Homework should be made enjoyable

THE MOST unpleasant word in school is `homework'. Another expression for the same concept is `take home assignment'. Whatever be the name it is the same. Homework is a continuation of classwork. In the class, the teacher teaches. She wants to do atleast two things through this domestic exercise. Number one, to check whether the students have understood what was taught; number two, wants the students to do a drill so that they become thorough with what was taught.

A good homework is a question given exactly on the model taught. As long as students think originally and do it by themselves, homework remains useful. There are many facts which have to be learnt before the question can be answered. The simple truth about testing is that a good test should test only what is taught, perhaps something less but nothing more.

What happens during homework time at home? Unless the students have paid proper attention in class, they cannot do the exercise. Homework is a test to find out the amount of attention paid in class. Surely a student who is attentive and has understood the lesson should have no problem during homework time.

Perhaps the only difficulty the student has is the physical work of doing it and the precious time that has to be spent. Play is easy. Homework is difficult! Play is enjoyable. Homework is dull! So the best solution here is to make homework like playing. It should be easy and enjoyable. When only what is taught is tested, it would become easy.

When teachers can think of exercises that really engage and attract the students such as playing, then it would be enjoyable. This solution leads us to an old but long unanswered question.

How talented and trained are our teachers in thinking of a really engaging and attractive homework?

Any attempt at making homework useful and interesting should link the lesson to life. The attempt becomes easy when the objects taught are found in our immediate surroundings.

Birds, plants, letters, stories, words and sentences can be taught and tested interestingly. Pictures should bring these objects closer to the students. For this, teachers will have to put their thought process into action. Unless the teacher does her homework, she can neither teach nor give a meaningful picture to the homework she assigns to students.

When the teacher teaches one thing and tests another thing, then starts the headache for both the students and the parents. Already at the lower class levels, LKG to Std. One, parents are often forced to literally make students sit down and complete their homework. When the child feels tired, they complete the remaining few words and figures.

When the teachers do not know the basic principles of testing, then the problem assumes greater proportions. An untaught homework makes the students think not of the ways to do it but the ways to copy it. When one such homework is given, my children are found talking to their equally baffled classmates over the telephone for hours.

The only advantage of such an unseen homework is the ingenuous and ingenious conversation that takes place between two keen observers of a careless teacher.

The conversation ends by one saying that as the answer has not been taught they should leave the homework undone. Though nervous, they set to school. In school, to their surprise, they find one or two students having done the homework correctly. Thanks to uncles, fathers and mothers! All the students who did not do the homework cut a sorry figure and the teacher's skin and face are saved because of someone's unwarranted interference.

There is a bit of psychological truth behind assigning homework. A teacher who wants her students to understand the lesson well, teaches well and expects a repetition of what was taught as faithfully as possible. Ofcourse, often our homework is sheer copying down teacher-marked answers into notebooks atleast once. Such a teacher is normal. She does not suffer from any complex. Some teachers suffer from a series of complexes.

The least harmful is that they want the students to be always wrong. In order to get a wrong answer they strive hard to put the wrong question. Right questions bring right answers! Wrong questions bring wrong answers!

What if the take home assignment does not serve as an exercise to improve the skill of the students, it helps parents to recall, re-learn and sometimes learn what they had missed as students!

In my own case I learnt most of the nursery rhymes while teaching my three children. I even advocate the same to others. If you are illiterate or semi-literate you should join your child while doing homework right from lower kindergarten. You will climb up the ladder of learning along with your children. Apart from patience, you also need humility to sit on par with your children and learn along with them and confess ignorance.

Finally you will have to realise the importance of learning at an out-of-school stage. Rather than pass a value judgment on the parents doing their children's home work, it would be proper to point out one of the incidental advantages of parent-homework.

Literate parents would become masters and start thinking originally; semi-literate parents would become properly literate and the illiterate have a bright chance of becoming literate, if only they keep pace with their children right from the start. Should not the Government that promotes Adult Education spending a lot of money, encourage parent-homework?

Y. SAYEED MOHAMMED

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