RECENTLY, a parent made some interesting observations about his seven-year old child’s way of doing homework. It was noted that the child happily did what interested her but had to be cajoled into doing what did not appeal to her. The parent questioned whether one homework could work for all the students.
It would not be humanly possible for any teacher to satisfy the varying levels of learning and the diverse interests of all her students. Given the assembly line pattern of our education system, which requires every student to be treated uniformly, every child is fitted into a straitjacket irrespective of her individuality. Many parents who care for their offspring are now seeking an answer to this dilemma.
The first question that should be asked is, why is a child required to spend nearly a quarter of her waking hours studying and learning from books and writing in her exercise copies. Here, I am referring to young children in primary schools, who are generally under 10 years of age. I decided to investigate. I asked a primary school teacher if she gave homework to her students.
The question itself shocked her. She then explained that she had to give homework to her students after she had taught them something new and then wanted to confirm that they had understood it fully. It also served to help them revise what they had been taught in class.
A child teaches herself with the help of her own experience and exploration.
It was my turn to be shocked. Obviously, she had no idea about a child’s learning process. She perceived it as the ‘knowledge’ a teacher poured into the child’s brain as one pours water from a jug into a glass. But that is not how a child learns. She teaches herself with the help of her own experience and exploration. At a young age, it is the multisensory experience that gives her what we refer to as knowledge. Her spontaneous exploration helps her reconstruct her psychic powers. This is not transferred verbally, and once a child acquires it, she never forgets it. Neither does she have to revise it in the shape of homework again and again to ensure that it is retained. Moreover, children are versatile and their development is diverse. That explains why some children are interested in one thing while others are bored by that.
These are some basic facts of nature that we must never tamper with. If we violate the natural rules and impose questionable, man-made rules on the child, she will react and never develop an interest in learning. If a teacher feels that a child needs to do homework to remember what she has been taught, it is the teacher and her pedagogy that need to be investigated.
It is universally known that play is the major tool of learning for a young child. How many schools have playgrounds, and how many have teaching material with which a child learns fast and effectively? Unfortunately, not enough emphasis is placed on physical exercise, which is absolutely essential for the development of the child’s brain.
Under Sister Zinia Pinto’s stewardship, the primary section of Karachi’s St Joseph’s Convent did not give any homework worth the name and no exams were held. Children were happy, well-adjusted and learned a lot without being forced to study what the teacher wanted them to learn. Above all, Sister Zinia insisted on giving the child choices, which ensured that she enjoyed what she did.
Here are some words to convince our educators and parents, for whom the West is the ideal example for a child’s education. I asked my grandchildren if they had to do homework when they were in primary school. The one in Canada thought for a while and then told me she got a homework assignment once a week and was given a week to complete and submit it. How long did it take her to complete it? “Not more than 10 or 15 minutes,” she told me. The granddaughter in the UK informed me that Monday was homework day. They were given new questions to answer and given a week to complete their work. They had to submit it on the following Monday. No one complained of the workload.
Are our children not intelligent enough to learn without struggling with homework every day? Is there a problem with our teachers? Or is our system faulty in some way?
Another factor that comes in the way of natural learning of the child is the language used as the medium of instruction. If an alien language is thrust upon the child with which she is not familiar, her psychic reconstruction will be affected. In that case, self-learning becomes difficult. The only option available to her then is rote learning, which inevitably requires repetitive practice. Hence the need for homework.
Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2025
