The burden of homework

R K Narayan was not just a story teller. He was an educationist of the highest order. He may have been thrown out of a teacher’s job for “dereliction of duties” because he dismissed the students in a drill class for which he was not qualified. Years later, he wondered what to teach in a prestigious American university where he was a special invitee. He found the solution by assembling them to sit on the campus lawn where he recounted delightful stories about India. It became the most popular class in the university. Still many more years later, he sat in the Rajya Sabha and protested against heavy school bags. The school bags contained heavy material for homework. The great writer disliked any form of education that robbed a child of his playtime.

RKN’s message is all the more relevant today when children are not only robbed of their playtime, their fun time, and their friends, but of their childhood itself. There has been plenty of debate on the question of homework just like rote learning which is the norm in schools in India. There are teachers who believe that there is no need for a child to carry home the same lessons learnt at school. Even if he has not learnt them well, he could be taught the same the following day during a break, singly or with other kids. Schools could
have special classes in the school for slow learners, since all children don’t learn at the same pace. I have seen these special classes conducted after school hours for kids who could not keep pace with others. They are not the “private tuitions” conducted by the same teacher in the same classroom for a fee. This ugly practice merely encourages teachers to neglect their regular classroom duty to run a parallel school in the same premises.

The special classes we are talking about are part and parcel of the school programme. Teachers get paid by the schools for these extra lessons and not by the parents which may again lead to unhealthy practices. I saw this at the famed Shree Ramakrishna Ashram school in Mysore which is an institution worth emulating in all respects.

Homework need not necessarily be done at home. If schools can provide the space and the time, children can complete the so-called “homework” in the school itself, and that too with the help of a teacher. This facility will be a boon to first generation learners whose illiterate parents cannot help. There are any number of such pupils who are admitted at great cost to English medium schools where they are completely lost without additional help. These children are usually at the mercy of “private tutors” who are ill qualified and untrained. Their parents (mostly daily wage earners) may end up with heavy debts for all this. Schools which support such disadvantaged children by providing the space and a teacher to supervise are exemplary institutions.

Since the teacher is paid by the school, parents will not be exploited. One more hour in the school will not hurt the child, especially if some refreshment is provided. The child has the rest of the evening for play and friends. According to educationist Jay Kang, whose article was published in these pages recently, burdening children with long hours of additional work after school “robs them of time for play, introspection, creative thinking, relaxation and intellectual growth.” He quotes Finland which has a great school system that proves you don’t need homework for educational success.

Many educationists in India feel that repeating classwork at home is the gateway to excellence. Father Shenoy, the late principal of St Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Bangalore passionately believed that rote learning (learning by heart) and home assignments were absolutely necessary for a child who needs a structured, disciplined way of learning. Perhaps he was right.

Children who were educated in this manner in this country have gone places in highly ranked foreign universities. Although many educators feel that this may be true of games or sports like tennis or gymnastics, and doubt if it can be applied to academics where a student has to explore what he is studying. Homework’s real value lies in making a child “see” what he “heard” in class earlier. It is like Wordsworth’s poem The Daffodils where the poet introspects “When oft upon my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon the inward eye….”

A child may have simply “heard” a teacher explain a mathematical problem in the classroom. But its real significance may dawn on him much later when he recalls the classroom lecture while doing his homework. That recollection perhaps is true learning.