HOME LESSONS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10104, 1 August 1893, Page 2

HOME LESSONS.

TO THU EDITOR.

Sib,—l feel sure there are many parents who will be pleased to see a movement to either greatly modify the system of home lessons or do away with it altogether. The present system is more likely to do harm than good, and is as objectionable in private schools as in public, and, to say the least of it, gross injustice is done to the children. Ihe child arrives home in some cases with tasks equal to a good day’s work—that is to say it they are to be carefully prepared and not ckimoied over. In many cases he has not been properly prepared, and consequently is at a loss how to begin his work. If his parents are willing and able they set to and try and explain the work to be done, and if it gets near bod-time, do the work themselves, rather than jeopardise the health of their child by allowing him to stay up to finish or go to bed with his work half done, or with the foaeful consequences of the morrow to disturb hia needful rest. With the help referred to the tasks generally piss, but not always, as the parent himself is often nonplussed at the Chinese puzzles set as examples in arithmetic, &c. Now, take the position of the children whose parents ere unwilling or unable to assist. Either they stumble along with their tasks for hours after they ought to have been in bed, and go through a sort of nightmare of lessons in place of rest. The parents object, and they are sent to bed tearful, depressed and thinking they are cruelly used either by the taskmaster or the parent. At school the first gets through and is possibly praised, the other is punished in some way or another. To remedy this state of things, would it not be a better plan to devote the last hour in school to the preparation of work for the following day, the masters being present to explain away any difficulties, and put all the children on the same footing ? I feel sure they would learn more in an hour this way than in a week by home lessons. Let the*parents have a chance to see their children bright and happy instead of poring over lessons to bedtime, or else bewailing their lot because they cannot do them. This is the only time of the day the father, in many cases, has a chance to see and converse with his children. Relaxation from study and recreation in any torm do more good to the.growing child than all the home lessons put together. Teach the children to read useful books, and to play draughts, chess, &c., and the girls to use the needle, and you will get a better resale from their studies at school time. Ask the doctors of this city their opinion on the system of cramming and over-study with the young students. Apologising for taking up your valuable soace, and trusting that those who have taken up the cudgels to do away with home lessons will go on and wio.—l am, &c., ONE WHO HAS SUFFERED.