Cairo- About 15 years ago, the little girl Marwa Mahmoud was sitting with her friends during the last weeks of the summer vacation to finish the vacation homework book, or as she and her friends called it, “vacation homework,” to refresh their memories and prepare for returning to school.
Today, after all these years have passed and generations and means of education and entertainment have changed, Marwa, an Egyptian mother of a child in the early stages of education, denounced the fact that his international school has cancelled the homework system during the summer vacation, and no longer cares about obligating students to review any lessons or information during the vacation period in preparation for the new school year.
According to a number of mothers who spoke to Al Jazeera Net, the principle of summer vacation homework has disappeared from the system of most schools in Egypt, even those that used to adopt it in the past, including a number of private schools (which are supervised by the government, but funded by the private sector).
Generational differences and needs
Amina Samir, a mother of an 8-year-old girl who works as a language teacher in a school in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, said that summer vacation homework was a system followed by the school she works at for years, and then it was cancelled in response to the parents’ wishes.
She added to Al Jazeera Net, “I will speak first as a mother. Forcing a child during his vacation to sit and think about solutions to some mathematical questions and issues is very difficult and exhausting. It increases the burden on the mother in particular, who devotes a lot of her time to meeting the needs of her children, including following up on sports exercises and determining entertainment times and appropriate entertainment methods for them.”
However, she spoke from the perspective of being a teacher who puts a lot of effort into helping students when they return to school, as she believes that “it is essential for any student to review what he learned in the previous year to make things easier for himself, his family, and his teachers, and to improve his ability to comprehend academically, especially during the first month of the new school year.”
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Amina pointed out that when she was a student, she actually used to sit for days to finish her “holiday homework,” but at that time, the options and entertainment were limited, so one of her favorite times was to meet with her friends to complete this homework.
To solve this dilemma, given that most schools have cancelled the summer homework principle, Amina suggested that schools reinstate the summer homework system, on the condition that “it is not mandatory, and that it is a means of providing parents with some materials and tools that they can rely on to activate their children’s educational memory.”
She also pointed out that she personally, due to the nature of her work and the tools she has, organizes some games for her daughter that are in the form of questions and answers, with some rewards attached if she is able to answer them.
She added: “When we provide children with any information in the context of a game or a task that tests their ability to do it, they respond to us, but if we tell them: Sit down so we can finish this mandatory assignment, they ignore the matter, especially since the climate surrounding them during the vacation period does not push them towards any educational commitment.”
Priority to sports, art and reading
For her part, Yasmine Mohamed, a mother of a 7-year-old child, expressed her complete opposition to obligating children to do any homework during the summer vacation, pointing out the importance of dedicating this period of the year to developing children’s skills through arts, sports, and reading, without obligation, but rather with the aim of enjoying the time.
She told Al Jazeera Net, “During the school year, we parents make a great effort to force our children to finish their daily homework, and it is illogical to force them to do similar homework during the vacation, which is an outlet for parents before children to reduce the burdens imposed on us during the school months.”
She considered that any supportive approach to school assignments during the holiday for the purpose of review is “arbitrary to parents and children,” noting that the benefits of activities in their various fields address many of the problems of academic deficiency that may appear in children during long holidays.
She added, “The vacation is an opportunity to introduce children to different aspects of life, and to practice their favorite hobbies, whether singing, drawing, or sports. This is enough during the vacation months, as there is no shame in having some free time.”
She considered that charging children’s mental and psychological energy during the vacation “is not limited to academic information, as the child acquires new information and activates his visual memory by reading a book that attracts him or watching a movie he loves, or researching a specific field that interests him, or even traveling with the family for adventure and discovering the world.”
Essential in the age of modern education
For her part, the certified trainer in child-rearing methods, Hadiya Allah Mashali, criticized the cancellation of the homework book system by most schools during the summer vacation, and considered it a measure driven by the desire of educational institutions to “satisfy parents.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, she stressed that “in an era where the prevailing approach is that the child must be convinced and satisfied with every step and decision taken by the parents, these assumptions are necessary to organize the routine of the summer vacation days and the child’s habits.”
She said: “We desperately need to bring back tasks that require children to sit, think and use their mental and manual skills during the holidays, especially in light of the prevalence of some terms such as modern parenting, which has shaken the confidence of some parents in the parenting methods they follow with their children.”
She continued: “The child being always satisfied and convinced with the tasks assigned to him by his parents has nothing to do with modern education. Evidence of this is that some of these practices have resulted in children addicted to screens that offer them everything by simply touching them.”
She noted that there is a “middle ground” that keeps this supplementary educational activity during the vacation and also suits the parents’ desires, which is to move away from it being a “mandatory duty”, but rather to deal with it “as a means provided by the school” to help activate children’s brains to keep the nerve cells (neurons) active and strong, like regular exercise to maintain muscle strength.
She explained to Al Jazeera Net that “children’s loss of sense of time makes them even more quick to feel bored, so manual skills are necessary to keep their nervous system alert.”
