Not sure what I think about this piece by Sarah Firisen at 3quarksdaily. She is talking about her daughter Anya
By public school standards, Anya’s homework load is still light; if she doesn’t procrastinate too much, she can usually easily get it done in an hour a night, and there are still nights when she doesn’t have any. Anya, rather like her mother, isn’t the most organized or tidy person; there have been some real struggles as she learns to make sure she has her school bag packed with the right materials at the end of the day. And then, she has to remember to take her homework back into school the next morning. But, week by week, she’s making progress.
I remember when I was in school in London; it was a private school, but a large rather formal establishment, far removed from the philosophy of my children’s school. When we forgot our homework or hadn’t done it, we would have to wait outside the teachers’ lounge (we weren’t allowed to knock on the door) until another teacher walked by. We would then have to catch her eye (it was a girls’ school and 99.99% of the teachers were female), and then plead “Mrs Jones, Mrs Jones, can you ask Mrs Smith to come out?) If we were lucky, Mrs Jones would see Mrs Smith and remember to tell her. I sometimes spent entire mid-morning breaks waiting outside of that teachers’ lounge.
When Mrs Smith finally came out, I had to do my best to sound convincing and sympathetic in my excuses for why my homework wasn’t being handed in that day. Despite the not insignificant school fees my parents paid to send me there, I don’t remember anyone actually taking the time to help me develop better, more organized, more efficient working habits. Instead, I would be told off because my work wasn’t done.
Anya gets called out on her work habits as well; her teachers have contacted me to tell me that her homework hasn’t been done, or hasn’t been done to the level they know she’s capable of. But, we then work together, the teachers, Anya, myself and my husband, to try to come up with better strategies to help her get back on track. These strategies include making a point of praising her, at school and home, when she does exhibit the work habits we’re all trying to inculcate in her.
I’m bringing this up because of a column by Gail Collins in the New York Times this week that talks about the work habits of college kids. It quotes a well-known study, Academically Adrift, that “followed 3,000 students on 29 campuses and determined that after two years, 45 percent showed no significant gain in learning — and even after four years, 36 percent showed little change.” The study goes on to find that, “that 36 percent of the students are studying five or fewer hours a week and get a 3.16 grade average.” These are some pretty scary statistics, particularly when you consider how much these students and/or their parents are paying for college these days, ” …
College should be a place for self-discovery, developing maturity and fun. But we need it to be more if our graduates are to compete effectively in the new global economy. And if they don’t have the right work habits in college to support this, perhaps we should think about making changes far earlier in their lives.
Broadly, I agree. I think without “study skills” it is hard to make the most of what you have got. Where I begin to worry a little is the implementation.
First, I am not sure homework itself helps organisation.
Second, and more importantly, I think we need to be very clear that we are encouraging learning (and organisation & study skills help that) rather than being organised as a good in itself. I have come across a number of teachers who believe that X is more able than Y purely because they cannot organise their homework diaries properly. Setting aside for the moment the idea that this may be purely a result of X’s parents being more involved than Y’s, it makes a mockery of some of our more hallowed halls of learning. Some of the more inspirational lecturers or dons that I have met were, in a word, shambolic. Yes they had developed coping mechanisms but what set them aside was interest, curiosity, academic rigour and willingness to explore new ideas. These are less measurable, but more valuable, I think, than organising your pens by colour.