Have you done your homework? This question is one that is on the lips of most parents and guardians. Indeed most adults in this part of the world equate – school - homework with home learning. They couldn’t have been further from right than that.

Some parents and guardians make a lot of fuss about homework as though it is a replacement for home learning. LET ME STATE IT CATEGORICALLY IT IS NOT. Make no mistake about it.

If you want your ward to be serious with studies at home, get him/her a Daily Study Personal [private] Timetable, encourage and monitor his/her work, until the habit of following accordingly it is imbibed.

Parents /guardians especially, in the private school go as far as reporting teachers to authorities to get them suspended and/or sacked.

The complaint, 'these days s/he doesn’t bring homework, so s/he is not serious, s/he doesn’t learn.’ If your ward is up and doing s/he will finish a homework assignment in 5 to 10 minutes.

And put away their book and say they have finished learning. This happens because of the equation of doing homework with learning by parents, guardians and shockingly some teachers. This leads to spending short time with the books, indeed too short for the liking of parents/guardians.

The next complaint that comes up is, 'the homework is too scanty the children should be given more work to occupy them.’ When that is done too, children are saddled with so much work they sleep late, and skip work and that comes with its attendant problems.

Those of them who cannot cope, become disoriented, dodge work/class to escape query or chastisement of teacher, authorities and/or parents, attend school late, confidence level takes a dip, lie to cover their backs, that s/he left their book home, copy from friends which is essentially cheating and anathema to learning. Any haphazard attempt at solving the challenge of home learning will lead to more serious unintended ones.

Note, I have nothing against homework in principle my point is we shouldn’t make giving homework from school a substitute for crafting a routine learning plan for our wards. Homework from school shouldn’t be cumbersome and by all means not punitive in nature. Children must enjoy, feel relaxed and good doing it.

Learning is challenging and we should avoid as much as we can making it burdensome for kids. That would cause a boomerang effect of them hating learning. We must engender love of learning for our young ones, by our words and deeds, this certainly has to be done tactfully. It takes patience and finesse, no straightjacket.

Homework is fundamentally meant to check whether pupils/students understood what the facilitator taught during the day’s lesson. In few instances, it meant to check previous knowledge or give a hint to students /pupils on what the next lesson is going to be about.

So if the pupils/students have challenge doing his/her homework on regular basis. Then the problem is deeper than the homework, it borders on lack of understanding of the basics.

The solution this, therefore is not to employ the services of a home teacher to come and do their homework for them. That would be a waste of your precious time and money.

Indeed it will create another problem for the child in the final analysis, s/he would not see the need to pay attention in class because after all when the work is given as homework it will be done for him/her. It ultimately leads dependency syndrome his/her brains will not therefore be trained to have the needed grit and wit.

Homework is strictly speaking is not meant for anybody, but the one it was given to. You may check the solutions by the child and correct and assist where necessary, but that is all you should do. DON’T DO OR LET ANYBODY DO YOUR CHILDS HOMEWORK FOR HIM/HER. It has to be done by him/herself with little or no support, don’t do for them what they have to do for themselves and by themselves.

If your ward cannot consistently deal with his/her homework with dispatch, then it is very likely they are struggling in school classwork too. If classwork marks are good that means s/he copies from others, which is cheating and that cannot help him/her out of the hole.

So get the teacher, school authorities to diagnosis the challenge s/he is facing, you can then pass it on the home teacher to draw a plan for filling in the gaps in his/her foundation. Once that is properly done, your ward would be on track and good to go.

Instead of advocating for homework, homework and more homework from school for your child, you have to do your homework of organising a routine for your ward which includes learning time with a structured timetable, playtime, rest time etc.

Daily minimum, learning time for pre-schoolers Kg 30 Minutes, Lower Primary 1 Hour, Upper Primary 1 hour 30 Minutes and Junior Highers 2 Hours. The game changer is CONSTITENCY! Catch them young! So it does get overly challenging when they grow, to introduce a learning regime in their lives.

The responsibility of instituting effective home learning for a child is yours, it cannot and should not be passed to the school or any entity for that matter. That would amount to shirking your responsibility.
God bless your efforts at getting your child, our child succeed in life.

Rayhann Shaban

Parent–Child Relationship Coach
Co-founder of Advocate Development Networks [ ADN ]
rayhannshaban@hotmail.com
0243414669/0200225235