Child abuse in a school

This article talks about staff at a school failing to report a teacher who abused a child. I decided to use the article as a starting point to raise the question of homework as child abuse. Here is a link to the article.

Here is the comment I left to the article.

I know that this article focuses on a particular teacher abusing a particular student, but I would like to expand the discussion from this identifiable act of child abuse, to a more subtle and ongoing way in which schools abuse students. And that is through homework. In general, homework takes authority out of the parents' hands and places it with the school. Further, it gives a wide range of teachers, with different personalities and different points of view, the authority to dictate behaviors in the home. There are many kids who are losing out on sleep and needed recreation because they are required to keep working for hours after school is done. There are also some particular students who have under-the-radar learning problems and cannot possibly complete homework in a reasonable amount of time. Making them complete the work or get poor grades is actually a form of child abuse. Here is a link to a blog piece I wrote on homework as child abuse. http://homeworktrap.blogspot.com/2013/03/child-abuse.html.

_{For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.}