Why homework is a barrier to kids’ creativity

Pretty much everyone, it seems, thinks homework, at least at primary level, is a waste of time. And that’s before you ask the children themselves, among whom, we can safely assume, the view is likely to be unanimously against.

Allsopp (pictured) called it “the devil’s work”. She claims having to do homework as a child left long-term scars. “I hated it, having to go upstairs and leave all the fun and warmth of the kitchen behind. I’ll never forget that feeling, it put me off studying for life,” she said more than a decade ago.

Going through it all again with her own children has only served to reinforce her position.

Earlier this month she declared on Twitter that one of her greatest
regrets as a parent is that she didn’t let her kids off the hook when it came to their homework.

“The tears, the time together lost, for many families homework causes real, daily unhappiness to no good end,” she wrote.

Not long after, the Irish head of State joined the debate. He was speaking to pupils from St Kevin’s National School in Co Tipperary, one of whom asked for his opinion on homework.

“I think myself, really that the time at home and the time in the school is an educational experience and it should get finished at the school and people should be able to use their time for other creative things.”

While his answer was warmly welcomed by exhausted parents and hassled teachers across the land, the greatest support for the President on this matter will no doubt come from the pupils of St Kevin’s themselves, who arguably have a credible excuse for failure to complete any homework assignment now and forever.

Pity the poor educator trying to respond to a class full of students claiming not to have done their maths homework due to being busy using their “time for other creative things, like the President told us to”.​

This debate has been rumbling on for years. Back in 2017 a petition made it to the Oireachtas seeking to eradicate homework for primary school pupils.

Last year the psychotherapist and author Dr Colman Noctor waded into the fray, saying homework is a significant cause of anxiety and stress among young children.

“I am well aware that I see the thin end of the wedge here, but homework is definitely up in the top five of things that are discussed in therapy with children as a difficulty,” he said.

“Oftentimes it is a battleground for tears, arguments, rows — especially for children who struggle with buying into education, or struggle with learning or even just struggle with being in school.”

In principle, homework for primary school pupils is discretionary. The Department of Education does not issue any specific guidelines, instead allowing individual schools to determine their own homework policies.

There is a solid research basis for this — multiple studies have shown that homework at primary school level provides limited benefits, and may even be counterproductive.

Young children, some research has shown, are not developmentally ready to carry out structured independent study.

This changes in secondary school. Research indicates that at older ages homework is useful for instilling good study habits and correlates with higher academic achievement. And yet, as parents can attest, most primary school-aged children in Ireland are coming home from school and spending up to an hour a day on homework.​

The tradition of sitting at a bedroom desk and spending hours completing times tables and long divisions is out of step with our broader cultural embrace of educational principles, both in school and at home, which favour fostering a child’s intrinsic motivation for learning and achievement, and supporting them in pursuing their own interests.

Advocates of homework argue that it is an important tool to reinforce the lessons learned during the school day, and an important way to instil discipline.

And while no one could argue against the importance of a structured approach to ensuring good standards of literacy and numeracy for the population as a whole, parents and teachers alike seem to be increasingly agreed on the central principle of learning as it was defined by WB Yeats.

The poet famously said that education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.