By Jerry Large, The Seattle Times

The gospel of Alfie Kohn says homework is evil.

And I say amen.

Teachers may come with honeyed lips to proclaim its virtue. Parents may plead for more to keep their children from temptation. But every schoolchild knows it is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Kohn is a prolific writer on education (11 books, countless articles), a former teacher who lives near Boston and travels the country speaking to educators and parents about the damage done by devotion to grades, tests, competition.

He says we are pushing children to achieve, not to learn.

Kohn’s latest book, “The Homework Myth,” argues homework is rarely helpful and often harmful.

Last week he addressed parents and teachers in the auditorium at Mercer Island High School, at the invitation of ParentMap, the magazine publisher dedicated to educating parents in Washington’s Puget Sound area.

He entertained and provoked thought, reminding me of the traveling evangelists my mother used to take me to hear when I was a kid.

He paced the stage, sat, waded into the audience, preached.

Kohn asked people to shout out their long-term goals for their children or students.

The responses: Be a mensch, happy, independent, curious, self-motivated, passionate, inner wildness, compassionate, self-reliant, engaged, financially independent, lifelong learner, comfortable, confident.

He said the list is similar wherever he is in the country, whether the inner city or the suburbs.

And what do we notice about the list, he asked? “We don’t teach that in school,” one parent offered.

Kohn said it is a frightening possibility that when teachers and parents are focused on test scores and GPA, the love of learning that he enthusiastically promotes suffers and we make it harder for children to grow into well-rounded adults.

He blasted tests such the WASL, which he said is only an accurate measurement of the size of the houses around a given school.

Heavy loads of homework is a symptom of education that is less about learning and more about competition. It’s supposed to show rigorousness, but he said we take its usefulness on faith.

He declared there are no studies that show it helps kids much and plenty that show it hurts elementary-school children.

The studies I’ve seen are complicated, sometimes contradictory, but most of what I’ve read suggests we overdo it. Even the reports that say it helps, include limitations on which kids and under which circumstances and in which subjects.

Even when it can be useful, it is bad practice to give hours of it or to give the same homework to every student, Kohn said.

Kids loaded down with homework don’t have time to read for pleasure. They even forget there might be a reason to read other than for grades.

“Homework may be the most powerful extinguisher of curiosity yet invented,” he said. “As a father, I want my kids to develop intellectually, even academically but … I also want my kids to develop socially, emotionally, artistically, physically and in other ways.”

He said homework requires children to work a second shift that intrudes into family time. I felt like shouting amen.

Excessive homework produces frustrated or exhausted kids and parents who spend their time with their kids nagging them to do homework.

People in the audience laughed and applauded. We were all feeling the spirit, but I suspect most of us will go home and sin again.

Maybe, though, we’ll think more deeply about how best to help our children become the people we say we want them to become.

___

(c) 2009, The Seattle Times.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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