IN State Duma They proposed abolishing homework in schools, since heavy workloads reduce children’s interest in learning.
Teachers and parents expressed their opinions on this proposal.
« I have a positive attitude towards not giving children homework"said the director of the Center for Economics continuing education RANEPA Tatyana Klyachko. However, according to Klyachko, a child partially learns the school curriculum by doing homework, and then the entire education system will have to be rebuilt. In addition, you need to think about where schoolchildren will walk and who will look after them.
« I studied at school for quite a long time, but even then they constantly said that children were overloaded and now they say the same thing. But we all grew up, somehow survived and got, in general, a good education. So I don’t see any particular problem in overloading children with homework. Yes, there are countries where children do not have homework, for example in Finland, but the whole system is structured differently there. educational process “Klyachko added.
Teacher primary classes One of the Moscow schools, Oksana Nikolaeva, supported the State Duma’s proposal. According to her, everything a child needs to know is taught in class, and the teacher always knows whether the children have mastered the material or not. " I don’t want to burden parents with extra work; only unprofessional teachers shift the learning process onto their shoulders, assigning more homework, and sometimes including new topic ", said the teacher.
One of the parents, Andrey, also supported the innovation. His son, a high school student, has no free time from his studies. " He [the son] is interested in fishing, but even in the summer he only went to the dacha a couple of times. Because he is constantly studying - even for the summer he was given homework", the parent complained.
Of course, there are those who are categorically against the abolition of homework. For example, the mother of third-grader Dima from the Moscow region, Maria Seleznyova, believes that homework helps to practice the material covered in class. " When in class it goes in one ear and out the other, then at home you can at least make up for lost time. And if they don’t ask anything, consider that the child will not master this topic. I want my son to grow up educated person. Although, it seems to me smart people many are now disliked. So they come up with all sorts of initiatives like this", - she said.
Maria Seleznyova also added that homework does it with the child herself. " Because the textbooks are such that Dima himself does not understand the assignments without me. I spend 3 hours a day of my personal time on this. But everything is under my control"- said my mother.
In Russia, the question of the need for homework, as well as the supposedly excessive workload to which Russian schoolchildren are exposed, arises quite regularly. Thus, according to Boris A, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Education and Science, they take too much energy from modern students. It is necessary to give them more free time for walks fresh air, he explains.
“Schools all over the world are moving away from homework, and there’s nothing wrong with that.<...> Homework- this is an unnecessary thing today. We already force children to be at school or in some classes all the time,” said Chernyshov.
As the deputy notes, due to the large study load Schoolchildren become indifferent to acquiring knowledge.
“They don’t want to sit over textbooks, pore over some kind of work, or engage in activities that put another strain on their body. On the one hand, we need to make education interesting, and on the other hand, we need to give our children the opportunity to catch their breath so that they can find time to play football and spend time in the fresh air. This would be correct,” says Chernyshov.
The parliamentarian also noted that additional workload in addition to school work - doing homework, as well as attending developmental sections and clubs - also negatively affects their health.
This is not the first time that the question of the excessive workload to which Russian schoolchildren are allegedly subjected has been raised in our country.
Thus, in 2013, teachers of one of the Moscow schools, at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, proposed to legally establish the right of students to voluntarily do homework. Then he instructed the acting mayor of Moscow to prepare draft instructions for this initiative. True, then we were talking only about homework for high school students, who have practically no time left for it due to intensive preparation for entering universities.
Just three months to live
For most school systems world, including the Russian one, homework is still the main form of consolidation of the material covered.
At the same time, Russia does not the only country, where parents of schoolchildren complain about the exorbitant amount of homework. For example, in Italy in 2016, one of the parents of students publicly criticized the education system, and many parents supported him.
Italian Marino Peiretti posted on the Internet open letter, in which he explained why his son did not do his homework during the summer holidays.
“I would like to bring to your attention that this year my son did not complete his summer homework.
We did a lot during this time: we rode a bike for a long time, went hiking, tidied up the house, did some programming.
You have nine whole months at your disposal to instill knowledge in my son and educate him, and I have only three months to teach him how to live,” the child’s father wrote.
Those who read the letter were divided into two camps: some parents supported Peiretti, others accused him of undermining the authority of teachers in the eyes of their son. That same year, the Spanish Confederation of Parents of Schoolchildren held their first strike against homework: for a week, parents and students did not complete the homework assignments they were given. By the way, a similar action took place in France in 2012.
According to research by the international (OECD), which regularly studies the effectiveness school education worldwide, in 2016 Russia ranked first in terms of homework volume. Russian schoolchildren spend more than 10 hours a week on assignments outside of school, the study found. The next places in the ranking were Italy, Ireland, Poland and Spain, where schoolchildren spent an average of about 6-6.5 hours a week on homework.
However, not all countries participated in the study, so the results may not be entirely objective. So schoolchildren in South Korea, starting from high school, All free time spend on education and preparation for entering prestigious universities. Outside of school, Korean children voluntarily attend numerous tutors and also perform Additional tasks Houses.
It's not the schools that have changed, it's the parents
Today, experts have not identified a clear connection between the level of knowledge and the amount of homework. Most of them agree that the main thing in this matter is not the number of lessons, but their quality and creativity.
People's teacher of Russia, director of the Tsaritsyno Education Center No. 548 in Moscow, Efim Rachevsky, believes that homework in school cannot be completely abolished. Our schools have the longest holidays in the world, which total last four months, he points out. In addition, during the lesson, children do not always have time to consolidate the material they have covered, the teacher believes. He cites English classes as an example.
“There are about 15 people in the group, the teacher has a 40-minute lesson at his disposal. And it turns out that on average, education takes two minutes per student. During this time, it is almost impossible to do anything. Therefore, homework in this case, will be of a training nature. Especially if it's interesting.
For example, you can tell your child: “Go to the BBC website, find some film about turtles and try to make Simultaneous translation" This assignment will provide more than 150 English lessons combined.”
He also notes that he does other homework important function, except educational. As Rachevsky said, several years ago, as an experiment, his school canceled homework for elementary school students for two weeks.
“The parents endured it for two days, three days. Then one of my friends, a doctor, called me pedagogical sciences, his grandson was then studying at our school. He says: “What are you doing, bastard? I used to come home and ask my grandson: “Have you done your homework? No? Come on, sit down and do it.” And I watch football myself. And now I ask him, and he answers me: “But they didn’t ask us. Grandfather, let's play chess." But maybe I want to watch football,” complained the doctor of pedagogical sciences. That is, homework also serves as a kind of nanny,” Rachevsky told Gazeta.Ru.
According to him, the most the main task homework - do not make children averse to studying. Perfect option learning - when a teacher gives his students individual homework, so that outside of school, each of the children reinforces the material that they learned the worst in class.
However, admittedly, few of them Russian teachers takes such a personalized approach.
Unlike many other experts, the teacher is sure: the version that modern schoolchildren are loaded with homework more than their predecessors is a myth.
The main difference of our time, he believes, is that the approach to children's education on the part of the parents themselves, who today “more than ever, link the well-being of their children with the quality of education they will receive.” Modern parents schoolchildren really want to raise successful children, and many now associate success with higher education in the most prestigious universities, the expert believes.
“For example, in the 60s of the last century, about 25% of students transferred to high school and then went to college. And now everyone is enrolling in higher education institutions,” explains the school director.
He also draws attention to the fact that there is no clause in the education law obliging teachers to give children homework, therefore there is nothing to be repealed at the legislative level. According to him, homework is a common teaching technique at school, but it is not required by law.
However, there are restrictions on the volume of tasks - sanitary rules and norms, the so-called SanPiNs. According to these recommendations, first-graders should have no homework at all, students in grades 4 and 5 can spend no more than two hours a day on homework, and high school students can spend no more than three and a half hours a day.
Teachers don't like children
Moscow schoolboy Bogdan (name changed) is 11 years old, he is in fifth grade and plays hockey six times a week. Previously, he also visited music school, but in the second half of the 4th grade I decided to take it there academic leave, because he did not have time to prepare for the numerous exams that all fourth-graders took when moving to high school.
As Bogdan’s parents told Gazeta.Ru, the boy has practically no free time between school, sports and homework. “He mostly sleeps in our car,” his father shared. “When I drive him home from class.”
Despite such a high workload, Bogdan seems to be a completely content and sociable child, and his parents believe that modern children need to be given a busy schedule.
“Otherwise, he will spend all his free time sitting at home at the computer,” explains Bogdan’s mother. — As children, we constantly walked with friends in the courtyards; we couldn’t be driven home. But now modern schoolchildren do not have such a habit; they do not spend any time outdoors.”
However, there is also an opposite opinion. Klara Mansurova, chairman social movement Parental Concern believes that today's students are given too much homework in each subject, and end up spending as much time working on textbooks at home as they do at school.
“I think the homework assignment should be reduced by 50%, but not cancelled. It is not always possible for a teacher to explain a topic so clearly during a lesson that all children understand it. In order to completely abolish homework, you must first change teachers,” says Mansurova.
According to her, there are subjects in which homework should not be given at all - among them computer science, social studies, and chemistry. Being a candidate chemical sciences, Mansurova is confident that this science can be revealed in such a way in the classroom that children themselves will become interested in it and want to watch it additional information on the Internet, encyclopedia or textbook.
“Maybe not everyone needs homework, but only those who are not doing well in the subject. The teacher needs to quietly approach such a student and advise him on what else to read and do,” she explains.
According to the expert, the worst thing in school is when a child is looked at as a person who is obliged to obey the teacher and complete all his tasks. While the main task of the school is to help the student find his place in life and self-determination.
“Unfortunately, in our schools there is almost no love for children. After all, these 11 years that a child spends at school are the most important in his life. The teacher must first of all help the child understand his purpose and answer the questions: “Who am I? Where am I from? Why am I?" But instead, every teacher believes that his subject is the main one.”
It turns out that the unfortunate student practically does not have time to live due to too much workload, says Mansurova.
Unlike Rachevsky, she believes that modern children are loaded with much more workload than Soviet schoolchildren. At the same time, Mansurova draws attention to the fact that this is also due to the fault of the parents themselves, who send their children to numerous extracurricular sections.
The child should have free time when he can think, Mansurova believes, however modern schoolboy cannot afford such luxury. Just because our children are small, we believe that we can force and humiliate them, and it’s time to start treating children differently, Mansurova is sure.
On education and science, Boris Chernyshev proposes to abolish homework for schoolchildren. In his opinion, due to heavy workloads, children lose interest in learning. And the freed up time can be used for walks in the fresh air. The MK correspondent found out how teachers and parents feel about this initiative.
“Schools all over the world are moving away from homework, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Homework is an unnecessary thing today. We already force children to be at school or in some classes all the time,” says Chernyshev. According to the parliamentarian, children are negatively affected by any workload after school, not only homework, but also classes.
The opinions of teachers and parents on this issue are divided.
“I have a positive attitude towards not assigning homework to children,” says Tatyana Klyachko, director of the Center for Economics of Lifelong Education at RANEPA. - But the fact is that the education system in our country is now structured in such a way that the child partially learns the material through homework. You can’t just cancel an element school curriculum. Then it is necessary to rebuild the entire education system. The deputy complains that children have little time for walks, but if it is freed up, it will be necessary to think about where schoolchildren will walk and what they will do with their time, who will look after them. I studied at school for quite a long time, but even then they constantly said that children were overloaded and now they say the same thing. But we all grew up, somehow survived and generally received a good education. So I don’t see any particular problem in overloading children with homework. Yes, there are countries where children do not have homework, for example in Finland, but the entire educational process is structured differently there.
This is the first time I’ve heard about this initiative,” says Maria Selezneva, mother of third-grader Dima from the Moscow region. - Homework cannot be canceled. After all, it is designed to reinforce the material covered in class. When in class it goes in one ear and out the other, then at home you can at least make up for lost time. And if they don’t ask anything, consider that the child will not master this topic. I want my son to grow up to be an educated man. Although, it seems to me that smart people are disliked by many now. So they come up with all sorts of such initiatives. In general, I sit with him myself, doing homework all the time, because the textbooks are such that Dima himself does not understand the assignments without me. I spend 3 hours a day of my personal time on this. But everything is under my control.
“I am completely for this initiative,” says one primary school teacher. capital schools Oksana Nikolaeva. - We cover everything a child needs to know in class. Sometimes it happens that having completed the amount assigned in class, we move on to homework right in class. I know very well whether this or that child has mastered the material. I don’t want to burden parents with unnecessary work; only unprofessional teachers shift the learning process onto their shoulders, assigning more homework, and sometimes including a new topic in it.
I’m looking forward to seeing such a law adopted,” says Andrey, the father of a high school student. - The child no longer knows where to go from this study. And now preparation for exams will begin in 11th grade. My son has absolutely no free time for anything. He enjoys fishing, but even in the summer he only went to the dacha a couple of times. Because he is constantly studying - even for the summer he was assigned homework.
He called for schoolchildren to give up homework in favor of walking in the fresh air. Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science Boris Chernyshov told the Moscow City News Agency that some schoolchildren, due to large quantity academic load leads to apathy towards education, and high workload negatively affects health. “Schools all over the world are avoiding homework, and there is nothing wrong with that,” the deputy added.
The head of the National Parents Committee, Irina Volynets, agreed with the parliamentary initiative on air on NSN.
“The huge amount of homework, this is no secret, leads to the fact that the relationship between parents and children deteriorates, because when parents devote so much time to this preparation, they accordingly demand from their children high marks. It’s irritating when a child doesn’t understand something, and for some reason they come home from school without understanding what they’re talking about we're talking about, with rare exceptions. And parents who have neither teacher education, nor the proper level of training, because they went through all this themselves at school a long time ago, they are forced to hire tutors. Children of parents who are unable to do this fall into disrepute. So is it necessary if not complete cancellation homework, then reducing this volume by at least two times. This is a very sound initiative, and on behalf of National Committee I support her,” she said.
Head of the NRK: Children are trained like puppies for the Unified State Exam, but there is no knowledge Irina Volynets connected low level children's understanding of new material with unsatisfactory work of teachers.
“The amount of homework that schoolchildren receive today reminds me personally, as the mother of four schoolchildren, that the school has taken care of not only educational function, but also educational. The teacher, as a rule, only sets the topic during the lesson, announces the section that is currently being covered, shows where in the textbook all this can be studied, and the main part of the work is transferred to the parents. For example, I can’t imagine how a primary school student can complete an assignment on social studies or the world around him without the help of his parents. Most of work is done using the Internet, information is downloaded, printed, glued into a project, which makes parents not sleep at night and turns childhood into torture. This only causes aversion to studying. And not only for children, but also for parents. A huge number of parents are looking forward to the holidays. This is the time when they can feel that they have children, and not creatures with whom they constantly need to do homework,” she lamented.
Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Corresponding Member did not agree with this opinion Russian Academy Education, Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation, Director of Education Center No. 109 in Moscow Evgeniy Yamburg. On the air of NSN, he called the talk about abolishing homework stupid.
“When will the Duma start doing what they should do? Is he a teacher or a professional in this field? You can do nothing at all, issue a diploma right away, and everything will be great. There’s no such thing as without tasks, you know? Another thing is that they can be different - creative, project activities and so on. But not one yet normal person Couldn't teach without having to work at home. I don’t know what kind of education this deputy received; I cannot evaluate his words. But in general it’s stupidity to call a spade a spade. Nobody will cancel anything. This is such nonsense, you know, fake news. There can be no law on this topic. Noise, just information noise. It’s funny to comment on this,” he said.
Previously, Evgeny Yamburg spoke negatively about the abolition of the five-point grading system, the possibility of which was considered by Rosobrnadzor. He stated that changing the grading system would not help education in any way, but would only cause unnecessary retraining of all teachers.
The country's high school students are frozen in anticipation: homework may be canceled in schools for high school students. The initiative to cancel homework was made by teachers of one of the Moscow schools at a meeting with the President of the Russian Federation. The teachers felt that the workload was graduating classes is off scale. According to teachers, it is necessary to legally establish the student’s right to choose the form of self-education that is useful and necessary for him.
On September 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the acting mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin to prepare draft instructions, at the initiative of a number of teachers, on the voluntary implementation of homework in high schools, which should increase the efficiency of distribution of the teaching load.
– Extremely important thing so that the guys have free time. Of course, I would like it to be used as efficiently as possible, wisely,” the head of state noted.
According to Rospotrebnadzor standards, primary schoolchildren should not study lessons at home for more than 1.5 hours a day, and high school students - 3.5 hours. Most schools follow this rule. But it’s still hard for the children. According to doctors, on average they spend 10-12 hours a day on training. In lyceums and gymnasiums sometimes – 15-16 hours.
The Russian Ministry of Education and Science did not see any obstacles to canceling homework. According to officials, the school and the teacher have the right to determine teaching methods. In connection with this educational institution Together with parents, they can decide whether to do homework voluntarily.
What famous people of Russia and Karelia think:
Nadezhda Vasilievna Pekarchik, Honored Teacher of the Republic of Karelia, Honored Teacher Russian Federation:
– This is extremely inappropriate, because homework is work that makes knowledge strong and stable. Without homework, it's just spending time at school. The Education Law states that schools must develop knowledge, skills and abilities. Skill is developed through training. Canceling homework is detrimental to Russian education. You can then increase the lesson time to 65 minutes: so that the teacher works for 40 minutes and the student for 15 minutes. But the school day will stretch for another two hours - that’s how much is allocated for independent work. Nowadays, children don’t do much homework anyway, which is why our level of education is so low. The abolition of homework is a terrorist attack within the country, within education.
Maxim Ivanov, teacher of history and social studies at the Derzhavin Lyceum, “Teacher of the Year in Karelia 2012”:
– I feel great about this initiative. I believe that a child should have the right to choose a self-training strategy. If he studies at profile class, has decided what he wants to take, and then he has to do homework in other subjects. If a child needs to read, then he will read anyway. The only thing is that this is a utopia for our reality. There are no legal obstacles, but this should be decided by the school together with the parents. We ask parents, teachers, and the principal, but we don’t ask the student. And the main object educational process- student. Imagine a parent who says, “Yeah, let’s cancel homework.” So, alas, this idea will remain only on paper. Although in Russia there are schools where there is no homework.
Natalya Tretyak, First Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Russia:
– There are no legislative obstacles on this topic, no administrative documents is not required by the Ministry of Education and Science. This is the choice of the educational institution, teacher and parent. It is the teacher and the educational institution who have the right to determine teaching methods, lesson construction systems, and forms. intermediate certifications. Therefore, if the school, together with parents, decides that to achieve the results determined by the federal government educational standard, you can do it without homework, she can and has the right to do it.
Irina Manuilova, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education:
– The problem is not whether or not there should be homework, but what it should be, whether excess homework is a problem for a high school student due to the fact that it can simply result in health problems. Currently, each school can, within the framework of current legislation, exempt students from doing homework - at the request of parents or on their own initiative. It is enough just to prescribe all the nuances of innovations in curriculum. Today educational institution must clearly monitor what homework our high school students receive and within what time they can actually complete them, taking into account their psychological and physiological characteristics.
Marina Bityanova, professor at the Moscow Institute open education:
– I am a little worried about this way of posing the question, when from a certain education system that has evolved over centuries (classroom-lesson system), we pull out one element and try to do something with it. This is very dangerous approach, because in the form in which the education system has developed today, it is impossible to remove homework. It can only be controlled, reduced, and correlated with the individual capabilities of the child. Homework is often the connecting thread between lessons. And if this “thread” is mechanically removed, the education system will become even more lopsided than it is now. So that in the 10th grade, when the teacher looks at the class and says: “Guys, I offer you a choice,” what he sees in his eyes is not the thought: “Wow! You don’t have to do anything,” but understanding what a choice is, what criteria children use to make it, and understanding that they make it consciously. But this will take years; now it is almost impossible.
Lyudmila Kurbatova, Honored Teacher of Russia, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences:
– Children are very overloaded now. They also work at night, and this is very dangerous for their health. So maybe this is a very good first step to minimize homework. School material, especially starting from the 7th grade, is very overloaded. There is a lot of information that you just need to cram. Therefore, the most important task now is to revise the content of education. Minimizing homework is great in principle, but it's only the first step. And the second is a revision of textbooks, a revision of the content of education.