Less Homework In these days of increasingly keen competitive examina-
tions, homework has become more and more of a bugbear to schoolchildren. The Board of Education's pamphlet on the subject is therefore most timely. It suggests, "very tentatively," that homework for children under the age of 12 should be abolished altogether, and proposes various reductions, for those of higher ages. Obviously some prepara- tion for form work has to be fitted into the curricu- lum, and less time is wasted if it is done at home. The new proposals, moreover, may seem drastic in com- parison with conditions existing in many schools, but on the whole they represent a saner and more humane policy. The dangers of excessive homework are not only physical. As the Board points out, it cuts off children from other activities, and " some experience of the independent manage- ment of leisure is .essential." The difficulty is that the majority of elementary and even of secondary schoolchildren have no place in which to settle down to either homework or anything else with . any. degree of comfort or privacy. More opportunities for the right use of leisure seem an Inevitable corollary to this suggested increase of it.
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