[Maths-Education] Homework

Peter Gates peter.gates@nottingham.ac.uk
Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:58:20 +0000


As Dylan says....

>Getting students to do homework (and getting teachers to
>mark it!) is just an incredibly expensive and generally unproductive
>public-relations exercise.

Assuming that this might have a lot of mileage surely the real question is not whether homework is useful or not etc, but why it persists, and how it persists as a social practice. This is not too far away from arguments on setting - something that Dylan has done a lot of work on with colleagues. Here again the question isn't about efficacy but persistence. Hence homework is very useful as a controlling mechanism and as a positioning mechanism. It clearly helps to position pupils into goodies and baddies and further reinforces all the other control mechanisms that go on in the name of teaching.
In a BBC-TV programme in "The Knowledge” series called “The Language Master” a quite well known American Teacher  - Michael Thomas - was featured teaching students to speak French in a week. The programme focussed on his approach to teaching, which bought about miraculous results in a very short time. At one time in this programme, at the end of the first lesson he told his pupils:
It is very important when you walk out of here not to practice, not to try to remember, not to review mentally, not to test yourself. It is very important to leave it alone.
In short, do no homework. Effective teaching might be enhanced by leaving well alone. But then again teaching maths isn't about teaching maths is it....

Who said "Old Labour?! Surely not you Mr Blunkett?


Best wishes,
Peter

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Peter Gates
Centre for the Study of Mathematics Education
University of Nottingham
School of Education
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Great Britain

peter.gates@nottingham.ac.uk

Tel: +44 115 951 4432
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Mobile: 0773 080 8353

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/staff/pgates.htm
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