It’s time to reinvent education!
“Hack” is a term I would like to borrow from Gary Hamel – an innovator in management and maverick in business thinking. He calls for and encourages people to develop unique solutions he calls “Hacks.” A “Hack” is any unconventional or disruptive idea that pushes the boundaries of traditional thinking. They do not need to be complicated; hacks can be seemingly basic as long as it turns the tables and challenges the status quo.
The status quo is no longer simply “not working” in current education, but it is now the problem. We need to begin thinking beyond the system that is broken and develop new ideas. We need to begin to have “Hacks” in the classrooms as well, and start having the courage to challenge the conventional wisdom. The following is one idea. I invite you to add your own and begin a conversation about not only what is wrong – but what can be done.
PROBLEM: Homework may reinforce what to think at best, but does little to help kids learn how to think.
Does the homework bulging from kids’ backpacks truly help them learn? Does maintaining a folder of throwaway facts inspire thinking? Does filling in blanks provide meaning and purpose to what they are doing?
The goal of work outside of a classroom should be to empower self-directed learning, not prove you can copy what you already know into a notebook. Assignments should not be wasting our children’s time and opportunity with rote reformulation of something already covered in class. Unfortunately, these hours of forced labor and stacks of worksheets give teachers, students, and the parents a false sense of rigor.
Truth is this sense of rigor is completely false. Any positive effects of homework are largely a fairy tale. Studies and research have shown little to no evidence of any educational benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school. Still, teachers pile on more work and some even take painstaking time predetermining before the school year starts that they will give something every night without even know what the assignments will be.
SOLUTION: I think it is time we rethink homework and begin to inspire “homelearning.”
We need to begin to have “Hacks” in the classrooms and to challenge the conventional wisdom of homework assignments and find new ways for mastery, purpose, and inspiration of content. Rethink standardized “homework policies.” Teachers that give a certain number of minutes of homework every day – or make assignments on the same schedule every week – provide a de facto admission that their homework is not justified by any given lesson; much less is it a response to what specific kids need at a specific time.
Before you assign the next homework paper or send the next packet home ask these questions:
Does the student have freedom over how it is done?
Does it promote mastery by providing a novel engaging task?
Does the student understand the assignments purpose?
If you answer no to any of these, ask yourself then: are you sending it out because you are filling an obligation of thirty minutes of work from home or are you inspiring minds to learn?
Instead, why not try…
- ASK A KID: It sounds radical, but if you want to know what works and what does not, ask the people doing the work. Offer students autonomy over what work they may do. Use homework as an opportunity to involve students in decision-making. The best teachers know that children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.
- FREE PROJECT: Students should have something to say about what they are going to learn and the circumstances under which they will learn it. Set aside a project or problem to solve that they decide. Allow a project each quarter – or even month – that the student picks (even if seemingly unrelated to subject matter). What difference does it make? The students are not learning under the current worksheets and memorization, so why not give them a purpose and inspiration to work on and learn from something they enjoy. They choose whatever, however, and whoever they want.
- STUDENT TURNED TEACHER: Turn students into teachers. Allow them to prepare and teach on a topic. Educator Martin Haberman said it best about homework when he said: Homework “is not checked – it is shared.”
Ultimately, it is not enough just to have less homework or even better homework. We should change the fundamental expectation in our schools so that students are asked to take schoolwork home only when there is a reasonable likelihood that a particular assignment will be beneficial and promote critical thinking.
Before you assign the next homework paper or send the next packet home, remember to ask:
Does the student have any freedom over how the assignment may be done?
Does it stimulate learning or simply force the compliance of finishing a task?
Does the student understand why they are doing it?
If you answer no, you may want to rethink and come up with your own “Hack” and change homework into “homelearning.”
