What is the purpose of homework?
If the purpose for homework is to ensure that students understand what was being taught, does it then mean that no homework is required when students show good understanding? This suggestion is unthinkable for many teachers as equating homework with learning has become a norm for many parents.
Logically, in a classroom, a handful of students will grasp the concepts. Others may only understand certain parts while some will find particular sections more confusing than others. In the ideal situation, the teacher will then assign different sets of homework to different students; depending on the areas the students needed extra practice. Look at how athletes are being trained. The coach observes them during practice and identifies the individual’s strengths and weakness. Each athlete then spends more time targeting their area of weakness and developing mastery.
In reality, how can our classroom teacher tell who is missing out on what? With 40 students, and only 40 minutes in class, she cannot. To be fair, unless the class size is small, more time is allocated for the students to apply the concepts in class and not just for the teacher to “teach”; there is no easy way for teachers to know. The solution will then be to design a generic set of homework so as to find out. Here comes the bigger question - what is done to follow-up after homework is submitted? If nothing is done, then the time that was spent on completing and reviewing the homework by the students and teachers respectively could have been better spent doing something else.
Issuing generic homework is not constructive and does little to help students improve. However, in today’s school, where each class has 30 to 40 students, what other alternative lies for the lone teacher? Pedagogically, all teachers know that following up on what has been submitted by the students is even more important than the homework itself. Why are we not practicing what we already know? This is not the job reserved just for teachers. Policy-makers and parents need to play their part too.
