Homework! For What?

Homework for what?

Lack of creative Homework makes learning uninteresting

Homework has been an essential part of Indian education since a long time. When a teacher doesn’t give homework to the students, parent think that his child is not learning that subject in the school. There are schools around us who have their own homework timetable. These schools are so keen in giving homework that they almost forget the real purpose of homework i.e. revision of the leant content, attempting new level of difficulty, learning something new out of already learnt content, analyzing the self-learning ability, etc. In schools, most of the times, homework is given just because they are asked to give the homework. One of the factors that teachers don’t think about giving a ‘meaningful’ homework to the kids is the workload they have in public school, or the professional development work they have in private international school. It is very important for all the teachers to have the attitude of a researcher in order to find what students’ need and why they need so.

When a Maths teacher gives homework, she or he gives some examples from the textbook, e.g. solve problems 1 to 5 from exercise 3.2. A social studies teacher gives homework of reading the chapter 3, India’s Non-cooperation movement, and learning the question given below it. A language teacher gives homework of writing skills, or learning question answers of a particular chapter. There are other subject teachers who are repetitive in the way they give homework. One should go and do a survey with an intention of finding out whether students of their school really like or take interest in doing the homework. One of the new trends that has been going on in the schools on the names of project work or assessment is also not working fine with the learning objectives.

Teacher, before they were teachers, have got the training of educational psychology and content knowledge. Teachers are also informed and taught about the various kinds of intelligences (Howard Gardener’s theory of Multiple Intelligence). Teachers are taught, during their training about integrated teaching and learning. But when it comes to actual applying these learnt concept in the real life classroom, most of the teachers forget or intentionally avoid using their knowledge. They just want to be like their teachers (traditional teachers) who taught just for the sake of teaching and getting paid. Do teachers around us really bother to make homework interesting?

If we look at the student’s understanding of why a particular homework is given, they say or think that the homework is given just because teacher wants them to be occupied with some or the other way. One student, when was asked about the homework, he said that he just does the homework because his parents want to see him doing something for an hour related to school work. There are students who have home tutors to do their homework. When it comes to the homework where a child is supposed to write answers of some questions, such home tutors can do it very easily. Sometimes, the homework given to the child is so easy that he could actually google it or find the solution in some reference book.

A teacher should be aware about the learning objectives while giving the homework.

According to the new trends in education, known as CCE i.e. continuous and comprehensive evaluation, students are given project works as a part of assessment activity. In almost all the subject, students are given project work. Students have the attitude, and somewhere it is true also, that teachers give mark on how the project looks rather than what is inside the project. Students spend more time in decorating their project work, colouring it, pasting some pictures in the project, etc. it is completely accepted that students who have an inclination towards arts and not more inclination towards study can take much more interest in such project works. But at the same time, the learning objective is missed. Have students been facilitate with ample opportunities for learning on their own?

One of the projects asked to me to give to students was ‘writing a book review’. I was sure that students knew the meaning of the word ‘review’ but I was surer that they don’t know how to write review of a work of art. Before teaching them how to write a book review, I asked them to go through some of the websites or google the movie review of a movie (the movie which is very famous and almost all the students have seen that movie). I also asked them to go through old newspapers to find the movie review of that movie. I also equipped myself with some movie reviews. At the time of teaching, I asked students to compare the format of the movie reviews with their peers movie review. It was found that most of the movie reviews follow the same format. Later, students were asked to observe and study the format of the movie review available to them. This is called as deductive learning where we observe things around us and then make our own theory. Students were also asked about the different aspects featured in the movie reviews. The next day, students were taught about writing a review of a movie with the help of learnt aspects. I know my students are not so keen in reading a book but they are more interested in watching a movie. The next day, I taught them in detail about writing a book review. Same method I used for teaching them about writing a book review (the deductive method).

I was told that only one book should be given to all the students to write a review, but I was not so keen on that for some unknown reasons. Instead of asking them to write book review of one particular book, I thought of trying to know what they are interested in. when I revealed the project work to them i.e. writing a book review, they were very happy, but when I told them that they have to write the book review only on some ‘XYZ’ book, they seemed to be not interested. I immediately changed my project work. I kept the topic same ‘Writing a book review’ but asked to write the book review of a book from the given options. The options were a book:

·         A best seller

·         A classic

·         Written by modern Indian authors

·         Written by famous author

I also gave them a list of book they might find interesting to write review of. Here, students got enough choices for writing a book review. Students were also given a sample book review. It is very important to make student aware what an ideal project should look like. It would be better if they should be given a sample. It is because understanding when you watch is always better than understanding when you listen.

A mathematics teacher, instead of giving same kind of boring homework, should give more creative homework. When I was teaching mathematics, I always had more creative assignments for my students. While teaching, I always had a group of assignments ready with me for different groups of students. I always used to keep three to four chits of papers on which four different assignments would be mentioned. There was an incident that happened when I was teaching the concept ‘perimeter and area of circle’. After teaching what is perimeter and what is area of circle, I gave them homework. For weaker students, the homework was to measure the perimeter of any circular thing in their house, and with the help of that to calculate the area. (as the relationship between the perimeter and area was taught to them). For bright students the homework was more about abstract problems and real life application of the same concepts.

I always hated History because of my History teacher’s cold-shouldered attitudes towards teaching us, and on the top of that there used to be the repetitive homework. Now, with advanced computer and technology, and internet revolution, we can make History homework far interesting. While teaching any topic like French revolution, we can ask them to watch some video available on YouTube or ask them to see a documentary on ‘French Revolution’ and write a report on the same. We can also make them compare the social strata responsible for French revolution with the Social Strata responsible for social revolution happened in India. We can ask them to search more about Mahatma Phule and Dr. Ambedkar who were influenced by French revolution. Also, we can ask them to write how French revolution has affected Indian social revolution, and how it has affected our present. Because History is learnt in a better way when we connect it with our present, when we teach student how our present lives are the result of our history.

Today’s generation is more of mobiles, laptops and of Smartphone. You cannot expect this generation to write a lot. You cannot expect them to be like you. Yes, it is important that they should write and they do write. But it will be interesting when internet and technology will be an integral part of their education, their learning, and their assignments. We mark them on the basis of the final product (what they have done), and not on the basis of process (how they have done). We teacher are more concerned about our likes and dislikes than students’ likes and dislikes. The entire Indian education is moving towards becoming ironical because we talk about being child-centered but when it comes to changing ourselves according to students’ likes, we feel that old way school was better.

Isn’t it a high time to stand for what we believe? Yes, it is a high time to make teaching learning a two way process. It is a high time to think that students are more important than anything in the world for a teacher. It is a high time to be more creative and techno savvy in order to understand the new world age students.