At Summers-Knoll we believe that young children should be free of homework, and that even as they grow older it should be limited. Children have many needs and develop in complex ways. It's not our view that relentless, constant academic study leads to healthy, happy, confident and independent young adults. People often ask us about our homework philosophy, simultaneously anxious that their child will not be adequately trained, and grateful for the possibility of their child having time to learn in other ways and live without the stress that they see other families endure. So when I came upon this quote from an article in an October 1860 issue of Scientific American, I immediately wanted to share it with you. This isn't a new struggle - it's been going on for centuries.
“A child who has been boxed up six hours in school might spend the next four hours in study, but it is impossible to develop the child's intellect in this way. The laws of nature are inexorable. By dint of great and painful labor, the child may succeed in repeating a lot of words, like a parrot, but, with the power of its brain all exhausted, it is out of the question for it to really master and comprehend its lessons. The effect of the system is to enfeeble the intellect even more than the body. We never see a little girl staggering home under a load of books, or knitting her brow over them at eight o'clock in the evening, without wondering that our citizens do not arm themselves at once with carving knives, pokers, clubs, paving stones or any weapons at hand, and chase out the managers of our common schools, as they would wild beasts that were devouring their children.”
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