Today we will continue talking about Education and proposals to change it in a way that best suits the real needs of children and a modern, respectful and creative learning. I propose you a summer without homework school, a proposal that I address to teachers, but also to parents, who are, in short, those who have to decide whether they will allow their children to spend time on their vacations with review books.
If having homework after school is something of doubtful utility, doing it in summer is really incomprehensible, although some children, accustomed to dedicating their time to that, may ask them explaining that they get bored without these tasks.
The supposed usefulness of homework on vacation
The usefulness of school homework on vacation very easily, but free time, vacations, have precisely one reason, disconnect brain and body from everyday obligations and allow us to freely decide what we occupy.
Rare are adults who take work on vacation and will be in very particular cases. But, what would you think of being sent to continue working a few hours a day in your summer so as not to lose the habit of working or not forgetting how it is done?
That is the most common justification of homework in summer, that the children do not lose the habit of work and that they do not forget what they have been doing throughout the course. And, really, it seems an intolerable slavery. If someone has the right to freely enjoy their vacation time they are children.
We should, however, analyze whether the justification, however unfair, has any real basis. My blunt answer is no. If the child has passed his course successfully, it is assumed that he has assimilated the prescriptive knowledge and if something is forgotten, surely the next year in a few days it starts again.
If the child has had problems in the course, he will possibly need to recover from stress and develop other alternative learning methods that may be precisely those that best suit his personal characteristics.
And, if the school and the teacher and the daily work have not managed to assimilate certain knowledge, is really spending the summer crushing it will help you with something other than to hate learning more?
The books of school assignments or mandatory summer readings they do not usually contribute anything new, they simply mean continuing to repeat in the same way what has been done during the long months of school. They do not contribute anything, they do not teach anything, and besides, I do not think that what a small child needs to repeat accounts and letters every day, well, if he needed it, it would be better to change the method or analyze his personal rhythm and way of learning .
Everything the child learns on vacation
If, on the one hand, we understand that children have the right to have real vacations without a workload or "work" and we also accept that the usefulness of these summer duties does not contribute much to them, we may have the doubt of If summer is going to turn into wasted time in learning matters.
Quiet, In summer and holidays children will learn a lot and they also carry out a really indispensable learning for their development. Undoubtedly in summer children learn as much or more than in school.
Many times during the course children barely have free time between school hours, after school, transfers and the need to adapt to adult schedules. Their social relations are highly mediated by the lack of time and the school environment, in which the group with which they live daily more hours is determined by age or last name.
The parents themselves, with their labor obligations, are little present and it is also complicated, in many cases, to see the extended family as much as the children would like. Getting to know other people who feel emotionally united is a way to learn about the world and human relationships naturally. We should not limit the time of this experience because you have to go homework.
Now they can strengthen ties with their cousins and make new friends chosen by affinity and not by proximity. Do we really think that this is not a learning they really need to do without being interrupted again by files or formal study?
Going to the countryside, exploring, playing without a fixed time, getting bored until inventing or finding your passion, reading what you want ... all that is essential for the healthy physical and emotional development of children and it is in summer when they will have the greatest opportunities To develop these activities.
However, this is only the beginning, the learning that children will do in a summer without homework It is much more extensive and complex. In the next topic we will deepen the extraordinary learning possibilities that vacations offer you.
