The days of spending your evenings doing primary school homework felt like an absolute chore. You'd mill through your copy book and wonder how to get away with doing nothing. Now it looks like after school homework might be a thing of the past.
Today, An Oireachtas committee will discuss whether or not homework should be scrapped in primary schools.
The Irish Primary Principals' Network (IPPN) has said the traditional form of after-school assignments needs to be reassessed.
It's not all free time and endless cartoons though, the IPPN believes some form of homework should remain. The homework would independent learning or a research project and not already what the student has learned in school that day.
The President of the IPPN, Maria Doyle thinks the idea of after school homework is no longer relevant:
Homework used to be there so home knew what was going on in school…I think that day and ship has sailed because now what children need to be doing instead of homework is project work and research...Children should be given tasks to do where it is not an extension of our work again, (they should be given) work that wasn't addressed in school.
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Researching a topic and presenting it to the class would give many students invaluable skills for challenges they'll face in later life. So many of us only experienced independent research and the dreaded presentation in our first year of college.
Do you think a change in independent learning is sorely needed?
H/T: BreakingNews.ie
