Why we will be "Low Homework"
Parents of modern high school age children are all too familiar with the scene. After a full 7 hour school day, followed by 2 hours of extracurriculars, followed by a brief dinner together, their teenager retreats to their bedroom at 7 pm to start the 3+ hour process of finishing the day’s homework. A day that began at perhaps 7 am only finishes for the student at 10 pm in the evening, meaning that the student has been on the move with precious few breaks for nearly 15 hours. Then, if they’re lucky, the student goes to bed in order to wake up the next morning and do it all again, with little time for family, non-organized interests, or any sort of true leisure activities.
The issue of homework in modern education has increasingly garnered attention over the last few decades. A 2013 study found that at prestigious high schools, teachers reported assigning on average over 3 hours of homework every evening. However, other research has shown that for high school age students homework greater than 2 hours per evening does not have any increased benefit to student learning.
At the Chesterton Academy of St. George, this is why we are committed to limiting the amount of homework students receive to 1 to 1.5 hours each evening. We believe that students having more time away from homework will actually increase their love for learning and their over all well being in life.
A Family First Philosophy
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom.” This oft-quoted principle from the Catechism is not just a theoretical ideal. Drawing on the wisdom of the ancients and the richness of Divine Revelation, the Church recognizes that the family is the divinely ordained mechanism for the formation of human life. As such, a school only exists to supplement the formation the family provides.
“Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home.”
The practical consequence of this notion is that a school must be careful to ensure that students have time to be part of their family. When students receive too much homework, they are drawn away from family life, from time with their father, mother, brothers and sisters. Teenagers need time to have conversations with their families over dinner, to play with siblings, and relax with their parents. A school’s homework policy, then, should be geared to maximizing this time with the family.
Humans are made for more than work
Furthermore, one great error of modernity is the notion that man’s fulfillment is primarily found in work. The early 20th century sociologist Max Weber described the modern idea in these terms: “one does not work to live; one lives to work.” Similarly, in modern education the idea is often that the whole purpose of a student’s life is to get an education so that they can work more later.
As Catholics, though, we do not believe that a person can be simply reduced to a worker. Human life includes work, yes, but the ancient and Christian understanding of man is that the purpose of human life is primarily union with God. Living a full human life thus requires time for prayer but also time for true leisure. To discover the goodness of God, students must have time to enjoy the good through activities that are done for their own sake, such as creating music or conversation with loved ones. A low homework approach to school reflects an understanding that a student is more than simply a student, they are a human being with needs other than school work.
How will the school do this practically?
This approach to education is so different from a modern understanding that parents often struggle with how a school can adopt a low homework approach and yet still educate their children effectively. At the Chesterton Academy of St. George, we are committed to various approaches that will reduce the amount of homework high schoolers often experience:
More focused homework - The challenge for our teachers will be to ensure that homework is purposeful and on target. A low homework approach requires teachers to think carefully about the homework they are assigning and avoid busywork.
More work in class - Conversely, we teachers will have to ensure that classroom time is being used effectively. For instance, rather than assigning large sections of reading, we will need to read some things out loud in class as we discuss them. Similarly, we will have to focus on what readings are most important for the lessons we are trying to teach.
Homework a matter of practice - There will also be an emphasis on reserving homework to those subjects that especially require students to practice the material in order to master it. This applies especially to the subjects of Math and Latin.
Commitment among teachers - In order to be a low homework school, we must set the expectation for teachers that we want students to have time at home. Therefore in preliminary conversations with teacher candidates, this is an issues that we have always brought up, to guarantee that they are on the same page.
Communication - Finally, to ensure this low homework approach will succeed, teachers will need to regularly communicate with each other about the work that is going on in class, especially regarding large tests and projects. Similarly, we teachers will need to be in communication with families to ensure that the assignments are taking as long as we expect.
In these ways, then, the Chesterton Academy of St. George is committed to being a low homework school. Rooted in an understanding of the role of the family and the nature of the human person, we want students to only have an hour to an hour and a half of homework each evening so that they have the time to experience the fullness of life that God has to offer them.