Brad’s Pedablog

Here they are:

1. Creation vs. Evolution - on February 3rd, 2008 at 1:40 am
2. Nothing Better To Do… - February 28th, 2008 at 1:57 am
3. How to get a couch potato to read. - February 28th, 2008 at 7:35 am
4. Wicked, man! Dr. Curzan’s take on slang - on 12 Apr 2008 at 5:59 pm
5. Republican’s Push for “Safer” Internet – on 12 Apr 2008 at 6:25 pm
6. Teaching the Reluctant Writer – Posted April 12, 2008, 6:43 pm
7.  http://bicej.edublogs.org/2008/01/28/fuel-for-the-media-fire/ – on 31 Jan 2008 at 12:14 am
8. Practical Uses for Art Education — January 31st, 2008 at 2:43 am 
9. The Eariler the Better, For Us All – Posted January 30, 2008, 11:14 pm
10. 3 Steps To A Better Education…Maybe – February 28th, 2008 at 1:28 am

The semester is winding down at Grand Valley State University, and it’s a good time for a little reflection on my blogging experience so far this year:

I’ve never been much of blogger in the past. I’d had a few other blogging assignments in other classes, but that’s exactly how I treated them–as assignments. I truly enjoyed this blogging experience, or perhaps I should say that I am enjoying it, because I don’t plan on stopping this blog. In semesters past, I’d research a topic, write up something that sounded nothing like a blog entry in a word document, and copy and paste it into some blackboard “gated community” type website for my professor to read and grade. That’s not blogging. That’s just turning in something online. So lame.

This experience taught me that a blog entry is a genre all its own; that is to say, there are rules. Even as I read through my posts I can see the gradual change in my “blogging voice” over time. Having the freedom to loosen my academic necktie in writing for this blog has been a pretty liberating experience. There’s still a lot I want to learn how to do on this blog, though, for example, how the heck do I embed a video into a post? I tried a number of times and I couldn’t get it to work right.

I’d like to give my sincere thanks to bloggers like Sara Bennett, for all the great information you’ve shared, and lastly, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who has made thoughtful comments on my blog, and I look forward to continuing to share ideas with you all in the future.

Today I attended the 2008 MTCE and MSU Bright Ideas Spring Conference, and though there were no break-out sessions concerning the no-homework policy, I still managed to attend several lectures and learned a few interesting things. This year’s Keynote speaker was a man who’s name appears on the same list as writers like Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Mark Twain. That list? The top ten most banned books for the year. His name is Chris Crutcher, and he’s one of the funniest keynote speakers I’ve ever seen. Crutcher used personal anecdotes full of self-deprecating humor and heartfelt tragedy to show how, for him, the real power of a story is usually at least partly grounded in truth, and a sometimes gritty truth at that. Because Crutcher’s honest YA novels don’t skirt issues like homosexuality, teen pregnancy, and the real vernacular of teenagers, his books are banned–even in his own home town! He put it this way:

“Put one gay kid in a book, and suddenly you can’t cross the state border of Kansas; or a girl who gets pregnant in high school, and it’s all, oooh! this has got to go.”  

Listening to Crutcher read an excerpt from one of his books, Deadline,was a powerful experience. Somehow, a book always sounds great when it’s read by its author, and this case was no exception. Crutcher, in a word, delivered.

The other lectures and presentations I attended were less entertaining, but I think I took some things away from the experience. One presentation was on the use of blogs in the classroom as a conversational tool. Unfortunately, it was mostly blogging 101 type information. Web + Log = Weblog . . . hence, blog. I asked a question about the blog as genre and that sparked a little more interesting discussion, but ultimately I left feeling unsatisfied.

Another presentation about “best practices” for new and Preservice teachers had some interesting ideas, and some not so interesting ones. One idea: wear a necktie. Hmmm. Is this truly that important of a “best practice” that it deserves 3 minutes of a 50 minute presentation? Also, rubrics are apparently the end-all-be-all of “best practice” methodology. Debatable. I’m being pessimistic, here, aren’t I? It’s not my fault, it was a rainy day. There was some valuable information as well, and true-blue “best practices” as well; it’s just not as fun to blog about them.

All-in-all, I had a very good time. Lunch was excellent. Just meeting some seasoned pro’s and a few other know-it-all-noobs like myself was worth the trip.  

That’s not something you hear everyday, but the parents of Damion Frye’s ninth-grade students in Montclair, NJ, must be getting quite an earful at the dinner table. Confused? I was too when I began reading the New York Times editorial titled “Spreading Homework Out So Even Parents Have Some“. But it’s no joke. Frye’s unconventional method of assigning his students’ parents weekly homework is the real deal–and his students’ grade may depend on it.

Alright, not really. In three years of assigning homework to parents, only once has he had to mark down a student for parental non-compliance (and even then it wasn’t enough to change his final grade). But I’m sort of getting ahead of myself here, aren’t I? Your probably still wondering why the heck this crazy teacher would do such a thing, and how the heck he gets away with it? Enough questions already! I’m getting there; here’s the skinny:

“So far (four weeks into the semester), Mr. Frye, an English teacher at Montclair High School, has asked the parents to read and comment on a Franz Kafka story, Section 1 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and a speech given by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.”

Frye instructs the parents to write their responses on a blog post he’s created, but that’s not the best part; his students finish their homework in class. Oh what sweet, sweet irony it must be for all those students who’d been berated in previous semesters by Mom or Dad for not keeping up on their homework. But what’s the point of all this unorthodox lesson-planning? Frye says:

“[The point] is to keep parents involved in their children’s’ education well into high school. Studies have shown that parental involvement improves the quality of the education a student receives, but teenagers seldom invite that involvement.”

I must admit, at first I was a little resistant to the idea of assigning parents homework, but it’s hard to argue with his logic here. The kids obviously get some much needed reprieve from what I’m assuming is an otherwise homework-packed curriculum. Parents may know the answer to the question “What did you learn about in school today?” without having to pry it out of their dissident little teenager one excruciating “nothing” at a time. More than this, it will give them a real common ground to talk about around the dinner table. Maybe I’m wearing rose-colored-lenses on this, but I can picture little Billy having a meaningful conversation with his Mom about existentialism in Whitman’s poetry. One mother went as far as to write in her blog entry:

““Searching for meaning in literary works is like stretching brain-cell-taffy in this household of literal interpretations and men of few words.”

It sounds to me like she’s getting as much out of the exercise as her child, but not all the parents are so eager to accommodate Frye’s assignments. One mother complains that she doesn’t have the time to deal with this sort of exercise, but she does it anyway in spite of her busy life. I’m not sure how to feel about this sort of situation. If it truly is too much to ask of some parents (and I believe in some cases it is), do the ends still justify the means? As I’ve discussed in the past, if homework (of any kind) begins to interfere with the family dynamic, or somehow take away or detract from the precious little family time that families have together, then I think that’s where you have to draw the line. However, Carol Jago, the incoming vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English, said:

““With 10th graders, the parents often really did tell me that it was the one place where they could talk with their student without fighting, without arguing about their hair.”

Family dynamic aside, what I’d really like to know is how well the students benefitted academically from Frye’s model? If I had to venture a guess, their probably not getting as much out of the experience as their parents. Having said that, Frye’s assignments still intrigue me as an alternative to assigning overworked students more homework.

Kelly, Tina. “Spreading Homework Out So Even Parents Have Some“, The New York Times. October 4, 2007.

Finland . . . that’s where Nokia cell phones are made, right? Well, Finland also happens to produce some of the very best students in the world. I’m not a huge fan of standardized tests, but Finnish kids are consistently leading the international pack in at least one of them, the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, in short. In the Wall Street Journal post , “What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?“, Ellen Gamerman explores a few rationals for their scholastic success. She writes:

“High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.”

Clearly, Finnish schools differ from their American counterparts in a number of ways; any one of which may have the most impact on the students boosted test-scores. I’m interested in the “half an our of homework a night” part.

American students take this test as well, and consistently score in the middle of the road. But that’s strange, because we assign so much more homework . . . By all rights, our students should be the front runners, shouldn’t they? Apparently not. Part of the problem may be that American teachers are forced into designing, ahem, excuse me, implementing lessons and curriculum that are jam-packed with homework. The fact of the matter is, teachers in most American schools don’t have a great deal of creative licence when it comes to how and what they want to teach. Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000, put things into perspective:

“In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs.”

I concur with that sentiment. If Finnish teachers have the freedom to choose books and curriculum that fit their own academic agendas (involving much less homework) and American teachers must act more like robots programmed to mold sheet metal through some assembly line, it’s no wonder their students are coming out ahead of the game.

I’d also like to consider the Finnish system of children not entering school until the age of seven years old. American kids begin their scholastic experience at age five, two years ahead of Finnish kids, shouldn’t the test results reflect that? Well, they do, just not in the way you’d traditionally expect them to. Here’s the rub; while American kids are shipped of to the factory–oops–I mean school, Finnish kids are placed in a high-quality government-funded preschool program. An Open Education blog-post titled, “Several Lessons to Be Learned from the Finnish School System”, examines the matter in further detail:

“As opposed to a focus on getting a jump academically, [Finnish] early-childhood programs focus on self-reflection and social behavior. It is interesting to note that one of the most notable attributes of Finnish children is their level of personal responsibility.”

It stands to reason that if kids are being asked to complete tasks before they are developmentally ready, not only will those “lessons” be lost on them, but they might instill a background of distaste for the entire educational system. Finland’s notion of the developmental needs and capabilities of their young children flies in the face of that misguided ideology.

“[By teaching students to better manage their emotions through the practice of empathy, caring, and cooperation, there will not only be an improved social climate in the classroom, student academic achievement levels also improve in the process.”

In allowing kids to be kids, Finland is allowing them to build the foundational requirements that lead to excellent students.

Gamerman, Ellen. “What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?” The Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2008

Open Education Blog. “Several Lessons to Be Learned from the Finnish School System“

You’re in the second grade. You’ve got your homework assignment sheet; it’s full of fractions and numbers you barely recognize; there are complex words you’ve never heard before; the good news is it’s hands-on, and you’ve set aside time with mom or dad to get it done; the only problem is, you’re out of brown sugar.

The Toronto Public School Board unanimously passed a groundbreaking new homework policy aimed at cutting back and reforming homework policies in kindergarten, primary, and secondary education. I found this information in looking through Sara Bennett’s blog, Stop Homework, which linked to an articlein TheStar.com, which detailed the major elements of the new policy. Among them were:

• No homework on Holidays or “days of significance” at any grade level
• Kindergartners should never have any homework, other than reading with or talking to their parents
• Until the third grade, students should have no homework other than playing games, having discussions or cooking with their parents . . .

Let me break here for a minute because I really like this idea–wait, no, that won’t do–I freaking love this idea. Yes, that’s the emotion. First of all, how many of us have thought to ourselves over a disgusting bowl of Top Ramen, that we should have learned to cook at some point in our lives. I know I have. Secondly, it covers all kinds of subject matter relevant to second graders. Anyway, Karen Grose, the Toronto board’s Superintendent of Programs, said it best when she said;

“[cooking] involves the family, it involves mathematics, it involves literacy, reading, talking and nutrition,”

What else could you ask for from a second grader? Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important point, this is legitimate homework that doesn’t eat up any precious time out of already busy lives–not of the parents, and not of the students. Plus, it’s time kids and their parents can spend bonding in a meaningful way. But the thing is this: no worksheet or formal requirements can be attached that will be counted toward a course grade. I agree with this policy, because every student has a unique situation at home (some students don’t have conventional guardians, others have parents who work at night), and to put some sort of rubric to homework like this would defeat the purpose. Not that this type of homework should be marginalized or otherwise ignored, just, not punitively enforced.

Back to this list:

• The ridiculous standard of 10 minutes per grade level of homework per night–No Mas!
• Homework that is assigned will be assigned in flexible blocks, in advance, so that teachers and students have time to prepare.
• Homework should only relate to materials already discussed in class
• Grades 7 and 8 should have no more than one hour assigned a night
• High school students no more than 2 hours a night

The policy is largely the product of thousands of consultations with students, parents, teachers, administrators, and all sorts of community members, whose input helped inform the goals of the document. Obviously, Toronto has plenty of individuals who care deeply about the issue at hand. Sara Bennett gave Frank Bruni, one such Toronto resident, a guest blog appearance on Stop Homework, where he made some interesting points I’ve never considered. On the subject of over-homeworked students and parents, Bruni had the following to say;

“this kind of workload, this kind of lifestyle is harmful, for both adults and children. We know that the incidence of childhood obesity and childhood diabetes is on the rise and the T.D.S.B.’s own research shows student stress alarmingly high. Indeed, a federal report in 2006 suggested that this is the first generation of children who can expect a shorter life expectancy than their parents”

Plenty of studies have been done to link stress and obesity, and perhaps too much homework is a part of the problem. Plus, Mom and Dad are too busy to cook a proper meal–what with all the extra homework–so the kids end up getting Tombstone and Tater Tots. Maybe I’m reaching, but it seems like the more I research this topic, the more it becomes clear to me that too much homework is somehow rotting society from the inside out.

To all you second grade teachers out there, listen up! Save this country by assigning your students to cook with Mom or Dad. At the very least, you might get some left-overs out of the whole deal.

 Rushowy, Kristin. “Cuts in homework proposed“, Apr 01, 2008 04:30 AM, TheStar.com, http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/407827

Bennet, Sara. “Proposal to Scale Back on Homework in Toronto Unanimously Passes Committee Vote“, April 6, 2008 at 10:06 pm, stophomework.com, http://stophomework.com/proposal-to-scale-back-on-homework-in-toronto-unanimously-passes-committee-vote/251

Incase you’re confused, “myface” is a fancy-shmancy blend word for Myspace and Facebook, which always makes me laugh because it’s so telling of the true nature of these sites. They’re all about narcissism, egocentricity, and every individual’s inherent love for all things ‘me’. Or are they? I used to think so, but more and more I’m coming around to the idea that students are using these sites to connect in meaningful ways. It’s not altogether uncommon to hear students saying, “I’ll hit you up on facebook” when referring to collaborative assignments. That’s all well and good, but is it appropriate, or even possible, for teachers to start tapping into these pages as a classroom resource? That’s the question one teacher attempts to answer in her edublog titled “The Month of June“. Her post on the subject is “RSS for the Fall“, which seeks to determine whether or not RSS can be combined with the Myface pages in a way that will be both appropriate and worthwhile to her students. She notes:

“since these are the spaces that students visit each day, then these are the spaces in which to incorporate any class announcements or updates. The question left ahead of me: How?”

The author of this blog has been trying to teach her students about the benefits of RSS feeds. The problem she’s encountering is that after her students set up their Google Reader accounts they don’t use them. In other words, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. Her students simply weren’t using RSS to stay up-to-date on the class blog–or anything else on the web. When it came time to make comments about their peers’ blogs, students would dust off their Google Reader passwords and check out what one another had to say, but they weren’t really learning anything about RSS or how to better manage a world of information on the web.

“So recently I’ve decided to take a bit more seriously the claim about email being for old people,” she notes.

While I don’t see email fading away as a generation of myfacers enters the workforce, I do think it’s important to recognize that students are using these pages in its place–at least for the time being. By incorporating RSS into myface, students would have a direct link to more than just their peers’ thoughts on music, their ilike lists, their lame bumper stickers, their addicted to “The Office” applications, and their “I Flip My Pillow Over To Get To The Cold Side” group (of which I am a proud member). They would have all their classroom resources, and indeed, their classmates themselves, coming to their preferred digital doorstep–and all in a way that wouldn’t seem so invasive or intrusive as to denature the pages they use and love.

Although this seems like an elegant solution to teaching RSS, I’m not so sure it works out all the bugs;

“Are these widgets/applications the best way to utilize RSS? Probably not. Are they appropriate for keeping the subscriptions to all of their classmates’ blogs? Probably not. What about students who don’t have a myspace or facebook?”

The whole concept of using RSS with Myface, at the very least, deserves a shot. As she points out, using them in tandem with Google Reader could be one solution. For information on how to get RSS applications going on your (or your students) Myface pages, visit http://www.springwidgets.com/widgets/view/23.

Article in full — “RSS for the Fall“, August 2007.

One of the biggest problems with assigned reading in an English class is that it just doesn’t get done. Studies show that assigned reading takes a back seat to other forms of homework, and students site a lack of interest in the material as the main reason. There’s a teacher who keeps a blog that offers some great insight into this problem titled Mr. Sale’s English 10 Blog, which attempts to understand and share ideas about his students’ reading habits. Each of his current students has placed a comment about their own reading habits and/or thoughts about reading in general; their posts are extremely telling of the impact the school system has made on the way they read.

There’s a lot of debate about what texts deserve to be in the curriculum and which ones don’t. Too often the canonical classics of literature are imbedded into courses on the supposition that if the teachers don’t offer them, they won’t get read. While that is indeed a perturbing thought, the reality is this: just because a teacher offers a text, it doesn’t mean the students will read it, and it may just lead to students keeping literature at arms length. Just listen to what Mr. Sale’s students had to say:

Jessica M. said… “I love to read books that I have chosen. Reading for school can become very boring.” Kyle said…“I read only when i am interested in a book. i really hate reading for school because i usually am not interested in the book.”

Many of the other students echoed this thought in so many words. For some reason, these kids just aren’t responding well to having books jammed down their throats . . . I can’t imagine why? They are the classics after all. If Kyle can’t get psyched up about The Scarlet Letter then there’s something wrong with Kyle, right? Wrong. Just because Kyle has a hard time identifying with the 17^th Century Puritanical Bostonian Adulteress Hester Prynne, it doesn’t mean he’s a poor student of English. It simply means that he needs a choice in the material to engage him. But that’s not the way English class works, is it? The fact is, Kyle will be handed a copy of The Scarlet Letter sometime in his high school curriculum, and chances are he’ll float through the lesson plan without really engaging with the text. My question is, how does that help Kyle understand or appreciate literature in a lifelong sense? Even more interesting is What Lacey C. had to say:

“I used to love to read. I still do, just not for school. It isn’t even that the books are bad. I assume that when a book is given to us at school it is going to be bad. I love to read on my own and the books that I choose.”

That entry really grabbed me. She simply “assumes” that when she is given a book in school that it’s going to be bad. Wow. What does that say about how kids are relating to what they are being taught? So how do we win over those types of students? Here’s a thought: give kids some options. Let them choose their own literature, or from a list of selections, when it comes to what texts they will read for class.

It’s easy to say that giving kids options like these are the answer, but giving kids options is only a the first step in fixing the problem. For example, if teachers allow their students a little more flexibility in choosing which texts they read, how can they be sure that the students will choose appropriate or intellectually challenging texts? What are some of the ways that teachers can reconcile those notions of “boring school reading” and “reading for fun” while maintaining their critical literary aims?

One method is to find interesting ways to relate those ‘old chestnuts’ in the literary canon to newer works that offer insight into similar plot structures or themes. The Great Gatsby is book that most students are force fed at some point in their high school experience. It’s a little bit like broccoli at dinner time—not too aesthetically appealing, but undoubtedly an important part of the dietary whole. So how can teachers get them to lap it up? Teaching Gatsby alongside the contemporary young adult novel Jake, Reinvented is one method of adding cheese to the broccoli. Jake, Reinvented parallels the plot and themes of Gatsby in a way that students will find more immediately relatable and accessible. That way, students aren’t left with a bad taste in their mouths for literature, and teachers might just find them eyeing the original Gatsby with a whole new appetite.

Sources:

 http://sale5th.blogspot.com/ – Mr. Sale’s English 10 Blog

GVSU Eng 311 – Professor Rozema Class Instruction

I was checking out Sara Bennett’s blog, Stop Homework, when I came across an interesting article that proposed getting rid of the zero as a grade. It got me to thinking. Conventionally, grades are ranged in groups of ten; an A is between 100 and 90, a B is between 89 and 80, and so on, but not an F. An F is between 60 and 0. That’s right, Nada. Zip. As in, sorry about your luck Johny, I guess I’ll be seeing you next year after all. A zero can be absolutely devastating in terms of your overall class average, and can be quite difficult to recover from. By ranging an F from 60 to 50, kids have a better opportunity to bounce back from an early mistake, instead of giving up on passing not even half way into a semester.

Sara links to an article about a school district in Iowa that is an early adopter of this idea. The area superintendent had the following to say:

“Some teachers are really wrestling with, ‘I don’t want to give them 50 out of 100 points,’ and to those teachers I say, ‘Fine, you don’t have to. Go to a different grading scale, like 5-4-3-2-1-0,’” Bruckner said. “We’re not saying give them half credit. We’re saying, give them the F. Just don’t kill them with the F.”

That really rang true to me. Don’t kill them with the F. I remember being an eleventh grade FST student, and having that sort of an experience. I was generally a B math student, and I was working pretty hard to maintain that average in FST. About midway through the semester I flopped a test. I mean I really flopped it. I can’t remember for sure, but I think my grade was around a 20 percent. It wasn’t that I was a terrible student, I just wasn’t prepared for that test. After that I was despondent; because of the way the grading system was structured around tests, I couldn’t hope for anything better than a C in the course–and that was if I got all A’s for the rest of the semester. The F killed me.

Where does the student benefit from that sort of scenario? Under the current system, all they have to go on is, don’t miss an assignment or really mess up on a test, or you’re completely screwed. I’d prefer a system where if they do make a mistake, students don’t have to pay for it Old Testament style. Lets say, hypothetically, that Johny B. Student does slip up and fail a test with flying colors. If I give him a five percent F and doom him to repeating the course, what has he learned other than to hate his teacher and the educational system? Instead of all that, I could give him his 50 percent F, and work with him on some sort of make-up test, or redo assignment to give him the chance to really learn what he needs to know, and maybe earn some make-up points on the side.

To me, handing out a zero seems like a teacher saying, well, “you gave up on me, so I’m giving up on you”. What do you all think?

One of the most interesting pedagogical debates being argued about today focuses on whether or not students should be assigned homework. If so, in what amounts? If not, in what grade levels? I’ve looked at a lot of articles on the subject, and I have to say I agree with those who see a need for a serious reduction in the amount of out-of-school work that’s being assigned to students. The anti-homework crowd isn’t pushing an end to all homework in every grade level. What seems to make the most sense to me involves no homework for kids in elementary school, some creative and worthwhile exercises for middle school students (though no more than a half hour a night), and around an hour and half a night at most for high school students.

I’m not some fanatical extremist who lives in a shack out in the woods, and I’m not the only person who thinks homework is doing more harm than good in our educational system. The American Educational Research Association had this to say:

“Whenever homework crowds out social experience, outdoor recreation, and creative activities, and whenever it usurps time that should be devoted to sleep, it is not meeting the basic needs of children and adolescents.”

One of the most interesting perspectives on the no homework policy comes from Etta Kralovec and John Buell in there book End Homework Now. Rather than looking at homework from the dogmatic perspective of how it affects test scores and what role it plays in the ‘sinking in’ of classroom topics, End Homework Now focuses sharply on what homework does to the families’ free time, the students lives, and the communities they live in.

The premise I’m most inclined to agree with is this: People’s lives are getting busier. The amount of hours in the average workweek continues to rise. More and more children are raised in single parent homes. Homework is being assigned to kids and families with no time to complete it. This cycle of overworked students and parents adds stress to the family that need not be there, and all this extra work ends up taking away from the precious little unstructured family time that’s left. One result of all this is that kids don’t have time to be kids, and parents don’t get the meaningful time they need to instill their own values on their children. Another is that young students end up with a bad taste in their mouths over the subject of homework, and find ways to avoid it, or cheat, rather than engage it willfully. In reading the blog posts of teachers who’ve adopted this policy, I’ve noticed that many have had incredibly positive results. By allowing students more free time after school, they came to school refreshed and more willing to learn.

But isn’t homework a necessary part of a child’s education? First, let’s dispel a homework myth: homework is the key to academic success. The research is in on this topic, and the results are all over the radar. Research results regularly contradict one another in determining the value of homework, especially in the secondary level. Most researchers, however, have agreed that homework in elementary school has little or no bearing on students’ academic achievement. Proponents of assigning homework have maintained that for young students, the content of the homework is less important than the discipline that comes from doing it regularly. Students will learn self-discipline, deadline sensitivity, time management, and all the skills that will help prepare them for life as an adult. There’s one problem with that, and Kralovec and Buell put it best:

“asking children to perform tasks before they are developmentally ready proves counterproductive to development . . . Lacking solid evidence, homework supporters ask us to take on faith the notion that homework can instill desirable character traits.” 

Link to Etta Kralovec and John Buell’s End Homework Now.