“不留家庭书面作业”成空话

   Jane Lai

    Parents have been complaining that their children still have too much homework, despite the city’s Education Bureau having forbidden any homework being given to students below Grade 3 early this year.

    Shenzhen has been chosen to pioneer a reduction of students’ workload, a statement from the local government has said it would reduce the number of homework given to young students, tightly restrict the study load and ban the assignment of any written homework to primary school students younger than Grade 3. It is hoped that students will use the extra free time to cultivate their creativity.

    “Why does my daughter still get three hours of homework a night?” A parent surnamed Sun complained to the Shenzhen Economic Daily last week. His daughter is a Grade 3 student at Chaguang Primary School in Nanshan District.

    Another parent surnamed Liu said his son, a Grade 2 student at a primary school in Bao’an District, had to spend more than an hour a day on assignments. “The new rule has had limited effect.”

    While students and their parents complained about the study load, schools and teachers said more homework would also mean a heavier workload for themselves, but some parents continue to request more homework.

    “This call for a reduction in the study load has been going on for decades, but it has never been effectively reduced,” the newspaper cited an unnamed headmaster in Futian District as saying. “It is not because of headmasters or teachers but complex societal forces.”

    Some reputable junior high schools enroll students on a basis of standardized test scores. Primary schools compete with each other on the number of students who can get into key middle schools. Parents naturally judge the quality of a primary school by the number of its graduates who enter key middle schools. District education bureaus organize exams each year to assess the quality of primary schools.

    All of these factors led to teachers imposing more homework on students, the headmaster said.

    Previously, the city’s Education Bureau said it would establish a homework coordination and supervision system. But it’s unclear as to how it has developed.

    Most parents, when asked, have said that having too much homework has been known to give their children insomnia, which in turn can affect students’ ability to concentrate in class.

    If it’s not possible to ban homework, then maybe the focus should be on quality rather than quantity. Most of the time, students are bombarded with repetition, which in the long term can cause them to lose interest in learning altogether, they said.