8 year old girl humiliated over homework

The story of the 8 year old girl from Arizona who got humiliated over homework has gotten national attention. It was recently brought to my attention that over 63,000 people have commented on this item on a blog, most of them critical of the parent for not making her child get the homework done. This highlights clearly why it is so important for parents of homework-trapped children to have a means to give their children homework-relief. It also highlights why it is important to support other efforts, like the national PTA petition, to revise homework policies.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Homework Petition for the National PTA

In the past, I have recommended to my readers that they sign a petition calling on the National PTA to adopt homework policies. In today's video, I talk about the issue, not just the petition itself, but why it is important that the PTAs around the country be called upon to take on homework as an issue of concern.


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Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Student humiliated over homework problems

This incident took place in Arizona, but appears in a Kansas City article. I think of this as a tip-of-the-iceberg issue. I don't really fault the teacher who appears to have been trying to be playful with the students and things came out the wrong way. But there is a larger issue which is that children, everyday, are being faulted and humiliated over failing to get their homework done on the misguided assumption that they could do well, if they just tried. It is my experience that homework problems start as educational issues, get misperceived as behavioral problems with that misperception reinforcing the behavioral problems. The school gets mobilized because of the behavioral problems, and the child moves into a behavioral classroom where homework is no longer required. It is a destructive and roundabout way of giving children the homework relief they needed in the first place. These children get turned off to education when they could have thrived had the situation been better understood at the start. Here is my commentary on his particular news item:



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Giving weight to homework

Presently, teachers have wide range in determining the amount of homework, how to grade it, and the weight it has in the grade. Much of the debate centers on the type and amount of homework. I think its weight needs more discussion. There was a recent movement in Los Angeles to cap homework at 10% of the grade. I wrote an op-ed piece in the LA Daily News on that debate. It seems to me that a 10% limit on factoring homework into the grade along with a standard grade of 60% for homework not done would go far in reducing the severe penalties that go with homework noncompliance, send parents into a frenzy, and work counter to the goals of motivating children and helping them succeed at school. Even if the school does not accept this as across-the-board policy, It would still be helpful as a standard provision available in 504 plans.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Gail Collin's on Mitt Romney and Education

Gail Collins in The New York Times.

My comment:

To say we have a crisis in education begs the question of whether it’s a single educational crisis or a broader set of society-wide factors. Over the past 50 years we’ve moved to a global marketplace with our educational system shaped by us thinking about how we compete with others around the world. We have longstanding issues of race relations and efforts to have integrated schools thwarted up and down the line, starting with the school busing debate but continuing today in other forms. Our drug problem fosters distribution centers in urban neighborhoods where countless young people sacrifice their lives expecting no more than early death or incarceration. Our child protection system puts large amounts of resources into keeping children safe without clear evidence that they are safe, while often disrupting family life. And we have a tendency in response to take these converging social issues, to lay blame on teachers, and in turn lay blame on parents, when, in fact, it is honoring the natural hierarchies of the school and the home that are most central the long-term education and welfare of our children. Perhaps, I join the fray with my own focus on a single issue, homework, too much to the exclusion of the larger picture of interlocking forces. I think it is safe to say that these varied societal forces are intertwined.

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Homework and Prostate Cancer

A task force recently recommended against doing routine PSA testing. Despite these recommendations, urologists and prmary care physicians are not convinced. There are parallels here to the homework debate which I explain in this video.



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The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

For print copy, click below:

Homework and Behavior

I would like to comment on the issue of homework and behavior.  In a conversation I once had, a member of a child study team told me that about half of all children she dealt with who had behavioral problems showed those problems, first, through homework noncompliance. That’s an extraordinary amount, one which in my mind, calls for homework reform, if not for the whole school, at least for those children who are homework-trapped. Think about it. Schools are there to teach. Behavioral management, although necessary, interrupts the primary mission of schools, to teach our children. Imagine the positive impact it would have on education for all, if there were ways to reduce homework-generated behavior management problems. Well, I think there are, and they come through the simple ideas I suggest in my model. I explain it further in the video clip below, and encourage all parents of homework-trapped children to pass this clip on to members of your child’s school staff.

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The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

For print copy, click below:

Bill Gates and Teaching

Article in the New York Times

My thoughts:
 

This is an extremely sensible article, the most sensible part being the willingness to evaluate and change, not just teachers but the system of evaluation. I respect Gates’ willingness to look at what he did, question its success, and make adjustments. There is a difference between teaching and business where business success leads to profits for the company and good education leads to profits for students and society, so education lacks a pool of growing financial resources with which to reward good evaluations to all who deserve, lest they don’t have the pool of financial rewards to match the good evaluations. I like the notion of a balanced approach and I particularly like the recognition that student feedback is important. Business relies on the feedback, through opinions or behavior, of its customers, and there is no reason not to look at student opinions and behavior as good measures of success. We are often too quick to punish “bad behavior,” for example lateness, absenteeism, homework not done, then to look at it as the students’ way of giving feedback about the educations they receive. 

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Look at The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.

National PTA Homework Petition

There is a petition going around asking the National PTA to endorse homework guidelines at its coming annual meeting. I've read the petition. I endorse it and suggest you endorse it as well. I also think it is missing two very important recommendations. These are that there be time boundaries on homework and that parents are the final decision-makers for all matters in their homes. Certainly, the organizers of this movement have done a great job and should receive everyone's full support. It is a great first step. Still, let's not overlook those two, extremely important pieces for homework reform.




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Homework and standardized test debates

I think there is a strong overlap between the current debate over standardized tests and the debate over homework policy. Here is a comment I wrote to an article in The Washington Post. For me, this is the most important line in this article is “standardized tests also erode the student’s relationship with his or her teacher.” This is the intangible factor that puts standardized tests and homework in a common category as both interfere with relationships. In the end, child development is based on quality relationships between children and adults: strong relationships between children and their teachers, strong relationships between children and their parents. The fact that many parents value standardized testing does not outweigh the fact that many teachers are prevented from using their judgment and relating directly with their students any more than the fact that teachers (and many parents) value homework does not outweigh the fact that individual parents are living a nightmare, trying to be effective authorities with their own children, burdened by unrelenting homework pressures. Standardized testing and homework are essentially the same issues and need to be understood as such. Kenneth Goldberg, Ph.D. www.thehomeworktrap.com.



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Penalties, rewards, and the homework trap

The other day, I was asked to give an interview to a writer who is doing an article on consequences and rewards and how they affect academic performance. I was asked if this was something I thought I was qualified to discuss. The question struck me as odd, since the bulk of my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers, is about behavior and how consequences and rewards, applied to homework-trapped children, have a different effect than they are intended to have. I realized that people are so desperate for answers that the interest I’ve stirred focuses almost entirely on the solutions I propose. In the process, they may overlook the intricacies of reasoning behind those solutions. I want to emphasize that one main reason children get homework-trapped is because they are subject to the repetitive use of penalties that fail to change behaviors. I once heard that the definition of a good penalty is one that does not have to be used again.  After all, if the penalty changes the behavior, you don’t penalize again. Penalties that are used over and over again but fail to change behavior foster the acquisition of other behaviors geared to ward off the penalty. The homework-trapped child learns to lie, argue, forget, and procrastinate, and these reactions are effective in temporarily reducing the pressures that come to bear. We step back and get angry at the child without realizing that are demands are actually supporting what can become lifelong, destructive behaviors. Is this what we really want to teach our children?

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Using the Summer to Plan for Homework Next Year

With the summer around the corner, parents of homework trapped children, everywhere, plod on to the end, as they anticipate a brief period of relief. Even if the school sends summer work home, it’s not the same. It probably won’t get done, and unlike what happens during the school year, the consequences will be slight to none.
But now’s the time for parent to think of their own “homework” for their homework trapped children. What do you plan to do this summer so that next year won’t be the nightmare it has been?
My recommendation is to map out in your mind how you want the next year to unfold, and put it together in a very specific plan. Present it to the school, and, if you don’t feel you’ll get support, ask for a meeting and a 504 plan. The plan should have three primary components – time limited work, penalty reductions, and a clear statement that you are the head of your home. If your child is in middle school, there also ought to be an identified person in the role of a study skills teacher. For more information, watch my video.
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The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Messages for parents and teachers

On this blog post, I have posted four messages regarding The Homework Trap. Please excuse the amateur nature of this production.

Introduction

For parents of homework-trapped children

Using The Homework Trap as a model for 504 plans

The Homework Trap for Teachers

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The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

For print copy, click below:

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Teacher burnout

We can think of homework reduction as an act of kindness for teachers. Read this article on teacher burnout, http://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-to-avoid-teacher-burnout-andrew-miller, and consider how homework reduction can help teachers in the long run.

Here is the comment I posted for this article:

Good tips. I would add two comments. A sixth tip is to follow the concepts of the serenity prayer: to accept the things that are out of our control, act on the things that are in our control, and know the difference. The class is in the teacher’s control; the home is not. Each home is different. Each parent is different. We can stave off burnout by not getting overly invested in how parents behave and what students do in their homes. My other comment is to look at comment number 3, recognize the wisdom of putting boundaries on time, and then considering how that applies to students as well. Should they be working until their assignments are done? Or should they be working (on their homework) for a fixed amount of time and allowed to stop working when that time is up?

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Pressures to learn math

Here's an interesting article in The Washington Post. Here is the comment I left in response: I would like to add one other thought about the problem of core curriculum and pressuring everyone to learn math that they have trouble learning and do not need, and that is the harm it actually does to children. I happened to have been gifted in mathematics but am awful in carpentry and auto repair. My elementary school diagramas were pathetic, and I barely managed my cub scout whittling requirement. The fact that we had a simpler math curriculum when I was a child, did not keep me from learning higher mathematics, which was my major, when I went to college. I believe it would have been an assault to my self-esteem to have been forced through school to take shop classes beyond the few they gave me in high school. The reality is that everyone needs some knowledge in math to handle everyday life, just as it helps me to be able to do some minor home repairs (I can change light bulbs) without calling a repairman. Obviously, students need access to whatever math information they are going to need for daily life, that coincides with their interests, and that fosters the talents they naturally have. But constant pressure to do things one does not do well breeds anxiety and avoidance, and acting out behavior. We actually breed dysfunctional children by dominating their days and their evenings with things they don’t do well, while leaving them little time to nurture the things they do well, even if they are not things that are taught in school. Kenneth Goldberg, Ph.D. www.thehomeworktrap.com.
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Time to think about 504s

As summer draws to an end, it is time to think about what you want for your child next year. If you have had chronic homework problems, your child needs relief. Once there is homework relief, you can start observing rather than pressing your child, and consider what he needs in order to succeed. If he's already in middle school, you need for the school to have someone on their staff who can negotiate among the teachers so your child has priorities for using his limited homework time. I would back off from trying to micromanage the schools in deciding between good and bad homework in favor of giving them a fixed amount of time for homework to be done in your home, and leave it to them to decide among themselves what's the best way to use that limited time. Here's my recommendation for your 504 plan. I explain the psychological reasoning behind it, in detail, in my book:
1. Time bound homework. Require ten minutes per night per grade. Create homework sessions that start and stop with a clock.
2. Reduce penalties. Modify the penalties so that the child gets rewarded for the work he does and cannot fail because of homework that was not done.
3. In middle school, assign a study skills teacher. This teacher works with the student to develop study skills, provides extra time to complete assignments in school, works with the teachers at establishing priorities, and serves as the primary contact for the parents.
4. Recognize that the parent is the head of the home. Establish an understanding that in fine tuning their efforts to get the child on a positive track, teachers and parents will work together, but that for matters in the home, the parents are the ones who have the final say.
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On Teacher Education

I think that one of the most important, but little known issues, is that teachers do not have courses called “Homework” in their schools of education. I find that an odd paradox that a profession whose stated purpose is to educate others and studies the art and science of educating children would not consider it imperative to educate itself on one of its most widely used tools. It puts parents in the uncomfortable position of having to bring information to them about the current debate and the research behind it. I think parents and teachers both have a right to expect that teachers will have been fully oriented to the theory, research, and practice of homework before they begin their student teaching.

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Dangerous Legislation in Tennesssee

I think everyone should be alerted to the fact that the state of Tennessee passed legislation calling for the grading of parents by teachers on a "voluntary" basis. It is a dangerous precedent, and I am concerned that other states may follow its lead.  First of all, how voluntary can that truly be. If you are a parent, what do you do when you receive this contract with the packet of materials given out at the beginning of the school year? Stand out as the one who won't be graded?

The concept arose following research that showed an association between parent involvement and educational success. I don't doubt this is true, but that research is on behavior that is voluntary. I don't believe the researchers set up a double blind study putting parents in the participation group and others in the non-participation group. I don't think anyone studied the effects of coerced participation on education. I don't think anyone can tell if correlation means causation or if there are numbers of other factors that contribute to the student's education that are also associated by parents who actively participate. I don't think we've considered that there are many students who thrive having parents who choose to take a backseat on their children's education.

The point is that parental participation is good, and it is probably best when it occurs with parents and teachers relating on equal footing. This legislation alters the equal footing concept by putting the teacher in the position of grading the parent, and hence making that teacher an authority over the parent.

One of the key concepts in my model, The Homework Trap, is that homework distorts the hierarchical relationships between family and school. Children need to have their teachers in charge of their classrooms and their parents in charge of their homes. That's why homework does not cause problems when it does not cause problems. As long as the parents feel good about the homework their children are getting, there's no problem. It's when homework supplants the decision-making of the parent and when the parent feels helpless to make a different decision -- no homework tonight or you've done enough and you can stop, just as that parent may say, pizza night, or movie night, or let's go visit grandma tonight -- that homework becomes highly problematic.

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Beautiful Brown Babies

I wrote this blog for Beautiful Brown Babies. http://beautifulbrownbabies.blogspot.com/2012/05/homework-trap.htmlhttp://beautifulbrownbabies.blogspot.com/2012/05/homework-trap.html

Writing Occupational Therapy in a 504 plan

This blogger notes the lack of consistency including occupational therapy in 504 plans. http://community.advanceweb.com/blogs/ot_8/archive/2012/05/08/part-ii-advocating-implementing-and-writing-504-plans.aspx

This is an extremely important concept when considering the relationship between problems with processing speed and homework that is given without time limits. Here is my response.

I consider the issue of occupational therapy central to my own recommendations regarding 504 plans. Homework is one of the major issues that gets students tripped up. Children with poor handwriting necessarily require more time to do their homework than others. As they more up the grades, the problem mounts, as there is only so many hours in a day, and they get mislabeled as children with behavioral problems. My recommendation for these students is a 504 with homework relief. If this is coupled with occupational therapy, then the focus is to work on remediating the problem with the goal that the child can complete more work as the problem gets resolved, rather than get more work done by working all night long. Kenneth Goldberg, Ph.D. author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers. www.thehomeworktrap.com.

Too Much Homework

Writer asks for feedback about how much homework is too much homework. http://weekly-times-messenger.whereilive.com.au/lifestyle/story/parenting-study-time-overload/

You can post your answer there.  Here's the response I posted:

My answer to this question is addressed on my website, www.thehomeworktrap.com, but here is the quick version. Homework is too much homework if it is measured by the assignment, not the clock, and if it exceeds what the parent agrees to allow.

The first concept deals with budgeting. If I buy a car, do I buy the car I like or the car I can afford? Current homework policy gives teachers an open-ended line of credit on time at home.  Is the diorama assigned in addition to or instead of other homework. Let the teachers decide what makes most sense, a diorama, spelling words, reading assignments, or math, as long as there is a true time limit on the homework session.

The second issue is organizational structures. Teachers are in charge of the class. Parents are in charge of the home. Homework traverses those boundaries, assigned by the school to be done in the home. That’s okay as long as the parent has the final say as the head of the home, and that’s one major problem with homework, since the grading system exacts severe punishments for work not done. Parents need the authority to overrule assignments without serious penalty for their children. Kenneth Goldberg, Ph.D.

Understanding IQ

In the New York Times today, there is an article on the question of whether or not IQ came be improved. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/iq-points-for-sale-cheap.html

To understand this issue, it is important to also understand what is involved in IQ testing. The standard IQ test has ten subtests which generate four composite scores: verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed. In the past, verbal comprehension and working memory were considered to comprise one's verbal IQ. Perceptual reasoning and processing speed comprised one's performance IQ. In the most recent version of the IQ test, the thinking has changed leading us to report all four of these areas and to create a new combination, general ability, stemming from verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning. All four sections come together for what we call full scale IQ.

These concepts may seem quite technical, but they are actually extremely important in understanding how people function, where IQ and functioning can be enhanced, and how that relates to homework, the topic of my work and my blog.

Some aspects of IQ can be enhanced. Some may not be amenable to change. In all cases, one's functioning and success, which is what we're most concerned about anyway, can be enhanced by considering where and how improvements can occur.

In my book, I place considerable emphasis on the issues of working memory and processing speed as factors that give children difficulties completing their homework assignments and not that the differences between scores on these scales and scores on the general ability scale scores are central to why some children are responded to erroneously and dangerously with the phrase, "You're so bright, you would do so well if you just tried harder." They certainly are bright and appear bright, as reflected in their general ability scale scores. Trying harder won't make the difference when it comes to homework unless we can do something about those other two areas of functioning.

www.thehomeworktrap.com.