School tasks: really necessary?

We have always accepted, and without hesitation, the precept that fulfilling school tasks is a guarantee of school performance, without observing, most of the time, how our children live this issue.

We have become accustomed to see how normal, the run runs of children day after day, many with some discouragement, worry and even stress, for getting at night and not having finished the homework assigned from school.

Fortunately, in recent years, voices have been rising from countries such as Spain and Chile, for example, which speak of the need to reduce the amount of work and tasks that schoolchildren take home, questioning, including their actual contribution to the learning opportunities of these.

Some think that school tasks take away time for play and recreation and sharing with the family. They consider, in addition, counterproductive, to arrive home in the afternoon, with the fatigue of the day, and to have to continue working, often under stress, to finish the assignment entrusted.

Many specialists believe that school tasks, if mandatory, should be replaced by more attractive and rewarding activities, games, sports, cooperative activities in the home, drawing or free reading, walks, excursions and visits with some learning objective, example.

Other more radicals pose the need to eliminate them completely, so that the child can rest, after the school day, or share at home with family and / or friends, as they claim, that the 5 or 7 hours they spend in the educational institution they are enough for their teaching-learning process.

In other words, the tendency is to stop assigning repetitive, memory and tedious tasks, typical of the traditional school, to make way for school tasks that are truly learning experiences for the student, which are mostly carried out within the school, respecting where possible, the student's time and their families.

I fully share the thesis that the allocation of homework indiscriminately must cease, especially if they do not respond to a coordinated and conscious academic program on the part of the teacher.

We live today a globalized and complex world. The students of today demand more dynamic, communicative and interactive activities.

The search for information is practically a skill that they already develop at an early age from their homes. Orienting those skills and interests towards educational objectives of interest to the student. I believe that is the challenge of the future.

Recall that the ultimate goal of education should be to ensure better skills for better job prospects, from the individual point of view, and to be able to function successfully, in a society that changes very quickly. Hence, the school, rather than transmitting well-established knowledge, has to teach how to learn and adapt to changing situations typical of this century.

It is time, therefore, that parents, representatives, managers and teachers are ready, of course, to discuss this issue, establishing criteria and proposals around them, and making sure that home assignments are less and more significant for the student, and that these are planned by the teacher, within a coordinated and conscious programming of the new role of the school in the formation of the man of today.