Some parents and teachers in the South-South have justified parents’ assistance to children in doing their take-home assignments, saying it is not a transfer of responsibilities from teachers to parents.
The parents made the justification in a recent survey carried out by the News Agency of Nigeria in the region.
They observed the practice would help parents assess the teachers’ performance, as much as help boost the bond between parents and children, whilst keeping a keen eye on the children’s academic performance.
A Calabar-based teacher, Margaret Ada, said that parents assisting their children and wards do take-home assignments helped to create a bond between the pupils and their parents.
“Teachers are not transferring their responsibilities to the parents by giving them take-home assignments as some people think.
”The practice ensures that parents get really involved in their children’s education,” Ada stated, adding that some schools had realised that some parents had no knowledge of the activities of their children in school.
She continued, “Education is a collaborative effort between teachers, parents and children. Parents just have to be involved and that is why assignments are given,” she said, but, however, noted that some parents ”felt the assignments were sometimes far above the understanding of the child”.
According to her, in such situations, parents could call the attention of the teachers, which would help boost the bond among the parties.
A parent, David Akpan, said that take-home assignments, no matter how difficult, were part of the teaching techniques to help pupils understand better.
“It is necessary for the parents to assist the children in their take-home assignments. It is only a lazy and irresponsible parent that sees it as a burden,” he noted.
In Yenagoa, a parent and teacher, Jonathan Epegu, said, ideally, such assignments were designed to ensure that children recalled what they were taught in school, and to make them execute the assignments on their own.
“Parents are supposed to supervise their children and not do the assignments. The education of children should involve parents as well as teachers,” Epegu said.
She, however, said that at times, students were given take-home assignments beyond their range of knowledge.
“I agree it happens. My children bring such assignments that are beyond their scheme of work,” she said.
According to Maduabuchi Eziukwu, some teachers usually overwhelmed children with assignments on a daily basis and thus overburdened parents who were increasingly finding it more difficult to eke out a living.
“I only assist when children have difficulties because when you do the assignments, the children do not learn anything.
Eziukwu said that parenting required a lot of commitment and advised that parents should create time and have an interest in the educational development of their children.
Some teachers in Benin told the NAN that take-home assignments were meant for students and pupils to master the topics taught in class.
Blessing Emmanuel, a teacher at a private school in the Edo state capital, opined that no teacher would give students assignments on topics not treated in class.
“I understand the fact that some parents see the assignment given to their wards as bulky whereas it is not, she said.
Treasure Emokpahe, a teacher, noted that assignments were given to students to ensure proper comprehension of the topic, disagreeing with the notion that homework was a ploy to shift responsibility away from the teachers.
In Asaba, the proprietor of African Elite International School, Ikenna Okafor, said that the academic growth of children fell on the shoulders of both teachers and parents.
Okafor said giving children assignments to do at home did not amount to transferring responsibilities to parents.
“It helps the child to play less and study at home. It also helps parents to find out if the teachers are teaching their children well.
“It helps parents find out whether their children are serious with their studies and makes the children open up to their parents about their teachers’ bad behaviours.
“When both teachers and parents join hands together to help the child, you will find out that the child is always the best,” he said.
Also, another parent, Chibuzo James, said, “Every responsible parent should be able to show love to his or her children by assisting them to do assignments. By so doing he or she will even know how much teachers are doing in the life of his or her children.”
“That a parent assists the child does not mean the teachers are transferring their duties to them,” she added.
Similarly, Dr Bassey Bassey, a parent in Uyo, said that parents should be involved in the academic development of their children in order to monitor what their children and wards were up to in school.
“If everything the children do starts and ends with teachers, then parents will not know much about the education of their children and wards. It means they don’t keep a tab on what their children do,” he affirmed.
Bassey said if assignments were not given to children, because of their short attention span, their minds would derail from academics.
He concurred that giving assignments did not mean a transfer of responsibilities to parents, but rather a way to keep children busy at home.
“It is not true that some teachers have made it a habit to give students or pupils take-home assignments and expect parents to solve them,” Bassey said.
Contributing, Patrick Titus said children did not really need to learn from the four walls of the classroom alone but also from home.
He said that parents helping their children do assignments was not out of place, adding that both teachers and parents should join hands in the academic building of their children.
He seconded the submission of many parents and teachers that homework helped boost the parent-children bond.
Also speaking, Iquo Uwa, a teacher at Royal Academy School, Eket, suggested assignments should be done inside exercise books and abreast notes taken on the topics taught.
She said that by so doing, pupils could do such assignments on their own without parents assisting them.
Uwa however, said that there was nothing wrong with parents helping children overcome their school assignments.
“It is not dodging responsibilities by teachers but parents being involved and knowing what their children are taught in school,” Uwa stressed.
Meanwhile, a lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, Dr Williams Wodi, says the absence of monitoring and evaluation of teachers is partly the reason many teachers now outsource their scholarly responsibilities to parents.
According to him, the current trend of teachers presenting students with homework to be assisted by their parents was wrong.
He said, “In those days, zonal supervisors visited schools at least once a month to know whether teachers are properly trained and to find out what students are taught.
“But in the absence of monitoring and evaluation, what we have masquerading as teachers nowadays are mostly auxiliary teachers who do not know classroom management procedures.
“They (teachers) simply load pupils with all manner of homework, sometimes flog them for not doing their homework and chastising the parents for not assisting the children.
“So, what teachers do now is to transfer their responsibilities to parents because they don’t understand what is expected of them.
“This is so because some teachers are not properly equipped and trained, and as such, they shift their responsibilities to parents,” he said.
He also blamed the poor remuneration of teachers in the country for such a “transfer of responsibilities”.
“Teaching profession in Nigeria is among the least paid, whereas, in a country like Finland, teachers earn more than politicians, including the country’s prime minister.
“Until there is proper monitoring and evaluation on the proper procedure for teaching teachers classroom management and how to evaluate students, we will continue to have what we have now,” he noted.
(NAN)
