00:00:01
Speaker 1: Seven o two for weekend Breakfast and Parenting with Nicky.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: Bush eleven minutes after eight o'clock ten for us to talk parenting for this week and this week we are talking about homework. Every now and again, there is a discussion about the amount of homework parents often say many parents saying there's too much homework for kids, particularly in the lower grades, and why doesn't all the teaching happen in school? So we are asking this question, so do we need to rethink homework? We'd love to hear your thoughts of course on on one one eight three oh seven oh two. Yess is on A three one seven oh two, and your WhatsApps on seven two seven two one seven oh two. Joining us in pseudo this morning is our resident human potential and parenting expert, Nikki Bush.
00:00:44
Speaker 3: Nikki are very good morning to you.
00:00:46
Speaker 4: Good morning gogs.
00:00:47
Speaker 3: How are you?
00:00:48
Speaker 4: I'm fine and how are you well?
00:00:49
Speaker 3: Thank you? So did you like homework when you were in school?
00:00:52
Speaker 4: I don't know that anybody really liked homework.
00:00:55
Speaker 5: I liked homework, but I'll tell you that homework gives you the opportunity to prove that you understand what you learned, and that in itself should make you feel good. So if you're given ten practice sums and I have to say, Maths was my achilles heell, so I hated Math's homework. But if you're given ten practice sums to practice what you learned in class during the day and you can get them right, then you feel better. You feel like you achieved something. I think what parents underestimate is that a teacher has anything from twenty four children in a class in a private school to forty to fifty children in a class in a government school, and there is absolutely no way in a thirty to forty five minute class or period that you can teach a concept and get children to practice the concept all in that period of time, because the first minutes of every lesson are spent calming the class down, especially if they have moved from classroom to classroom, and then the last five minutes are spent packing up, So you have fifteen minutes of wasted time in every single lesson. And there are a number of very good reasons why there is homework, even though we really as parents would rather not have homework. And I remember this, I've actually found something that I wrote when I was in the middle of homework season with my children. I wrote an article about homework hurdles, and I said, there are days when homework is a breeze and days when it's a ground. When it goes well, I as the mother, feel fabulous, and when it doesn't, the levels of frustration and despair can be overwhelming. Add to this fact that we no longer live in an ideal world in which we would get home at the same time from school or extramarial activities every day, allowing us to consistently do homework at the same time in the same place. And this is also true specifically if you have more than two children, more than one child. Put it that way, because you might have one child in a swimming pool having a swimming lesson at the age of say nine or ten, and you might have a four or five year old at your feet or on your lap, and you've got to keep them entertained. And then while when your child, the homework doing child, gets out of the pool, they've also got to get their homework done now, and you've got to motivate them to get their head back into their books. So you can see why parents don't like homework. Plus we work so these days, you only have about three hours with your children of a wake time, and now you must spend some of those three hours doing homework with your children. The younger the child, the more you have to help them with their homework. The older the child, the less you have to help them with their homework. And when they're little, it's quite simple reading, which is essential. Don't skip it because repetition, repetition, repetition, And it's usually some form of writing or spelling and some form of basic numeracy. And it's usually ten of this and ten of that, and five of this and five of that. It actually doesn't take long when you get to the upper grades, where we are not learning to read, write and do maths, but using reading to learn. Now we're into research. Now, we're into project work. And these are the things that send us over the edge. And when every subject teacher actually needs us to study for tests in the same week. So I would say, as an asside for educators, please communicate with each other in the staff room and don't all give a project in the same week. This is the stuff parents freak out about when we have projects, when we have tests all at the same time, because these are outside the realm of ten of this and ten of that, right, and these are the things that really do break the camel's back.
00:05:07
Speaker 2: We actually have a message about that, so MOUITERI says, here, Morning, Gogs and Nikki. This past week, I was very frustrated with my child's teacher, who asked the pupils to write an essay of three pages, which was required the following day, only to find out that she didn't take it on the day. My son had two other homework pieces and he slipped at three am. He was so tired, and I wanted to reach out to the school about this, but my son was not in agreement with that. So to your point about perhaps, I mean, I imagine different teachers teaching different classes aren't always going to have the same kind of cadence or timing. But you know, it can't be a science project, a history project, and an English paper and a three page essay. Yeah, So here we're talking about the later grades. So i'd like you say, when they're younger, the focus is improving their literacy and the numeracy, but as they get old that now you're taking that literacy and numeracy and using it, applying it applying it to writer and so yes, this idea a frustrated parent of well, you know there was this essay and they were other things.
00:06:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, and no child should be up at three o'clock in the morning. So there are three good reasons why we have homework. So let's talk about why homework is actually necessary, right, because this is the case for homework. The first is repetition, So practicing of concepts taught in class leads to mastery. You cannot achieve mastery without repetition and practice. So to create an ningram, a memory cell in the brain, you have to practice something two hundred to three hundred times to consolidate it so that it is a well oiled in grease neurological pathway. This goes for adults and for children. So if you're learning something new around AI or tech or your phone or something, if you don't do it many times, it's not going to stick.
00:07:08
Speaker 4: It doesn't stick.
00:07:09
Speaker 5: So to create the sticky factor, repetition is required. So two hundred to three hundred times. That's why your child comes home with ten sums and ten words, et cetera. We have to keep this in mind. This is how the brain learns there is no teacher on this planet who can get kids to do the repetition and enough repetition during class time that is required, which is why homework is necessary. Right, So that's the first really important reason for the homework debate. The second is application, and that's why children are given project work and group work to extend the application of the learning and combining it with additional research. So what are we learning with project work? How to research, how to quote sources, how to present, how to present, how to package. You know, at the end of the day, this is practice for the real world. When you have your own business, when you are employed by somebody, you have to pitch ideas constantly, for sponsorship, for budget, to get work so that you actually get paid. So everything we actually do in childhood is preparation for adulthood. And being able to communicate one's ideas and present them logically in writing and through words the spoken word is an absolutely essential life skill. And then the third reason for homework is preparation. Now, in some more advanced schools who have changed the methodology of learning, there's the concept of the flipped classroom. The flipped classroom is generally used in high school and in university where the teacher will send some source work, some preparation, usually these days a video of some description or maybe a little bit of reading. Go and read about this concept we are going to unpack in the classroom tomorrow. So the teacher is getting the learners to prep to start getting interested in what she's going to teach them or what he's going to teach them tomorrow in the classroom, and then they unpack it and teach it the next day. And then there is sometimes time for practice in the class because we've done some of the pre work the night before. So that's often termed the flipped classroom, usually only in the higher grades, where reading is consolidated and they can go and read for meaning and watch for meaning and extrapolate and formulate questions for the teacher for the class tomorrow, etc. So those are three very good reasons why homework is necessary. Let alone the fact that at some point there are going to be assessments, tests, exams which then help you to or help your child or help the teachers to compare children against benchmarks. I hate them personally. I think that we need to have continuous assessments which includes tests, exams, project work and assessing how children are coping generally, and that's very hard to do when you have too many children in a classroom, when you have overcrowded classrooms, there's only one way to assess, and that's for children's through tests, and it's only one way of assessing children. There are many ways to assess children. So those are the reasons for homework.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: Could I add one more?
00:10:57
Speaker 4: Yes?
00:10:58
Speaker 2: What was quite interesting for me move from school to varsity is just how much of reading for a degree? And it got even worse at a because I did my undergrad and then I did my honors. How much of reading for a degree is a lot like homework. In high school, you sit in a lecture and you prepare for that lecture. You need to have done the reading before getting to the lecture. The lecturer will go through pretty high level stuff. They might explain some concepts. Then you need to go read chapter six, nine, ten, and eleven. And the only time really you might get a little bit of sort of one to one attention is in your tutorials, but the bulk of the stuff you teach yourself. And that was so interesting to me because it felt as if even in school where we had a lot of homework. It felt like we were babied a lot more. And then you suddenly get to your to varsity and no one even cares if you go to lectures.
00:11:56
Speaker 3: It is all on you, all of it.
00:11:57
Speaker 2: You read for that degree, you go to the line, you go through the course outline, you find the books, you photograph, the reading. All of that stuff is almost all like independence, self driven.
00:12:08
Speaker 3: And I feel.
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Homework almost mimics that and prepares kids, I think in a better way. Maybe your kid does want to go to a varsiti, I feel like homework mimics it in a way it almost better prepares you and not having to upset.
00:12:23
Speaker 5: And actually I remember very very clearly having a conversation with a psychologist and my son had had an assessment. This was mid high school. He was having going he'd gone from a's in maths to getting c's, and it was all about the teacher. And he just looked my son in the eyes and said, just you wait till you get to university.
00:12:48
Speaker 4: The teaching is shocking.
00:12:50
Speaker 5: You are going to have to teach yourself just about everything because lecturers don't know how to teach. Academics don't know how to teach, and to your point, you're going to have to do a lot of reading when you get university, a lot of prep because they go very fast. And so we see issues in first year university with children who haven't consolidated, particularly maths concepts. They fall behind incredibly quickly in that first year. So I think homework definitely has its place. If it's extreme, you need to be chatting to teachers and finding out why your child is getting so much homework or why they are taking so long to do their homework. Maybe they need some remedial intervention to help them consolidate concepts, maybe they've fallen behind. I found maths very difficult at school because I learned maths much slower than I learned any language. So that wasn't my strong suit, and that's the subject. I had years and years of extra lessons, and I think that my parents I actually did the sums at one stage. I went to a good old government school that cost twelve round a year at the time, and my parents paid out thousands and thousands over three years in maths extra maths lessons. They paid far more for my extra maths than they did for my education. But it was highly necessary. So if your child is battling to get their head in the game when it comes to doing their homework, let's talk about a few hints and tips that can help parents have an easier time of it. So some children, in fact, many children are tired when they get back from school or get back from extramurals. So maybe having a little rest is a good idea. But what happens with many children is they flop down in front of television for half an hour. And I have to tell you that television SAPs your energy. It doesn't energize you. It drains you. We think it energizes you because you're doing nothing, but it actually leaches your energy. So recharging your batteries would be a power and app Or it would be play a little game with your children if they're young, have a quick game, official snap, a card game, or it could be going out into the driveway or the street or the garden and throwing balls to each other for ten minutes. That will wake up your child's reflexes and their brain. Plus you are filling their emotional cup because you are with them, interacting with them. They've been away from you all day and actually they need to fill themselves up on your voice, on your presence, on your energy. And I know if you work, this is hard at the end of the day, but it is worth the effort. Then a little bit of creativity in primary school. There is some work that does not have to be handed in. It just has to be done. Practice sums, the practice spelling, the practice multiplication tables that your children can do in a different medium. Change the medium and you will raise the excitement level about homework. So you can do multiplication and spelling in flour on the kitchen counter or on a tray. You can use whiteboard markers on your windows or on ceramic sealed tiles or on mirrors. That's fun for children. And please remember you are actually the helper, not the doer. You don't need to pass Grade six for the second time. If you're doing too much helping or doing, you need to raise this with the teacher. And please encourage the process, not just the end point. So you need to be a cheerleader. And then four rules for doing homework. After extra murals comes homework, and only after homework comes TV and gaming. Right, Okay, you see children are coming home and wanting entertainment. Homework is not entertaining, and there's so much at their disposal that is entertaining that they want to get to the entertainment. Well, the middle piece the bridge is the homework. Then rule number two is that they might have to learn to get little bits of homework done on the run. So you might get your reading homework done in the car on their way home from school, so reading is done by the time you get home, so you can tick some stuff off the list. They may have to do bits of homework while you're in a therapy room waiting for one child to have therapy while the other child is sitting at your feet doing some homework. Rule number three is encourage the effort. It is a daily reality of their life and you have to reinforce what was done.
00:17:46
Speaker 4: In class, So encourage them.
00:17:50
Speaker 5: And rule number four is that if you're at home, try and get homework done in the same place. So there's a homework spot, whether it's the kitchen counter, whether it's a desk in their room, whether it is the dining room. It's kind of like an anchor. When we sit here, we do the homework, right. So those are the full rules. Try and keep your children as focused and organized as possible, and you need to take a disciplined and structured approach to how to get this daily homework done. So it's not all bad news about homework. There really are good reasons why homework exists. But hopefully it does not lead to burnout. It leads to some kind of discipline that is going to serve your child once they get to tertiary education.
00:18:36
Speaker 2: One day, speaking of discipline or what's up, message here says good morning dogs and Nikki, it's Hojoser from Atredgeville. As a parent who's actively involved in my daughter's schoolwork, I think homework is good for kids. It teaches children discipline, how to prioritize, and time management.
00:18:52
Speaker 5: Oh and time management such an important point that's been raised there. Time management is actually one of the skills that most people fall down on. So how much time do you allocate to what? And that's part of a parent's role is looking at the homework load and going right, this is probably going to take you fifteen minutes, that's going to take you twenty minutes, that's going to take you half an hour. We've only got an hour for homework or an hour and a half. How are we going to divvy up this homework? And using a timer is actually a good thing. A little old fashioned sand timer or an old fashioned clock if you want to keep cell phones away, can work wonders. Even this morning, when I was prepping to get here in studio, I put a timer on for myself of five minutes to blow dry my hair because I needed to get out on time. So we all have to do time management. It's a fact of life. I also think kids should use analog tools tool.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: Ceasingly young people can't read a clock because they don't have to. They read the time on a digital interface with their cell phone, an iPad, a smart watch. So you I mean, I think I learned how to tell the time in school. It's one of the things you learn you do, and that is no longer. But it's such a good you know, the good clock, especially a clock.
00:20:15
Speaker 5: A clock is like doing fractions, yes, because you can have fifteen minutes, you know, there's four quarters in an hour, or how many sets of ten minutes are there in an hour? And get your children to do sprints, homework sprints. You know, if you're involved in the digital side of business, if you're building tech back ends. They talk about sprints where they literally allocate a period of time for you to build a piece of the back end, and it's called a sprint. So we should be using sporting analogies with our children. You know, you've got a five minute sprint here, get it done. Then we've got a ten minute sprint. Then there's another five minutes. Then you're going to do a physical sprint. You're going to run to the gate and back to wake your brain, and you're going to do ten star jumps, and then we're going to.
00:21:03
Speaker 4: Get back to your spelling. Be creative. Yeah, you can get this done, parents, you really can.
00:21:08
Speaker 2: Before I let you go, received a whattape voice notas on seventy seven one seven o two.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: I remember seeing a documentary where, I think at the time of the northern European countries and probably most of them Norway or whatever, they got the highest their kids rate the highest in education in the world for schools and whatever, and they did away with homework completely, and then the shortened the school days. You got four or five hours. They said kids must play and their kids are best in the world. So, yeah, it's deficult. One I suppose they haven't got classes of forty or fifty kids. But you know, this homic thing is ridiculous. My my kids primarem in primary school. They had a project but they kept the omic right back. I'm not sure what the outcome was, but yeah, at least they were trying to be progressive.
00:22:01
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for that message, Gary, And it's interesting that he mentioned Norway. Norway is one of the lowest student to teacher ratio is actually nine one teacher teachers.
00:22:11
Speaker 5: Nine, okay, but now one teacher to nine children can get through a lot of work and she knows that every child understands the concept. That's why you can cut down on homework because you can get through more. To my point when I started, you cannot get through everything when you've got twenty four to fifty children in a class with a different level of understanding throughout that class. So where there are progress, where there are progressive education practices, you can cut down on homework.
00:22:40
Speaker 4: We are way behind the curve.
00:22:41
Speaker 2: And also to your point, where have a great deal of inequality, right, so you have kids coming in with different levels of literacy and numeracy. Whereas countries like Norway, the Nordic countries for the most part, are fairly sort of. They have the same kind of class.
00:22:56
Speaker 5: They come in school ready number one, and they are literate, yes, number two, so a teacher can take them anywhere.
00:23:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not teaching a kid how to read.
00:23:05
Speaker 5: Two weeks ago we were talking about the literacy crisis here and that is plays a massive role in what we're talking about today.
00:23:15
Speaker 2: NICKI has always it's great to chattoo. Thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you, girks, it's always a pleasure having you. That's our resident yum and potential and parenting expert Nikki Bosch. Coming up, we speak to internationally acclam South African choreographer Gregory Marcorma. He has a new production in Gregory on Stage is always such a treat. This latest one is called Genesis. We'll speak to Gregory about it. But first, a very busy weekend, so let's check in with your latest. I Witness New Sport with Anthony Schader
Speaker 1: Seven o two for weekend Breakfast and Parenting with Nicky.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: Bush eleven minutes after eight o'clock ten for us to talk parenting for this week and this week we are talking about homework. Every now and again, there is a discussion about the amount of homework parents often say many parents saying there's too much homework for kids, particularly in the lower grades, and why doesn't all the teaching happen in school? So we are asking this question, so do we need to rethink homework? We'd love to hear your thoughts of course on on one one eight three oh seven oh two. Yess is on A three one seven oh two, and your WhatsApps on seven two seven two one seven oh two. Joining us in pseudo this morning is our resident human potential and parenting expert, Nikki Bush.
00:00:44
Speaker 3: Nikki are very good morning to you.
00:00:46
Speaker 4: Good morning gogs.
00:00:47
Speaker 3: How are you?
00:00:48
Speaker 4: I'm fine and how are you well?
00:00:49
Speaker 3: Thank you? So did you like homework when you were in school?
00:00:52
Speaker 4: I don't know that anybody really liked homework.
00:00:55
Speaker 5: I liked homework, but I'll tell you that homework gives you the opportunity to prove that you understand what you learned, and that in itself should make you feel good. So if you're given ten practice sums and I have to say, Maths was my achilles heell, so I hated Math's homework. But if you're given ten practice sums to practice what you learned in class during the day and you can get them right, then you feel better. You feel like you achieved something. I think what parents underestimate is that a teacher has anything from twenty four children in a class in a private school to forty to fifty children in a class in a government school, and there is absolutely no way in a thirty to forty five minute class or period that you can teach a concept and get children to practice the concept all in that period of time, because the first minutes of every lesson are spent calming the class down, especially if they have moved from classroom to classroom, and then the last five minutes are spent packing up, So you have fifteen minutes of wasted time in every single lesson. And there are a number of very good reasons why there is homework, even though we really as parents would rather not have homework. And I remember this, I've actually found something that I wrote when I was in the middle of homework season with my children. I wrote an article about homework hurdles, and I said, there are days when homework is a breeze and days when it's a ground. When it goes well, I as the mother, feel fabulous, and when it doesn't, the levels of frustration and despair can be overwhelming. Add to this fact that we no longer live in an ideal world in which we would get home at the same time from school or extramarial activities every day, allowing us to consistently do homework at the same time in the same place. And this is also true specifically if you have more than two children, more than one child. Put it that way, because you might have one child in a swimming pool having a swimming lesson at the age of say nine or ten, and you might have a four or five year old at your feet or on your lap, and you've got to keep them entertained. And then while when your child, the homework doing child, gets out of the pool, they've also got to get their homework done now, and you've got to motivate them to get their head back into their books. So you can see why parents don't like homework. Plus we work so these days, you only have about three hours with your children of a wake time, and now you must spend some of those three hours doing homework with your children. The younger the child, the more you have to help them with their homework. The older the child, the less you have to help them with their homework. And when they're little, it's quite simple reading, which is essential. Don't skip it because repetition, repetition, repetition, And it's usually some form of writing or spelling and some form of basic numeracy. And it's usually ten of this and ten of that, and five of this and five of that. It actually doesn't take long when you get to the upper grades, where we are not learning to read, write and do maths, but using reading to learn. Now we're into research. Now, we're into project work. And these are the things that send us over the edge. And when every subject teacher actually needs us to study for tests in the same week. So I would say, as an asside for educators, please communicate with each other in the staff room and don't all give a project in the same week. This is the stuff parents freak out about when we have projects, when we have tests all at the same time, because these are outside the realm of ten of this and ten of that, right, and these are the things that really do break the camel's back.
00:05:07
Speaker 2: We actually have a message about that, so MOUITERI says, here, Morning, Gogs and Nikki. This past week, I was very frustrated with my child's teacher, who asked the pupils to write an essay of three pages, which was required the following day, only to find out that she didn't take it on the day. My son had two other homework pieces and he slipped at three am. He was so tired, and I wanted to reach out to the school about this, but my son was not in agreement with that. So to your point about perhaps, I mean, I imagine different teachers teaching different classes aren't always going to have the same kind of cadence or timing. But you know, it can't be a science project, a history project, and an English paper and a three page essay. Yeah, So here we're talking about the later grades. So i'd like you say, when they're younger, the focus is improving their literacy and the numeracy, but as they get old that now you're taking that literacy and numeracy and using it, applying it applying it to writer and so yes, this idea a frustrated parent of well, you know there was this essay and they were other things.
00:06:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, and no child should be up at three o'clock in the morning. So there are three good reasons why we have homework. So let's talk about why homework is actually necessary, right, because this is the case for homework. The first is repetition, So practicing of concepts taught in class leads to mastery. You cannot achieve mastery without repetition and practice. So to create an ningram, a memory cell in the brain, you have to practice something two hundred to three hundred times to consolidate it so that it is a well oiled in grease neurological pathway. This goes for adults and for children. So if you're learning something new around AI or tech or your phone or something, if you don't do it many times, it's not going to stick.
00:07:08
Speaker 4: It doesn't stick.
00:07:09
Speaker 5: So to create the sticky factor, repetition is required. So two hundred to three hundred times. That's why your child comes home with ten sums and ten words, et cetera. We have to keep this in mind. This is how the brain learns there is no teacher on this planet who can get kids to do the repetition and enough repetition during class time that is required, which is why homework is necessary. Right, So that's the first really important reason for the homework debate. The second is application, and that's why children are given project work and group work to extend the application of the learning and combining it with additional research. So what are we learning with project work? How to research, how to quote sources, how to present, how to present, how to package. You know, at the end of the day, this is practice for the real world. When you have your own business, when you are employed by somebody, you have to pitch ideas constantly, for sponsorship, for budget, to get work so that you actually get paid. So everything we actually do in childhood is preparation for adulthood. And being able to communicate one's ideas and present them logically in writing and through words the spoken word is an absolutely essential life skill. And then the third reason for homework is preparation. Now, in some more advanced schools who have changed the methodology of learning, there's the concept of the flipped classroom. The flipped classroom is generally used in high school and in university where the teacher will send some source work, some preparation, usually these days a video of some description or maybe a little bit of reading. Go and read about this concept we are going to unpack in the classroom tomorrow. So the teacher is getting the learners to prep to start getting interested in what she's going to teach them or what he's going to teach them tomorrow in the classroom, and then they unpack it and teach it the next day. And then there is sometimes time for practice in the class because we've done some of the pre work the night before. So that's often termed the flipped classroom, usually only in the higher grades, where reading is consolidated and they can go and read for meaning and watch for meaning and extrapolate and formulate questions for the teacher for the class tomorrow, etc. So those are three very good reasons why homework is necessary. Let alone the fact that at some point there are going to be assessments, tests, exams which then help you to or help your child or help the teachers to compare children against benchmarks. I hate them personally. I think that we need to have continuous assessments which includes tests, exams, project work and assessing how children are coping generally, and that's very hard to do when you have too many children in a classroom, when you have overcrowded classrooms, there's only one way to assess, and that's for children's through tests, and it's only one way of assessing children. There are many ways to assess children. So those are the reasons for homework.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: Could I add one more?
00:10:57
Speaker 4: Yes?
00:10:58
Speaker 2: What was quite interesting for me move from school to varsity is just how much of reading for a degree? And it got even worse at a because I did my undergrad and then I did my honors. How much of reading for a degree is a lot like homework. In high school, you sit in a lecture and you prepare for that lecture. You need to have done the reading before getting to the lecture. The lecturer will go through pretty high level stuff. They might explain some concepts. Then you need to go read chapter six, nine, ten, and eleven. And the only time really you might get a little bit of sort of one to one attention is in your tutorials, but the bulk of the stuff you teach yourself. And that was so interesting to me because it felt as if even in school where we had a lot of homework. It felt like we were babied a lot more. And then you suddenly get to your to varsity and no one even cares if you go to lectures.
00:11:56
Speaker 3: It is all on you, all of it.
00:11:57
Speaker 2: You read for that degree, you go to the line, you go through the course outline, you find the books, you photograph, the reading. All of that stuff is almost all like independence, self driven.
00:12:08
Speaker 3: And I feel.
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Homework almost mimics that and prepares kids, I think in a better way. Maybe your kid does want to go to a varsiti, I feel like homework mimics it in a way it almost better prepares you and not having to upset.
00:12:23
Speaker 5: And actually I remember very very clearly having a conversation with a psychologist and my son had had an assessment. This was mid high school. He was having going he'd gone from a's in maths to getting c's, and it was all about the teacher. And he just looked my son in the eyes and said, just you wait till you get to university.
00:12:48
Speaker 4: The teaching is shocking.
00:12:50
Speaker 5: You are going to have to teach yourself just about everything because lecturers don't know how to teach. Academics don't know how to teach, and to your point, you're going to have to do a lot of reading when you get university, a lot of prep because they go very fast. And so we see issues in first year university with children who haven't consolidated, particularly maths concepts. They fall behind incredibly quickly in that first year. So I think homework definitely has its place. If it's extreme, you need to be chatting to teachers and finding out why your child is getting so much homework or why they are taking so long to do their homework. Maybe they need some remedial intervention to help them consolidate concepts, maybe they've fallen behind. I found maths very difficult at school because I learned maths much slower than I learned any language. So that wasn't my strong suit, and that's the subject. I had years and years of extra lessons, and I think that my parents I actually did the sums at one stage. I went to a good old government school that cost twelve round a year at the time, and my parents paid out thousands and thousands over three years in maths extra maths lessons. They paid far more for my extra maths than they did for my education. But it was highly necessary. So if your child is battling to get their head in the game when it comes to doing their homework, let's talk about a few hints and tips that can help parents have an easier time of it. So some children, in fact, many children are tired when they get back from school or get back from extramurals. So maybe having a little rest is a good idea. But what happens with many children is they flop down in front of television for half an hour. And I have to tell you that television SAPs your energy. It doesn't energize you. It drains you. We think it energizes you because you're doing nothing, but it actually leaches your energy. So recharging your batteries would be a power and app Or it would be play a little game with your children if they're young, have a quick game, official snap, a card game, or it could be going out into the driveway or the street or the garden and throwing balls to each other for ten minutes. That will wake up your child's reflexes and their brain. Plus you are filling their emotional cup because you are with them, interacting with them. They've been away from you all day and actually they need to fill themselves up on your voice, on your presence, on your energy. And I know if you work, this is hard at the end of the day, but it is worth the effort. Then a little bit of creativity in primary school. There is some work that does not have to be handed in. It just has to be done. Practice sums, the practice spelling, the practice multiplication tables that your children can do in a different medium. Change the medium and you will raise the excitement level about homework. So you can do multiplication and spelling in flour on the kitchen counter or on a tray. You can use whiteboard markers on your windows or on ceramic sealed tiles or on mirrors. That's fun for children. And please remember you are actually the helper, not the doer. You don't need to pass Grade six for the second time. If you're doing too much helping or doing, you need to raise this with the teacher. And please encourage the process, not just the end point. So you need to be a cheerleader. And then four rules for doing homework. After extra murals comes homework, and only after homework comes TV and gaming. Right, Okay, you see children are coming home and wanting entertainment. Homework is not entertaining, and there's so much at their disposal that is entertaining that they want to get to the entertainment. Well, the middle piece the bridge is the homework. Then rule number two is that they might have to learn to get little bits of homework done on the run. So you might get your reading homework done in the car on their way home from school, so reading is done by the time you get home, so you can tick some stuff off the list. They may have to do bits of homework while you're in a therapy room waiting for one child to have therapy while the other child is sitting at your feet doing some homework. Rule number three is encourage the effort. It is a daily reality of their life and you have to reinforce what was done.
00:17:46
Speaker 4: In class, So encourage them.
00:17:50
Speaker 5: And rule number four is that if you're at home, try and get homework done in the same place. So there's a homework spot, whether it's the kitchen counter, whether it's a desk in their room, whether it is the dining room. It's kind of like an anchor. When we sit here, we do the homework, right. So those are the full rules. Try and keep your children as focused and organized as possible, and you need to take a disciplined and structured approach to how to get this daily homework done. So it's not all bad news about homework. There really are good reasons why homework exists. But hopefully it does not lead to burnout. It leads to some kind of discipline that is going to serve your child once they get to tertiary education.
00:18:36
Speaker 2: One day, speaking of discipline or what's up, message here says good morning dogs and Nikki, it's Hojoser from Atredgeville. As a parent who's actively involved in my daughter's schoolwork, I think homework is good for kids. It teaches children discipline, how to prioritize, and time management.
00:18:52
Speaker 5: Oh and time management such an important point that's been raised there. Time management is actually one of the skills that most people fall down on. So how much time do you allocate to what? And that's part of a parent's role is looking at the homework load and going right, this is probably going to take you fifteen minutes, that's going to take you twenty minutes, that's going to take you half an hour. We've only got an hour for homework or an hour and a half. How are we going to divvy up this homework? And using a timer is actually a good thing. A little old fashioned sand timer or an old fashioned clock if you want to keep cell phones away, can work wonders. Even this morning, when I was prepping to get here in studio, I put a timer on for myself of five minutes to blow dry my hair because I needed to get out on time. So we all have to do time management. It's a fact of life. I also think kids should use analog tools tool.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: Ceasingly young people can't read a clock because they don't have to. They read the time on a digital interface with their cell phone, an iPad, a smart watch. So you I mean, I think I learned how to tell the time in school. It's one of the things you learn you do, and that is no longer. But it's such a good you know, the good clock, especially a clock.
00:20:15
Speaker 5: A clock is like doing fractions, yes, because you can have fifteen minutes, you know, there's four quarters in an hour, or how many sets of ten minutes are there in an hour? And get your children to do sprints, homework sprints. You know, if you're involved in the digital side of business, if you're building tech back ends. They talk about sprints where they literally allocate a period of time for you to build a piece of the back end, and it's called a sprint. So we should be using sporting analogies with our children. You know, you've got a five minute sprint here, get it done. Then we've got a ten minute sprint. Then there's another five minutes. Then you're going to do a physical sprint. You're going to run to the gate and back to wake your brain, and you're going to do ten star jumps, and then we're going to.
00:21:03
Speaker 4: Get back to your spelling. Be creative. Yeah, you can get this done, parents, you really can.
00:21:08
Speaker 2: Before I let you go, received a whattape voice notas on seventy seven one seven o two.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: I remember seeing a documentary where, I think at the time of the northern European countries and probably most of them Norway or whatever, they got the highest their kids rate the highest in education in the world for schools and whatever, and they did away with homework completely, and then the shortened the school days. You got four or five hours. They said kids must play and their kids are best in the world. So, yeah, it's deficult. One I suppose they haven't got classes of forty or fifty kids. But you know, this homic thing is ridiculous. My my kids primarem in primary school. They had a project but they kept the omic right back. I'm not sure what the outcome was, but yeah, at least they were trying to be progressive.
00:22:01
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for that message, Gary, And it's interesting that he mentioned Norway. Norway is one of the lowest student to teacher ratio is actually nine one teacher teachers.
00:22:11
Speaker 5: Nine, okay, but now one teacher to nine children can get through a lot of work and she knows that every child understands the concept. That's why you can cut down on homework because you can get through more. To my point when I started, you cannot get through everything when you've got twenty four to fifty children in a class with a different level of understanding throughout that class. So where there are progress, where there are progressive education practices, you can cut down on homework.
00:22:40
Speaker 4: We are way behind the curve.
00:22:41
Speaker 2: And also to your point, where have a great deal of inequality, right, so you have kids coming in with different levels of literacy and numeracy. Whereas countries like Norway, the Nordic countries for the most part, are fairly sort of. They have the same kind of class.
00:22:56
Speaker 5: They come in school ready number one, and they are literate, yes, number two, so a teacher can take them anywhere.
00:23:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not teaching a kid how to read.
00:23:05
Speaker 5: Two weeks ago we were talking about the literacy crisis here and that is plays a massive role in what we're talking about today.
00:23:15
Speaker 2: NICKI has always it's great to chattoo. Thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you, girks, it's always a pleasure having you. That's our resident yum and potential and parenting expert Nikki Bosch. Coming up, we speak to internationally acclam South African choreographer Gregory Marcorma. He has a new production in Gregory on Stage is always such a treat. This latest one is called Genesis. We'll speak to Gregory about it. But first, a very busy weekend, so let's check in with your latest. I Witness New Sport with Anthony Schader
