An old photo of our two boys appeared in the Sunday Star recently. Taken 5 years ago when we were interviewed for an article on homeschooling, it’s now used to illustrate a story about the tyranny of homework. “Can we ask the papers to pay us for using our photo without permission?” asked Elliot. With a headline that screamed, Burden on Parent and Child, the article reported stress and anxiety among parents and school students brought about by excessive homework.

The irony isn’t lost on us because we homeschool to get out of the very system that’s being discussed here. A homeschooler once quipped that parents of children in conventional schools must believe in homeschooling - after all they spend so much time coaching and helping their kids with their school assignments at home. Of course mundane homework reportedly including “copying questions AND answers from workbooks”, rewriting ‘nicely’ a teacher’s notes” do not add to the pleasure.

In the report, one mother claims that she spends 3 hours after dinner every night going through her daughters’ schoolwork. And that’s not all of course. Students these days have to contend with tuition, which comes with homework as well. A father whose 7-year old son is registered for tuition in ALL subjects told me that although it appears stressful, his son is actually more motivated – he works harder on his tuition homework than the ones he brings home from school. So who’s to say homework is a burden?

The contentious subject about homework surfaced recently with the publication of an international survey by Australian psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg last July. In the report Malaysian students were found to spend an average of 3.8 hours a day on homework compared to Singapore (3.5), Russia (3.1), Australia and Canada (2.2) and Japan (1.7).

In a typical reaction, the Education Ministry pooh-poohed the survey then as ‘irrelevant’ but has since seen the light. Minister of Education Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein announced a set of guidelines to regulate homework, so that it would be “fun for students, focus on specific work and serve as learning aids.”

Dr Etta Kralovec, teacher and teacher-educator wrote in her groundbreaking book “The End of Homework” that homework does not necessarily make for brighter students. Instead homework can have a negative effect on children, families and communities. Subtly but surely, child-family time so necessary to build relationship is disrupted, time for leisure, music lessons, reading, or hobbies is curtailed, down time for relaxation and play is discouraged, and involvement in other learning activities (such as church, special interest groups, community clubs, etc) is sidestepped. Worse still, inability to complete schoolwork on time or to a teacher’s expectation may deepen frustration and lead to loss of love for learning and a desire to drop out of school altogether.

So does that mean schools ought to scrap homework entirely? I don’t know. Right now debate is raging over the form that homework takes. Yet not enough is said about how children learn, much less the contents in schoolbooks that ought to captivate, and encourage thinking and learning.

Certainly homeschoolers face a different kind of tension. Because homeschool derives its pedagogical benefits from a broader canvass encompassing formal and informal learning, all work is in fact homework. Sometimes parents confuse ends with means - the number of hours at the table, the number of books read, question of assessment and testing - and like other parents worry if their children are getting enough learning!

While education normally includes the mastery of facts, homeschoolers should aim higher. Win the National Spelling Bee. Be a champion orator. Go ahead, win awards. Be all your kids can be. But also work on attitudes such as self-sacrifice, readiness to serve, endurance, self-motivation, humility, adaptability, willingness to try new challenges, hard work, and a heart that’s tender to the things of God.

Above all, families should review their goals frequently so that whatever the aims, children should not forget their Creator in the days of their youth, and learn to “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccl 12:13). If these are lessons for a lifetime, the time to start is now.