CONDITIONING TO FAIL

If you do something repeatedly, it becomes a habit. Those habits become your character and how you behave in life. If you wake up everyday at 7am, then you will automatically wake up at 7am. Your mind does not have an alarm clock, but that habitual activity will act as an alarm. If you eat everyday at 4 pm, then your stomach will start growling if you do not feed it at that specific time. Again, the stomach does not have a clock, but it just becomes a habit. If you sleep everyday at 11 pm, then even an hour past that time will make you lethargic and exhausted. You get the point!

Applying the same notion into the education system, the public school system is creating habits for younger students which stays with them throughout their entire educational endeavour. Sadly, students in KG, Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 3 are barely given any homework. Even students from Grade 4 to 7 rarely bring home textbooks and consistent homework.

The kids come home, throw their bags to the side, play video games like Call of Duty, Roadblocks, GTA and other things that deviate them from education. After playing, they eat food and then get on their social media accounts. Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Netflix and other media platforms take up the rest of their day. They go to sleep and then wake up and repeat the same cycle all over again. They do this until Grade 9 and 10 and are suddenly given hours of homework. They go into Grade 11 and 12 and are given even more assignments and homework. They enter post secondary institutions, colleges and universities, are inundated with hours and hours of assignments and homework. How will they manage to do that?

The kids get used to not doing much in the earlier stages. Their habits are created and their routines are set, so how do you expect that child to sit down and do hours of homework at the later stages. For almost 8 years, they develop the wrong habits and in high school and post-secondary institutions, it becomes next to impossible to break those habits.

What is the number one complaint parents have with kids in high school? “My son plays too many video games. My daughter is always on her social media accounts.” Well…that is not a big surprise! They have been doing that since KG, so how can we as parents expect them to sit down and do 2-3 hours of homework suddenly in high school. The habits and routines must be created at an earlier stage; however, the education system does the complete opposite. The kids get used to doing almost nothing, so they gravitate towards other distractions to consume their time. They become used to this and then we expect them to suddenly change their habits in high school. So, can we really blame them for not doing their homework or not taking school seriously at the latter stages?