School Home-Work Slaves

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 56, 28 May 1927, Page 10

School Home-Work Slaves

Vicious System Needs Revision

THE hot-bed product makes a good show, but it lacks solidity. The hot-house flower is a perishable thing-. In our school system, despite protests, there is still, particularly in the case of the brightest children, a good deal of mental forcing which often shows a temporary success, but puts in jeopardy the health and future development of its victims. THE fact that in our educational scholarships gained year by year in system all the honours and re- our Is, for these vicwards go to those scholars who can tories are achieved only by the loss show the biggest stock of mental of finer and more valuable assets —the acquirements is responsible for the health and. lib pressure on the brightest children, only one boy or one girl succumbs as many of whom are not physically fit the effect of this intellectual < for the strain. Since the gaining of it is really a social murder, but when these distinctions brings credit to the cases are known to everybody of school in which the winners are where young people have gone under trained, and consequently improved as the effect of over-study, it is

status and promotion to the teachers, there is a strong temptation to force the pace and get more out of the young student than his or her constitution will bear. This is a vicious system which should be inquired into fully and which should be sternly repressed by law. It is by a national compromise that children are handed over for a certain number of hours each day from the care of the parents to the care of teachers who are—to use the legal definition —“in loco parentis” and who possess during those hours all the duties and responsibilities of father, mother, or guardian, as the case may be. Invasion of the Home When, however, the child is sent home with a sack of books over his shoulder and a load of home-work to prepare for the following day, the sanctity of the home is invaded, the authority of the parents is sapped, and the liberty of the child who has rights as well as any other citizen is destroyed. It is unfortunate that such stress is laid by the public on the number of

time for the legislature to intervene. Pretence at Reform It will be said by the principals of our high schools through the country that the evil is not so bad as in the past, that it has been much reformed. As Hamlet impatiently exclaimed, “Reform it altogether.” Banish homework completely. If the teachers cannot bring on their pupils during the five hours of each daily session, they should give up their jobs and try something else. Many headmasters again in some four big centres will state that they strictly limit the time to be devoted to home-work. Their regulations, as a matter of fact, amount to little more than what is called in drawing up wills “a pious wish” for their assistants each eager to have liis own subject well done, pile on the home-work and the poor youngster goes home like the “laden ass bending down between many burdens.”

Home-work leaves no time for originality, for hobbies, for the innocent fun which is the life of children, for the happy intercourse between parents and children which should create the sacred atmosphere of a home.