Why focus on homework and not promote play? Part 2

 Part 2 Blog by Ria Uiterloo

 In part 1 of the blog, I shared the development 21^st Century (transversal skills) a necessity in educating children. Developing those skills in and after school through play is essential.

If education is a holistic process, how do we help children to discover the real world? How do we help them to apply what they have learned, how to study, use their talents and uniqueness and how to express themselves?

At the same time, I often ask myself “Isn’t it tactless as well as harmful and irresponsible to have children doing hours of homework after a full day of school?”

Pasi Sahlberg & William Doyle[1] wrote and documented an excellent guide/book for all educators, parents, and policymakers to prove children's lifelong success. They have included accounts of the alarming proportions and stress on parents and children in educational systems that ignore the necessity of play.

In an excerpt of the book of Pasi Sahlberg & William Doyle, LET CHILDREN THE CHILDREN PLAY, they describe the following paragraphs:

I am highlighting these two excerpts to call for our attention the amount of stress placed on children. I have heard many times from children/students here on our island how they want to hurt themselves because of all the tutoring and hours of homework, “I am sick of homework since 1^st grade of primary school, says Kendra while in high school”.

 I am the president of the foundation Expertise Centrum Stichting Ervaringsgericht Onderwijs St. Maarten (Stichting EGO). The foundation facilitates Afterschool programs. Parents often ask, “Why are you not offering homework classes?” They will take their children to other programs that offer only homework and tutoring after school. Alejandro Francisco the executive coordinator of the programs always stresses the importance of play after school and especially in a free of choice setting where the well-being of the child is of the most essential importance.   As a father and youth worker who have lead programs in Europe and in Africa, he advises the importance play through activities and spending quality time with a child. Children need time to process their experiences in school and freely share with parents. Alejandro also shares the benefit of activities through play. His own daughter has been exposed to music and art and has developed amazing musical skills and mastery of several instruments. Through the art of music, she has developed academically, social emotionally and excels in areas of logic and critical thinking, he concludes.

In talks with parents, there is often a concern that children will fall back if they do not practice at home / do homework. Parents have learned to believe that their child will fail their national FBE exams, an exam after eight years of primary education on St. Maarten. In addition, why are policymakers selecting children for future education this early?

According to Pasi Sahlberg[2] who I have met in Finland, the country has chosen to keep the instruction time to children at a necessary minimum and focus more on the quality of teaching and learning during instruction time. The country did this based on evidence and support by common pedagogical wisdom. According to him, “interestingly, Singapore and some other high performing education systems have employed this same paradox: teach less, learn more. This same rule also applies to homework that can only benefit student learning if done purposefully and linked to students’ interests and what they should learn.

In conversations with friend and colleague Marcel van Herpen from Centrum Pedagogisch Contact, who guides several pedagogical projects in several countries including the Netherlands, he advocates that children must be allowed to be children. He suggests, “You cannot shield them from a complex life or the influences of the Internet. You can however, let them play and learn for a long intensive period. In a way, a school is where they can safely practice with life's big questions. That requires great intensity. With young children, this does not include a lot of homework. A school day must combine an intensive with free time, play, processing, and rest”.

The Afterschool programs from Stichting EGO do just that. They have replaced homework with activities that benefit the overall development, such as Chess. The program's initiator Ernest Sams explains the benefits of such an activity in an interview with the local newspaper, the Daily Herald. Here is an excerpt of the interview:

The goal of the chess class is to elevate the IQ levels of children. In these classes, the children start with the basics of game; the board, how the pieces move, the rules of the games, strategy, tactics, patience, thinking ahead, learning to calculate, evaluating and making right choices. “I often try to relay the game back to practical ways of their daily learning, studying, planning and doing their homework and abiding by rules,” Sams explained. “I noticed during my early days in school in Aruba, the smartest guys in class were chess players and with every little chance they got, they would play. I believe I linked them, being the smartest to the game at that time. So I learned the game and I’ve been playing it ever since,” he added”. He said chess could be seen as life on a board, “in every situation of the game you are confronted with one or more choices which you have to make a decision (hopefully the best one),” he added. “What chess does is it trains your brains, you learn to concentrate, visualize problems that have not yet occurred, it teaches the use of your fantasy, taking decisions under time pressure, it teaches you to be practical, how to make plans, how to be creative, how to strategize and my list can go on and on. “Life is a about choices and each choice you make in life has consequences,” said Sams.

According to Alejandro Francisco, this Creative Mind project has become a seedbed for nurturing the minds of all the students involved. It has taught students to not only see the “what is” but also to create dialogue and outcomes within the realm of their own realities as the instructor often asks during his classes “what’s going on in this chess position” or “what do you think you should do”. The children learn to concentrate for longer periods, which is conducive for skill building of the game and academic performances.

Chess has also given the children a platform for creating innovative mechanisms for future decision making in every aspect of their lives and it has brought children from different ethnic and geographical backgrounds together.

I am eager to know what you think as a teacher or parent. Together we can explore how to help society including policymakers to understand the analog of life whereby children can explore the world, address challenges, build relationships, collaborate, imagine., dream big…..

In part 3 I will share experiences and examples of developing the transversal and the executive functions and self- regulating skills, which are mental processes that can help children to become autonomous and successful learners.

 

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[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/Let_the_Children_Play.html?id=E2QjuwEACAAJ

[2] Blog Pasi Sahlberg Let’s give kids more responsibilities: An interview with “The Teacher’s Newspaper”