the working out of examples following the taught blue print. It should not be used for such undertakings as 'research' projects, or accession to new material or for recouping parts of the curriculum untaught for various reasons - usually classroom disruption. So why are parents feeling unable to help? Sit there with the reading book, spelling list, tables, number bonds, poetry by heart, to be learned, and refuse them their tea until they have memorised the necessary. Is that so hard? No.

Faced with collecting material on 'Castles, their uses and abuses in the history of the British Isles and elsewhere compared and contrasted', or, ' define the proper use of the ablative absolute with at least 5 examples from latin texts you have studied', and who does not blench?

Tea first, I can do tea, then they were on their own.

8 comments:

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

They're just relying on kids Googling these subjects Hats.

The only time I can recall a teacher saying anything nice about my homework, was when my Dad bought me a new fountain pen from the local shop (you could then - and this was 1956), and I spent ages writing something in my best handwriting.

Whatever happened to Prep...

hatfield girl said...

Fountain pens Scroblene! and propelling pencils with spare leads, and a clip for pockets; I had one made of silver from my father but someone took my bag in the underground and that was that - used a bic ever since.

Prep was for borders. Day girls did homework.

Anonymous said...

Wave..

I suspect that the Times report is completely accurate, if for no other reason than that the vast majority of today's parents are the products of 1970s/80s Comprehensive schooling and they really do not have the useful overall general knowledge our parents had to help the likes of Mr O'Blene (as I have seen him called elsewhere!) and me. These days the kiddiwinks have to refer to their grandparents for proper educational assistance.

I had a black Parker 51 set (pen, pencil and biro) given to me for my 21st birthday. Several hundred years later, they are still going strong!

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

I was given a steel clutch pencil by a chum who worked for Laings - and it really is a joy to use...

My favourite Parker biro, given to me by Mrs S all those years ago also went somewhere on the tube. If anyone ever finds it please could they post it back...

hatfield girl said...

All these beloved writing tools, and remembered so clearly, right back to infancy. We were required to use nibbed pens, a class thing I suspect because biros were ubiquitous and effective, although exaggerated handwriting effects were frowned on.

Black ink, plain white or perhaps cream paper, address ranged right, clear hand, and a rigidly governed set of salutations and sign-offs.

'Hi' and 'love' (from almost complete strangers) has pushed it all into the past. It is surprising how rustily writing works when formal letters require paper and ink. Sometimes I wonder what my handwiting might have looked like now, after years of constant use, in all its fluency as a daily workhorse, instead of its substitution by computer keyboard. It has frozen into the 'proper' hand demanded in those letter-writing lessons years ago.

Waves back to Nomad.

Anonymous said...

I taught my children to read using th Ladybird series... the school math was rubbish.

Raedwald said...

Ah, I remember my first year at boarding school we were given a half-term geography assignment to collect the labels from wine bottles by soaking them off and pasting them in our work books.

The sixties had barely passed, and wine at home was Sunday lunch only. I gazed wistfully at my single label - an unremarkable Burgundy - and confessed my misgivings to my father. The following day an army 4-tonner rolled up to the house and a pair of mess stewards jumped from the back unloading crate after crate of empty wine bottles.

I'm sure there were a Petrus, Brane Cantenac and a few Margaux amongst them. And the volume of labels also earned me a strange respect from our geography master ....

hatfield girl said...

All right. What's a steel clutch pen. Scroblene?

Are you collecting other things R? I recall a remark on Croydonian about a tram tickets album. Now we hear of wine labels. I still have my notebook of train numbers spotted passing beneath the Twentieth Mile Bridge, but its survival is fortuitous.

Reading is more a willingness to learn than a difficulty; if the learner gets the point of books, in goes the effort. If not it's a mystery process with no prize. I still read in huge vacuumed-up sections, desperate to consume the story. It took a long time to grasp that the writing might be of interest too. And that wasn't Ladybird's fault - anything and everything was up for being read. So learning to read M, is probably different for each of us. Which might explain 40% illiteracy at 11.