Should Assignments Be Banned For First Graders?
Seeing Teju and his kid brother, aged ten and six, struggling with their overloaded school bags reminds me of my childhood days when I struggled to maintain an oversized school bag for a term. My bags always underwent routine sewing and occasional visits to the cobbler, to enable me to withstand the pressures from the weighty books in them. Worse, I ended up looking like a mini turtle.
Children still go through this ordeal today and it is neither helpful to their physical structure nor helpful for their development. Besides, nothing stresses children and parents more than having to come home after a busy day at work or school to begin a bag full of assignments.
A study published in The American Journal of Family Therapy discovered that students in the early elementary school years are given significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended.
Parents reported that first-graders (children between ages six and seven) were spending 28 minutes on homework each night as against the recommended 10 minutes. This is not peculiar to American Canadian kids alone as this is also a global challenge.
Recently, the Indian government banned schools from giving students homework and heavy books to prevent spinal damage. Teachers have been asked not to give first and second graders homework to prevent them from carrying heavy books home. In addition, weight guidelines were issued for school bags, depending on a child's age, after studies showed heavy loads can affect soft/developing spines.
While the goal of sending a child to school is mental development amongst others, postural defects would do a great disservice to the overall wellbeing of the child. Carrying oversized school bags full of heavy books can cause young children to develop serious spinal deformities; they develop forward head posture because they hinge forward at the hips to compensate for the heavyweight on their back.
A study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India discovered that children below 13 years old might, in their later years, suffer from mild back pain which may develop into chronic pain and a hunchback. Of the 2,500 children and 1,000 parents surveyed, 88 percent of these pre-teen children carry more than 45 percent of their body weight on their backs.
Imagine if this was in Africa, where many children come back from school and still have to fetch and carry water on that same back strained from the weight of their bags. These children may not show symptoms or experience pain immediately, but in the long term, they develop imbalances in the body which can affect the health of the nervous system.
Potential health challenges caused by excessive homework amongst other things are not helping as kids develop basic skills and it takes away much of their play time, which is essential to their wellbeing.
According to the 2017 World Development Report by the World Bank 650 million children attend primary school, but a staggering 250 million are not even learning basic skills. Even after several years in school, children cannot read, write or do basic maths. So, what is the aim of these back-breaking homework?
Adaku, a mother of three girls aged four and 2, noted that each day her children come home with nothing less than five assignments which are spread across in textbooks, workbooks and exercise books. According to her, “most times, for an assignment on one subject, my four-year assignment is given up to 6 homework and workbooks and is expected to return them the next day.”
Spanish parents had once called for a homework strike for their kids, many British teachers share this same view, the same goes for the Indian government. So what are African governments’ waiting for to tone down on voluminous homework given to elementary graders? After all this system hasn’t worked, given that this mode of education has led to a continental churn of half-baked graduates.
