On most nights, certain intruders enter our homes and wreak havoc and destruction. They interfere with everything the fathers and mothers are trying to accomplish, and they drive the children to panic and tears. They turn scenes of harmony, tranquility and joyous laughter into bedlam and discord. Who are these intruders? They are the insidious inventions known as homework assignments.
This is the opinion expressed by Rav Mattisyahu Salomon, Mashgiach of the Lakewood Yeshivah, in the newly published With Hearts Full of Love (Mesorah). I wrote this book for the Mashgiach based on a series of vaadim on chinuch he gave to a small group over a period of a year and a half. The book addresses numerous chinuch concepts and issues that, for the most part, are not related to schools, but in several places, the Mashgiach does take the school system to task.
The home, he contends, should not be an extension of school, and the parents should not be surrogate teachers. Our homes should be Arei Miklat, Cities of Refuge, for our children. Rabbeinu Yonah writes in Iggeres Hateshuvah that women “are the ones that send off their children to school and see to it that they learn Torah, and they take pity on them (merachmos aleihem) when they come home from school.” What does it mean that the mothers “take pity on them when they come home from school”? Why does welcoming a child back from school call for rachmanus?
Clearly, says the Mashgiach in the book, Rabbeinu Yonah is telling us that when children come home from school, they’re rachmanus cases. School is a grueling ordeal even for star pupils; it’s not easy for any child to sit through hours and hours of classes, restricted to his seat, required to pay
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attention without wavering or looking out the window and daydreaming. It’s a lot to demand from anyone let alone a young child. So children coming home from school need to be greeted with rachmanus, with a glass of milk, a plate of cookies and a warm hug. They need to relax and play. Loading them down with hours of homework extends the ordeal into the home and robs them of the respite they need and crave. The school is a place of pressure, and the home should compensate by being a place of relaxation, a place where children play, eat, sleep and help their parents. That was the traditional system of chinuch.
As for the parents, they have their own responsibilities. The mother is running her household among other things, and the father is involved in his learning, his business activities or his duties around the house. Parents barely have time to breathe, especially if the families are large. And then the children come home with assignments that require the extensive participation of the parents. The result is an unjustified disruption of the home with all sorts of negative consequences.
Homework, in the opinion of the Mashgiach, should be limited to simple and straightforward review of material the children are already expected to know well, review that does not necessarily require the participation of the parents. Perhaps it would be better all around if children learned a little less and had more time to be children and enjoy their childhood years.
This is a brief summary of the Mashgiach’s opinion expressed in the book at considerable length.
So what can we do about it?
It is difficult to change a system gone askew. Schools are pressed to assign so much homework in order to reach ambitious goals that simply cannot be reached during classroom hours alone. Part of the motivation for these goals is competition with other schools. Schools are, therefore, reluctant to lighten the homework load, because they are afraid they will be seen as lacking in academic excellence. In fact, not only does the
competition prevent the lightening of the load, it actually leads to incremental increases in the load.
It seems to me that the only way to change the system and reclaim the peace and serenity of our homes is by a groundswell of protest from parents empowered by the Mashgiach’s book. The Mashgiach is one of the great leaders of our generation, and his stature and prestige lend tremendous authority to his opinions. If parents in sufficient numbers confront their principals, rebbeim and teachers with the relevant passages from the Mashgiach’s book, they could not be so easily dismissed.
Such a groundswell will not change the system in a day, but it will force the schools to grapple with the problem with a sense of urgency. And once the problem of intrusive homework becomes a topic of public discussion, we could conceivably see positive results in a relatively short time.