Opinions on Home Work for Elementary-School Pupils

Abstract

As modern educational practice comes to be based on the results of scientific investigation, the traditional superstitions relative to education are being discarded. Not long ago teachers contented themselves with assigning lessons and hearing recitations, giving little thought to the important problem of teaching the children how to and scarcely concerning themselves with the means by which the pupils learned the stereotyped facts they were expected to repeat during the recitations. Now that we have added the terms and supervised study to our educational vocabulary, much attention is being given in school to the task of teaching the child how to approach his work. To accomplish this, a considerable amount of time has been given to the child's under the personal guidance of the teacher in the classroom. The success of such study, coupled with the recognition of the abuses and disadvantages of home study, has led many progressive school men to insist that all home should be abolished. On the other hand, conservative educators and vast numbers of more or less intelligent parents contend that there are certain good qualities to be fostered and developed in the doing of home tasks by the pupils and that the abuses and disadvantages acknowledged to exist need not prove insuperable. Thereby hangs a controversy. Some years ago an order was issued in Sacramento, California, prohibiting the assignment of any home work in the elementary grades. The reasons for the regulation as given by the superintendent of schools are in part as follows: Pupils must be trained to study. It is believed that to know how to is more important than to know how to recite, and that this important part of the child's training should be accomplished under the direct supervision of the teacher in the schoolroom, and not left to the busy home. .... It is rare, indeed, to find a home with proper facilities for ..... From a physiological Ii6