A group of French parents and teachers have called for a two-week boycott of homework in schools, saying it is useless, tiring and reinforces inequalities between children.
They say homework pushes the responsibility for learning on parents and causes rows between themselves and their children. They say children would be better off reading a book.
“If the child hasn’t succeeded in doing the exercise at school, I don’t see how they’re going to succeed at home,” said Jean-Jacques Hazan, president of the FCPE, the main French parents’ association, which represents parents and pupils in most of France’s educational establishments.
“In fact, we’re asking parents to do the work that should be done in lessons,” Hazan said.
HOMEWORK BAN
Homework has been officially banned in French primary schools since 1956, but many teachers ignore this and send children home with exercises.
Catherine Chabrun, president of the teachers’ organization Cooperative Institute of Modern Schools (ICEM), says homework also reinforces inequalities.
“Not all families have the time or the necessary knowledge to help their offspring,” she said.
The protesters calling for the ban say no one is contesting the idea of children being given devoirs — or exercises — just that they should be done during the school day and not at home.
“Teachers don’t realize the unbelievable pressure they are putting children under,” Hazan said.
The question of whether young children should do homework has been a matter of fierce debate and disagreement in France since 1912. The anti-homework campaigners stand little chance of banning it, even for two weeks, but their blog, which has already had 22,000 visits in the past fortnight, hopes to put the perennial controversy back on the political agenda.
“Either a pupil has understood the lesson and succeeded in doing the exercises in class, in which case homework is a waste of time and stops them reading, for example, or they haven’t understood and it’s not at home in the absence of a teacher that they’re going to do better,” a statement from the FCPE said.
PREPARATIONS
Not all parents agree. Myriam Menez, general secretary of PEEP, another school parents’ association, told Le Parisien giving primary school children homework prepared them for secondary school.
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