Monday, February 22, 2016

The cure for too much homework.


Teens can aim for better time management: South China Morning Post, Feb. 21.
Nowadays, teenagers are under a lot of pressure. It can be pressure from parents or from school where they are bombarded with too much homework.
Some parents will closely monitor the academic progress of their teenage sons and daughters.
If the pressure is too great, then these teens may dread going back home after the school day. This pressure ­damages family relationships.
With such a heavy workload, some youngsters may have trouble sleeping. They then go to school tired and have trouble concentrating. This can lead to them losing interest in their studies and becoming depressed. In extreme cases, they may take their own lives.
Teens must learn to help themselves and aim for better time management. It is also vital to do regular exercises.
Yoyo Sin Lok-yiu, Cheung Sha Wan

My comment, posted.
Re: Teens can aim for better time management.
How about reducing the pressure? How about reducing the amount of homework? There is no evidence that massive amounts of homework and high pressure produce better learning. See eg Alfie Kohn's book: The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (2007)
Comment posted at: http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/1914129/letters-editor-february-21-2016?comment-sort=all#comment-286462


1 comment:

  1. Im from China and i fully understood the situation that mentioned above. Our government has been tried to reduce the pressure and homework for students since when i was in grade 5(2012) but the more they reduce the pressure and homeworks the more anxious we are. Why? China has hude population and we are competing fiercely for an university, a job. Especially pur parents, they still wish our teacher leave more homeworks to us... I used to tell my parents much homeworks only make me sick, my parents said "look at others, you have no excuses" they reduced my pocket money as well. Xd I wish this book could introduce to parents as well.

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