Featured Radio Interview

Here's a link to a radio program on homework.

I have the following comment to what one of the callers-in said on the clip.


The teacher who called in with the issue of pace in this segment hones in on the most important issue regarding homework, but then comes to the wrong conclusion. She is absolutely right that children vary in the pace at which they work, and that some who excel have no homework at all. They get it all done in class. She then goes on to suggest that those who work more slowly should continue working on the assignments at home. That is precisely the wrong solution and it is the reason why so many kids get turned off to school and why many of them move in unproductive, and sometimes dangerous directions, when they reach their teens. We all vary in skills. I know people who had much more trouble in school than I had, may have plodded along to get the assignments done, but go on to fix their cars or complete projects in their homes at speeds that are virtually out of the range for an academic like me. The notion that we would identify a person's weakness and go on to pile on more and more of what they don't do well makes no sense at all.

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Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.