HOMEWORK IN SPAIN

Some days ago they said on the news that, out of the European Union, Spain is one of the countries which gives the most homework to the students, but at the same time, it is one of the countries with the worst academic results. I actually don’t know about the amount of homework students get in the other countries, and they level on the academic results, but I think what they said on the news could be perfectly true, and I think this is because of the education system.

I’ve heard several times about the education system in some of the northern countries, such as Iceland or Finland and it’s quite different from the one here in Spain. In Finland, for example, they focus on the studies but they also place importance on the free time and the games. They think it’s important for the kids to have time to play, because even though it’s necessary to study, they also need some leisure. And to do this, the kids go to school, but they practically have no homework. Also, they try to work in more enjoyable ways, working in groups, doing varied activities, etc. And I guess this works, because Finland’s education system is considered one of the best of the world, and with the best results. 

In my point of view, it’s okay if teachers give students some homework to do at home, for example finishing an exercise they started in the class, but that’s not what they do at all. They make students work in the class and then they have quite a lot of extra work to do at home. And it’s not all about homework, because there also the exams, for which you have to study. With all these work students don’t get enough free time and this stresses them.

I know that, for example in my case, I’m doing Batxillerat and I am aware that it requires a lot of work, because you need to be prepared for university, but I don’t think the kids having that much homework is fair. Some people would say that if you don’t make kids work hard when they’re little, when they grow up they are not going to work, but I don’t think this is true. In my opinion, there’s a difference between working hard and having study habits. What little kids should learn is that studying is important and they should learn how to have good study habits, so when they grow up, they do the work they must do in every level of their studies. If we want kids to be good students by making them work very hard when they are little, all we are going to get is them growing up and getting tired of having been studying hard all their lives. And probably they will get tired at the age when studying is most important.

Another thing I would like to talk about is the way the education system makes students work. In some subjects the teachers make students thing and analyze by themselves, but in lots of subjects they don’t really test the knowledges of students, they test their capacities to memorize the things and then put them all on the exam, often without  thinking too much. I don’t think this is the students, teachers or high school fault. I think this is because of the way the education system works and appraises the students. Maybe it is kind of unpleasant of me to say all this without providing a possible solution to it, but I don’t really know how the education system could be fixed.

In conclusion, what I thing is that maybe, one of the several reasons of the bad academic results in Spain is the education system and the way they make students work, so maybe it would be good if things changed a little bit and the way of working was redesigned, so our country could get better results. 

Here there is a recent video of a social experiment, that shows the amount of work that kids have in Spain. The video was recorded in Spanish, but it has the option to put English subtitles:

UPDATE: I have just found a video that expresses everything I wanted to say with this post, so I thought I should post it. It is in Spanish, so I hope it's not a problem. The quote I would like to remark is: ''Si quieres aprobar no hay tiempo de aprender'', that would be ''If you want to pass there's no time to learn'', which I think that summarizes perfectly what I wanted to say about the education system way of making us work.