Homework

I marvel that no one of the columnists brought up the single and overwhelming argument that was used by Berlin school supervisors to regulate homework in elementary classes: Homework favors the rich and disadvantages the poor. Hence it cements the status quo of society.

The rich Filipinos want to perpetuate their superiority so they provide their children an own room with aircon, writing table, and all the favorable amenities including nanay and tutor. Ambitious parents unrelentingly push their kids to performance.

The children of the poor do their homework lying on the floor in a hot crowded hut in a noisy environment left alone by overtaxed parents. Without help and often empty stomach they get exhausted and discouraged and soon drop out of school as half-literates and ignorant of Philippine culture. They will become the toiling masa or informal workmen and minimum wage earners receiving orders from the white-collar upper-class managers with graduation certificates and diplomas. Is this what the privileged (including the columnists criticizing the two Congress bills) want? A cleavage of society in castes?

In Germany since the 1970s, the target of education is chance equality and mobilization of the culture reserve. The children of hitherto underprivileged families in the remote areas were bussed to well-equipped schools in central communities. The slogan was: Culture is citizens’ right.

Reverting to homework: One day when I was teaching a Grade 5 class in Berlin an ordinance came out regulating homework: Limit is five minutes per subject (German, English, Math, and General Lore) so 20 minutes maximal. Contents are only reviewing the notes or finalizing a task begun in school. No writing of poems, songs, drawing posters, composing essays and all that. And for granted no homework over the weekend!

Consequently the no-homework policy was leveling up the underprivileged without preventing the interested and motivated students from doing additional studies that was in the pre-computerized era above all reading books. Then travelling, visiting fairs, museums and theaters with their parents in the metropolis with its quasi-unlimited offer of cultural events.

The numerous skilled workers and engineers are one of the pillars of Germany’s economic success today. They succeeded without doing much homework in elementary class.

Erich Wannemacher

Lapu-Lapu City