Who is in charge in the home?

I came across this article that broaches the issue of who is in charge of the home. It includes a common omission that I comment on. Here's the link to the article.

Here's my comment:

I would like to highlight the comment "Who is in charge of your house? You or your nine-year-old son?" and rephrase that to "Who is in charge of your house? You, your nine-year-old son, or your nine-year-old son's teacher?" The sad part of this common dilemma is that the authority of the teacher to assign and demand homework goes unquestioned. In reality, homework is controversial, teachers do not study the research, theory and practice of giving homework when they are in school, and they frequently miss the point about why an otherwise bright child does not do his homework. The key is almost always found in the issue of pace and that has to do with problems of attention, reading speed and handwriting speed. Children work with time containers at school, but with the expectation that they will keep working, without limits, until the work is done at home. This is unrealistic and unfair, and at the core of what I call The Homework Trap. But whether you agree with my analysis or not, take stock of the oversight in discussing whose in charge of the home, omitting the powerful authority teachers are given over what happens in an individual home. www.thehomeworktrap.com.


_{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.} 

 

New York Times Opinion Piece on The Common Core

There is an opinion piece written on Common Core in the New York Times today. I recommend reading it. Here the link. I wrote this comment:

The biggest problem with high-stakes testing is that it weakens the most important building block of education, and that is the relationship between the mentor and the student. Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and the Race to the Top all distract the teacher from that direct relationship and the art of teaching, causing them to look behind their backs rather than at their students. The problem overflows into the home, as the teacher thinks, to shove all the "stuff" in the kid needs to learn, that he or she has to expand the school day into the home, with more and more homework. Homework goes on to distract the parent from his or her primary relationship as a caretaker and as a teacher (one who does not need a curriculum sent home by the school), to one who gets overly worried that the homework assignments get done. The whole system goes awry and the student is the one to suffer. Interestingly, the student who is going to be a great scientist or mathematician may still do well in this system. The student who is going to be an artist or philosophy may not. And the student who needs a basic education to live an average life is the one who is going to suffer the most.

_{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.} 

On Cheating

There is a post in Valerie Strauss' Washington Post Education Blog, "Why Schools Should Relax About Cheating." I wrote the following comment:

I think there is a difference between people collaborating after they have entered a specialized field and are looking to create solutions, and what happens in school where students are taking a range of course subjects and are in the process of learning things that are already known. That comment aside, let's also consider the roots of school cheating and how we actually teach children to cheat from a very early age. Cheating, by definition, involves a behavior that veers from the rules set by an authority. It the teacher puts the students in teams and tells them to work as a team, there is no cheating when they share answers. If the teacher defines calling a friend for help as an acceptable behavior, there is no cheating. From elementary school on, we distort the natural hierarchies by giving teachers excessive authority to make decisions about what should go on in the home. Teachers assign homework and parents are expected to support them. Keep in mind that parents are children's original teachers, starting long before their children went to school. Yet, the teacher can make decisions about what goes on in the home over the judgments of the parents. For children who have difficulty completing their assignments in a reasonable period of time, parents end up helping them, and often end up doing the work for them, not because they value cheating, but because they are at their wit's ends. The hierarchical distortions created by homework cause serious problems for many parents and sow the seeds for "cheating" being okay.


_{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.}