"Why doesn't my child have homework from your class?" is the beginning of a useful discussion

Some parents have asked, "Why isn't there more homework?"

No Homework?  Actually, I expect students to do a lot of thinking after they leave my class.   Some of the the students recently chose to take the classwork (an essay-writing exercise) and turn it into their personal homework.  They chose to deepen their work.   That's the sort of choice that I encourage in my classes.  I want us to think about how other countries run their classes.

What can we learn from Finland?
The teachers in Finland generally aim to help their students learn how to be happy.   Here is a quote from a blog by a teacher who saw the Michael Moore documentary:

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The only other point I want to respond to here is the one Moore makes with the math teacher - the part where the math teacher says he cares about his students becoming happy human beings and Moore is so impressed. This part of the clip, at least in my experience, rings absolutely true. Right now I have over 70 of Finland's future teachers in my classrooms and I would expect every single one of them to give the same answer as that math teacher.
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Here is a comment from William Doyle, a researcher:

If you want results, try doing the opposite of what American “education reformers” think we should do in classrooms.
Instead of control, competition, stress, standardized testing, screen-based schools and loosened teacher qualifications, try warmth, collaboration, and highly professionalized, teacher-led encouragement and assessment.

When American reformers refer to “personalized learning,” they mean that every child should have his/her own laptop. Finnish teachers use the concept of “personalized learning,” but they mean person-to-person learning:

While the school has the latest technology, there isn’t a tablet or smartphone in sight, just a smart board and a teacher’s desktop.  Screens can only deliver simulations of personalized learning, this is the real thing, pushed to the absolute limit. 

Instead of walking in lines, remaining silent, blowing a bubble instead of speaking, and maintaining perfect order, as our reformers prefer:

Children are allowed to slouch, wiggle and giggle from time to time if they want to, since that’s what children are biologically engineered to do, in Finland, America, Asia and everywhere else.

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CLICK HERE at 0:45

Watch this clip at 2 minutes

So you see, one of the reasons that I don't give a lot of homework is that I expect students to create their own work outside of the classroom.   I ask questions, as suggested by Neil Postman, to stimulate their thinking, which will continue after the students leave my classroom.  I expect students to come to my next class with some answers to those questions and for them to bring questions that they have created since I saw them two days before (I have classes every other day).




"Find friends and grow ... there is so much more than homework to being a human being."

I'm glad that we had this opprotunity to talk with each other.  I wish that more parents would make time to talk with their teachers to find out their philosophies about homework and work outside the classroom.   Ken Robinson once said that the teacher has the ultimate responsibility for the experience of the student.  For most students, the TEACHER IS THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, in that moment and in that classroom.  This means that teachers can choose to create the environment in every class to post questions like these from Neil Postman's book (1971)


 Reflect on these questions - and others that these can generate. Please do not merely react to them. 
 What do you worry about most? What are the causes of your worries? Can any of your worries be eliminated? How? Which of them might you deal with first? How do you decide? Are there other people with the same problems? How do you know? How can you find out? 

 If you had an important idea that you wanted to let everyone (in the world) know about, how might you go about letting them know? 

 What bothers you most about adults? Why? How do you want to be similar to or different from adults you know when you become an adult? 

What, if anything, seems to you to be worth dying for? How did you come to believe this? 

What seems worth living for? How did you come to believe this? At the present moment, what would you most like to be - or be able to do? Why? What would you have to know in order to be able to do it? What would you have to do in order to get to know it? 

 How can you tell 'good guys' from 'bad guys'? How can 'good' be distinguished from 'evil'? What kind of a person would you most like to be? How might you get to be this kind of person? 

 At the present moment, what would you most like to be doing? Five years from now? Ten years from now? Why? What might you have to do to realize these hopes? What might you have to give up in order to do some or all of these things? 

 When you hear or read or observe something, how do you know what it means? Where does meaning 'come from'? What does 'meaning' mean? How can you tell what something 'is' or whether it is? 

Where do words come from? Where do symbols come from? Why do symbols change? Where does knowledge come from? What do you think are sane of man's most important ideas? Where did they come from? Why? How? Now what? 

 What's a 'good idea'? How do you know when a good or live idea becomes a bad or dead idea? Which of man's ideas would we be better off forgetting? How do you decide? 

 What is 'progress'? What is 'change'? What are the most obvious causes of change? What are the least apparent? 

What conditions are necessary in order for change to occur? What kinds of changes are going on right now? Which are important? How are they similar to or different from other changes that have occurred? What are the relationships between new ideas and change? Where do new ideas come from? How come? So what? If you wanted to stop one of the changes going on now (pick one), how would you go about it? What consequences would you have to consider? 

 Of the important changes going on in our society, which should be encouraged and which resisted? Why? How? What are the most important changes that have occurred in the past ten years? Twenty years? Fifty years? In the last year? In the last six months? Last month? What will be the most important changes next month? Next year? Next decade? How can you tell? So what? What would you change if you could? How might you go about it? Of those changes, which are going, to occur, which would you stop if you could? Why? How? So what? 

 Who do you think has the most important things to say today? To whom? How? Why? What are the dumbest and more dangerous ideas that are 'popular' today? Why do you think so? Where did these ideas come from? 

 What are the conditions necessary for life to survive? Plants? Animals? Humans? Which of these conditions are necessary for all life Which ones for plants? Which ones for animals? Which ones for humans? What are the greatest threats to all forms of life? To plants? To animals? To humans? What are some of the 'strategies' living things use to survive'? Which unique to plants? Which unique to animals? Which unique to humans? What kinds of human survival strategies are (1) similar to those of animals and plants; (2) different from animals and plants? What does man's language permit him to develop as survival strategies that animals cannot develop? How might man's survival activities be different from what they are if he did not have language? 

 What other 'languages' does man have besides those consisting of words? What functions do these 'languages' serve? Why and how do they originate? Can you invent a new one? How might you start? What would happen, what difference would it make, what would man not be able to do if he had no number (mathematical) languages? How many symbol systems does man have? How come? So what? What are some good symbols? Some bad? What good symbols could we use that we do not have? What bad symbols do we have that we'd be better off without? 

 What's worth knowing? How do you decide? What are some ways to go about getting to know what's worth knowing? 

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We believe that the schools must serve as the principal medium for developing in youth the attitudes and skills of social, political and cultural criticism. No. That is not emphatic enough. Try this: in the early 1960’s, an interviewer was trying to get Ernest Hemingway to identify the characteristics required for a person to be a 'great writer'. As the interviewer offered a list of various possibilities, Hemmingway disparaged each in sequence. Finally, frustrated, the interviewer asked, 'Isn't then any one essential ingredient that you can identify?' Hemingway replied, ‘Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.' It seems to us that, in his response, Hemingway identified an essential survival strategy and the essential function of the schools in today's world.     Neil Postman

PDF]Teaching as a Subversive Activity - Kairos School of Inquiry

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Did you see the clip?

by N Postman - ‎Cited by 2032 - ‎Related articles

TEACHING AS A SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY. Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner. Contents. Introduction. 1 Crap Detecting. 2 The Medium is the Message, Of ...

These notes are from a conversation with a teacher who spoke with more than 25 parents during a charter school's "parent's night"... parents walked form class to class to meet parents.   The teacher, a Spanish teacher in Miami, gave these remarks to 4 separate groups of parents during the evening.  These notes are a compilation of the message.

The parents have been given this link so that the message can be revived in their minds and so that the parents can make more recommendations about how best to reach their children.  
Studetns are given this link, too, so that they have the slight pressure on Friday afternoon.  "NO HOMEWORK!"... and then they think, "But now I have time to read a good book and bring questions to my teacher.  I really need to recommend a good video to him and to add to my blog."