I recently found out that my nephew's school had no take-home homework before high school, instead having kids complete assignments during class time. At first, I was flabbergasted that they would deny kids the discipline building of managing unstructured time without direct supervision. Homework- at home- seemed like such a fundamental part of the schooling experience. Now, I'm thinking that was pretty much they onl…
While I respect your good intent, I am disappointed to hear this perspective. The increasing burden of homework on children honestly strikes me as the denial of childhood.
I am happy to hear that this is one by-product of the widespread adoption of LLMs. I don't even mind getting rid of phones from the classroom to ensure that school time is productive learning time under these conditions.
Children should absolutely be permitted to live out their childhood. I don't think that time without homework equates to time with electronic brain rot. There is absolutely a middle ground that parents should enforce (like doing chores and engaging in discovery).
Similarly, I think that adolescents can find far more rewarding ways to spend their time outside of homework, whether that's working part-time, participating in volunteer activities, building personal projects or developing soft skills. While there absolutely will be adolescents that spend their time consuming social media and doing nothing productive, it feels problematic to enforce the double standard that teenagers should be required to juggle school, homework, extracurricular activities, basic familial responsibilities, and personal development, all while many adults do nothing productive outside of their work lives and barely meet their own familial responsibilities. Instead of having them do more homework, we should trust them to navigate their time. Parents, mentors, teachers can guide them with a gentle hand.