Your story appears to have had a happy ending, but I would
like to use it as an example about what is wrong with the system. The fact is
that you got your child back on track with a fairly simple punishment, which is
fine, as long as the punishment need not be used again. The problem with
homework punishments, and punishments in general, is that they are only good if
they work, and the only way to know that a punishment works is that you don’t
have to use it again. Unfortunately, there are many parents who get caught in
the cycle of using the same punishments over and over again, and that is not
good. So let’s consider what happened here.
The teacher enacts a penalty, low grades despite the fact
that your child is learning and can do the work. The penalty impacts you more
than it does him, so you employ a punishment that he responds to and gets his
work done. He does it in 15 minutes, so it takes little effort for him to
comply. What if the assignment took him an hour or two hours, and what if he
was a child who had trouble with work, not just the occasional missed
assignment or foray into ordinary teenage life? That child would not be able to
do the work on a continuous basis, so for that child, no punishment would get
him going.
Now, let’s look at the teachers and what “homework” they
have done. In reality, teachers are not routinely taught homework in schools of
education and teachers do not have continuing education courses on homework.
Teachers are generally not acquainted with the research, theory and practice of
homework unless they make special efforts to look into it, and those efforts are
not easy to do because teacher training does not demand it. In effect, your
child faces potentially low grades (Ds despite A levels of competence) for
failing to do something that is not clearly needed for learning and is not
adequately studied by those who give it out.
Hopefully, this will be the end of your child’s “homework
problems.” Unfortunately, it is not the end for many youth. And for kids with
autism spectrum disorders, it can be a double-edged sword.
Most kids, who have trouble with homework, have problems with
pace. Pace involves the speed at which one can work, typically impacted by
difficulties with working memory (think attention) and processing speed (think
handwriting). If a child cannot work quickly, he has two choices: do the homework
and give up socialization and play; don’t do the homework and get poor grades.
Typically, the more social and sometimes more athletic kids will accept the bad
grades to play with their friends. The more awkward and socially isolated youth
will do the work at the expense of play. But they cannot do both. There are only
so many hours in a day.
My own recommendation is to limit homework to time by the
clock. In the case of a child who can do the assignment in 15 minutes, there is
no real problem. For the child who cannot accomplish this goal, it is quite
important to place limits on what he has to do. I would also prod teachers into
doing their “homework,” their own study about homework, too.
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