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Post by Jaga on Apr 14, 2024 17:58:24 GMT -7
This is quite a drastic change. We would see what happens.
In the US there is usually not homework for children who are in junior high. This news was actually in several international outlets including Times of India.
Here are the news from Times of India:
www.foxnews.com/world/poland-implements-new-rules-against-homework-sparking-mixed-reactions-students-parents
Poland implements new rules against homework, sparking mixed reactions among students and parents
Ola Kozak is celebrating. The 11-year-old, who loves music and drawing, expects to have more free time for her hobbies after Poland’s government ordered strict limits on the amount of homework in the lower grades.
"I am happy," said the fifth grader, who lives in a Warsaw suburb with her parents and younger siblings. The lilac-colored walls in her bedroom are covered in her art, and on her desk she keeps a framed picture she drew of Kurt Cobain.
"Most people in my class in the morning would copy the work off someone who had done the homework or would copy it from the internet. So it didn’t make sense," she said.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk enacted the ban against required homework this month amid a broad discussion about the need to modernize Poland's education system, which critics say puts too much emphasis on rote learning and homework, and not enough on critical thinking and creativity.
Under the decree, teachers are no longer to give required homework to kids in the first to third grades. In grades four to eight, homework is now optional and doesn't count towards a grade.
Not everyone likes the change – and even Ola’s parents are divided.
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Post by pieter on Apr 15, 2024 6:45:39 GMT -7
Jaga,
I don't know if this is a bad decision or a good decision of the Polish government. We live in different times than in my childhood years of the seventies and my teenage years during the eighties when I had to make home work. I was born in januari 1970. So 2024 is different than my first 20 years in Vlissingen, from 1970 until 1990 in the Harbour town Vlissingen on the Penisnula Walcheren in Zeeland. I was part of the old system of Primary school and High School in which we had a lot of homework. Often I was busy with homework hours in the afternoon or in the evenings after dinner. I learned a great deal from that homework. And next to that I drew and painted and went sporting and read a lot of books.
Pieter
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Post by Jaga on Apr 17, 2024 4:17:16 GMT -7
Hello Pieter,
it is good to know about your life as a child. I also had a homework, but I don't think it was overwhelming. I was good in math, but I did not like to write essays in Polish. Ela, my daughter, went to the private school and she had a lots of homework there in the 4th grade about Idaho, but she learned a lot from it.
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Post by pieter on Apr 17, 2024 8:07:35 GMT -7
Hello Pieter, it is good to know about your life as a child. I also had a homework, but I don't think it was overwhelming. I was good in math, but I did not like to write essays in Polish. Ela, my daughter, went to the private school and she had a lots of homework there in the 4th grade about Idaho, but she learned a lot from it.
Did'nt you liked to write essays in Polish because of the complicated Polish grammar and orthography (Spelling) with it's 7 Latin grammatical case (nouns). I had Polish lessons in the Netherlands, but it became to complicated for me when I had a very strict Polish teacher and I stumbled over the 7 Polish nouns and all these exceptions and rules. I decided, this is a very sophisticated and elegant Western Slavic language for Polish people and Polish speakers, but to difficult for me as a Dutchman who knows only Dutch, German and English. I had difficulties to grasp French as well. So for some reason Germanic languages are easy for me (except the North Germanic Scandinavian ones indeed and Yiddish and Swiss German which are hard for me to understand), and Polish sounds very sweet, elegant, charming and sophisticated to me. But really to difficult. It is hard for a Germanic language speaker to learn a Slavic language. But I have Polish friends in Warsaw which German son in law speaks excellent and fluently Polish. Of course he learned some from his Polish wife and children (half German/half Polish), but how this German learned to speak polish fluently is a mystery for me. No offense, but just admiration and cheers for the Poles and foreigners whom speak Polish fluently and can read and write Polish. Again, not an easy language for foreigners. They say the same about Dutch, because it is an illogical language with a lot of Grammatic exceptions, which makes it irritating for both Dutch and foreign people whom make grammatical and spelling errors. And in every language territory you have the linguistic puritinicals, whom harass others whom make errors in writing or speaking. Some Dutch people have a day job in correcting other Dutch peoples Dutch.  
I was a dreamy child which spends hours reading children novels, my child encyclopedia, comic books, and children scientific (space) books in the seventies, and drawing Second World War plane battles, allied and German soldiers, tanks, but also houses, trees, fanatasy machines and etc. Climbing trees, hpuses, bunkers and sometimes houses that were being build, not to the pleasure of the constructor workers. We were naughty, playfull kids with a lot of fantasy, abrasions, bruising and sometimes a bloody nose from silly actions (boys do). Falling out of a tree or from a bunker or meeting a hostile rival gang of young boys and etc. You had rival schools, rival neighbourhoods (other neighbourhoods than your own) and etc. It was like the Holy War (Polish: Święta Wojna) between Wisła Kraków and Cracovia in Kraków. I survided living in a harbour town with some tough cokies.
I spend a lot of time on homework, very fanatically, maybe more hours than others, and next to that I loved my radio, drawing, painting with water colour on paper and ink. I watched a lot of TV and until today I can't understand how it was possible that I have seen so much sevneties and eighties series, sitcoms, movies, documentaries, political tv programs, news and etc. I must have had 2 lives back then. But that is the reality. I don't want to exaggerate, but it seems that I experience more back then than I do today. Maybe that is what childhood and being a teenager means?
Jaga, I hope that your daughter Ela learnt a lot in her private school and that the homework she had to do in the 4th grade about Idaho, made her aware of the history, heritage, customs, tradiotions, geography, demographics, politics, nature, towns, cities, villages, hamlets, the economy, the people and the wild life of your wonderful state Idaho. The state her parents live in. I do believe that you said that she studies in Texas. It is good that she learned a lot about Idaho Jaga.
Cheers,
Pieter |
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Post by karl on Apr 18, 2024 20:25:56 GMT -7
Jaga
As with Pieters experience, myself also was required to do homework but not in grades 1,2, and 3. Once though above was then required to do homework, it was usually an hour or so depending upon if research was required. I was terrible in math and with Mr. Winsten Churchill words, it was blood=sweat and tears with math or as we used the descriptive word, arithmetic.
What usually saved my bacon was a very good ability in research for presenting in class a subject description of such things as manufacturing, mining and such. With this was ability of descriptive writing such as writing and presenting researched reports curiosity and an enquiring mind of the world around us.
Karl
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