The school starts with everything that implies, what children like and what less: homework. The ghost of homework is always present in the back to school and there are children who really have a hard time with the amount of homework they have to do each day. And not only children, parents are also overwhelmed to see our children stressed and with little time to play or share with family.
Ikea adds to raising awareness about the situation that millions of Spanish children with too many duties live. He just presented the study "Let's save dinner: how homework influences the daily lives of Spanish homes" which ensures that 80% of parents believe that the duties should be different.
They are not the only ones who warn about the abuse of duties in children, even the UN itself believes that Spanish children are among the most pressured by the duties, occupying the first positions in the ranking of countries with the highest percentage of children affected for excessive duties.
The PISA 2012 report reflects that Spain is above six hours of weekly homework, which places our country as the fifth in the OECD where children spend more time on homework only exceeded by Russia, Italy, Ireland and Poland
It is a matter that creates controversy if we ask whether homework should be prohibited, but what most parents do agree is that they should rethink in some way.
According to the results of the Ikea study from 2,400 interviews conducted nationwide to parents with children between 7 and 17 years, children and adolescents of the same age range, as well as elementary and secondary school teachers .:
One in three parents believes that children spend excessive time on homework. 39 percent state that their children spend an average of 30 minutes to an hour a day and 34.9 percent mention that between 1 and 2 hours.
42 percent of children and adolescents between 7 and 17 years say they spend too many hours doing homework and for 72 percent of them homework is boring.
65 percent of parents think their children feel overwhelmed or tired of the time they spend on homework.
41.9 percent of parents believe that the time their children spend doing homework is a impediment to enjoy more family time.
49.8 percent of children and adolescents believe that if they had less homework they could enjoy more family dinners.
Duties as we know them are obsolete. Both parents and teachers agree that there should be some change in the concept of homework, either spending less time doing them, or doing activities such as reading books, consulting online, watching a movie or visiting a museum.
Along the same lines, 95 percent of primary and secondary school teachers believe that there are other activities beyond daily duties which can help children reinforce their learning such as daily tasks (79.7 percent) or play (13.7 percent).
Let's save dinner
The campaign, conducted by the Mccann agency, claim dinner as the ideal time to learn as a family. For this they have created a new subject “Cenology”, so that the little ones learn while they talk and participate during dinner.
Moral: homework is the enemy of family dinner, a moment in which, without a doubt, you can learn much more than doing homework in a repetitive and methodical way throughout the afternoon.
