Homework: Improper Teaching Leads to Massive Frustration

Starting from as early as Grade 1, kids are given homework to complete on a daily or weekly basis. The concept behind homework is to practice the skills taught in class and thus prepare the student for upcoming tests, in which case the teacher may not offer their help. As your child grows older and they progress through the grades, the work becomes tougher and the time period to complete said work becomes shorter.

School administration is often advised to limit the length of daily homework depending on the grade. In Grade 1, homework should take no longer than 10 minutes, and then increase in 10-minute increments throughout every subsequent grade. Theoretically, this means it should take approximately 2 hours to complete homework assigned in Grade 12, however, this is not the case. The school administration bases their assumptions on averages. The problem is that there are outliers within all data. If a piece of homework is averaged to take 2 hours, they’re not taking into consideration the students who will finish it in 30 minutes, or the ones that will take 4 hours to complete the work.

Few of us are born as geniuses. It takes us years to grow and expand our intelligence. With that said, you need to realize that teachers alone cannot intellectualize our kids. As parents, you might often be preoccupied with your job and housework, but whether you agree with it or not, you play a major role in the development of your child’s education.

When I was in Grade 1, my dad would often take me aside for an hour or two each day and teach me cursive writing, mathematics and spelling. I learned how to add, subtract, multiply and use long division from his teachings. I even learned how to solve fractions and work out cross-multiplication. I knew the concept of negative numbers long before my classmates, and I was even annoyed when my Grade 5 teacher named Mrs. Macphee informed the class that negative numbers did not exist, just because she did not want to teach them about it.

I was so far advanced in my knowledge of mathematics that up until Grade 9, I easily attained a 97% average in my math classes. Of course, at that point, it became harder. My dad’s knowledge was limited and thus my final mark dropped to an 82% in Grade 9 and a 78% in Grade 10, before I skyrocketed back up to a 97% in Grade 11 and a 95% in Grade 12. But all of this was thanks to my dad, who chose to stay at home with me and not work at a job for 12 years, just so I could excel at getting an education.