Dear Rabbi Abenson,
With hearts filled with LOVE, we will embrace HW and not ABOLISH it
Most children need extra review to master their learning and succeed. I can’t imagine what klal Yisroel would look like if we abolished HW. Most of my children needed that extra help from me when they started learning Eilu Metzios for the first time. As a Kriah person, you would know that many kids need more one-on-one reading than any school can provide. Either way, why is HW your most significant stress? Which school won’t accept a note from the parents? “Please excuse a stressed-out mom. We couldn’t do HW tonight because… “
Doing HW requires the same parenting skills as putting children to bed and getting them to do any of the myriad tasks a child has to do!
Our children are our future, they are our biggest investment. What better way do you have for a father to bond with his son than learning together joyfully? It is on us to make HW joyful.
I am afraid that your well-intentioned and well-written piece will cause more harm than good.
I can’t imagine I will change your views, but being practical, I would suggest putting some thought into improving the world instead of trying to change it.
Don’t you agree that with hearts filled with love, we could make homework a memory that your son will cherish forever?
המתחיל במצוה אומר לו גמור!
It is now on you to start the conversation with some ideas about making homework an enjoyable and memorable experience!
Sincerely,
Rebbe and a father!
My reply
Dear Rebbe and a Father,
Thank you for your response. However, it seems clear that you may not fully understand the critical points I presented in my letter on the Lakewood Scoop. Homework, as an educational tool, has its origins in non-Jewish systems and does not align with our mesorah. My rebbi, Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon zt”l, was adamant that homework is not in line with Torah-based education and strongly opposed it.
Your statement, “With hearts filled with LOVE, we will embrace HW and not ABOLISH it!” is not only concerning but dismissive of a well-established Torah approach. Embracing homework without consideration of our traditional values is not an act of love; it is an oversight that risks compromising our children’s genuine growth in Torah learning.
I urge you and your rebbeim to read my book, I Can Learn, as it provides an in-depth analysis of the Jewish educational crisis we face today—a crisis that stems in part from abandoning traditional values in favor of foreign methodologies. My work offers practical, Torah-based solutions to correct this misguided approach.
If you are serious about understanding the true impact of homework and wish to address this crisis in a way that aligns with our heritage, I encourage you to read I Can Learn thoroughly. Once you’ve done so, I would be open to discussing how we can work together to elevate the standards of chinuch in a way that honors the Torah and our Mesorah.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Dovid Abenson
Thank you Rabbi for your on target response to the letter. I can only hope none of my boys has that letter writer as their Rebbi.
Ironically I believe the Artscroll book titled With Hearts Full of Love by the Mashgiach Rav Mattisyahu ZTL is the book where he writes how terrible homework is. I am also very sure I have read in numerous places that Rav Yankel Bender is also very much against homework.
Chazara is so important. True. However, teaching classes at the level they SHOULD be taught rather then the level we are teaching now will make a much greater debt and have a much greater impact on the effectiveness of our mesorah from Rebbi to Talmid. A child needs his childhood and a home must be happy and a loving place with no outside pressures. Get the work done in school, review in school, be creative with your talmidim in school, but leave it in school. Father’s shouldn’t bring their work home and neither should kids. That being said, it’s a wonderful idea and very beneficial when parents are actively involved in their child’s school work and progress. Chazara is great, incentives to review are great, exciting sit downs with parents and children to review are great. Go for it. However NOT as an assignment and as homework. No Rebbi has any right ever to dictate or demand or even expect that they can infringe on the private personal time a child has at home. Home is his. Home is where is protected and home is where he feels true love and acceptance.
Oh, and by the way Mr Rebbe letter writer – you are very wrong when you say every teacher or Rebbi will accept a note from a parent that homework wasn’t completed. Just the opposite, when a kid comes with a note they couldn’t do their homework 9 out of 10 times they are told to do it in school at their break
The responding rebbe sounds like a young person, trying to justify the cookie cutter system.
As a master mechanech, I’d like to clarify something. Chazorah is NOT assigned homework and should NOT be labeled as homework.
Homework harms children in more ways than it is beneficial.
A competent rebbi (or teacher) should be able to entirely teach the day’s lesson without expecting the student to go home and waste an hour of his/her parent’s time “relearning” what they didn’t fully learn in school.
I can go on and on…but you get the point.
Hatzlocha
Forcing a child to learn with his father isn’t joyful, if you need your students to learn everything with their father to understand what you are teaching them, that is a problem with the Rebbe.
Now do the 2 month summer vacation, midwinter and can we look into where the idea of tuition came from?
Here’s the bottom line. Not everyone’s pet peeve needs to be publicized as the latest major crisis facing the frum world. Nothing is attributable to just one thing as the main cause and you won’t fix anything by getting people to fight over it. If you run a yeshiva go ahead and run it how you like with hw or without, with a 2 month summer vacation or from Tisha B’av, have a midwinter or not. Other yeshivas may follow suit while others may not.
We keep being pulled in opposite directions. On the one hand we’re told not every kid is cookie cutter so they need to be educated in a way that works for them. On the other hand we’re told yeshivas are doing it wrong and need to be cookie cutter. Enough! Let each yeshiva/community do what they feel is correct and works for their student body.
AGREED THAT THE HOMEWORK AND WORK LOAD has gone too far!
Did you ever try writing a note that the homework was too much for the stressed out mom? I counsel many mothers in multiple schools in town. And I sadly have seen that writing this letter is NOT met with understanding from the schools! Their view is coming from a good place, but is unfortunately very black and white. They view school as the beginning and end of the students’ life. Family and everything else comes secondary to schooling.
WHY?
They answer that that is the current achrayus of the child. They are a student.
Since when is that a TORAH VALUE FOR A GIRL??
Why can’t we instill that the home comes first and the work comes second?
Wait until performance season comes around.
Do you think the school respectfully asks you to look at their practice schedule? Or do they tell the girls that day that their group has practice, so don’t even think of helping anyone else that month, because maybe the school will say you are needed.
I really believe the schools have many good intentions.
But why can’t there ever be a heard voice from the parents or students?
(of course, there is no forum to do so, less you be branded as the complainer parent, not as a representation of what e/o is thinking…)
Please dont take this as bashing, but do please ponder for a moment if you think that our schools should come out of the black and white thinking and recognize the importance of other things in life besides school….
thank you
Limud Torah baLaylos is part of Torah Chinuch and should be marketed this way from day one. Torah haKedosha is not “schoolwork”, “homework”, or any other secular term. As a Rebbi of 39 years, this is how I explain my “Home Chazarah Sheet” to my parents and first graders. I suggest that they limit it to 10 minutes just for the Chinuch value and Zechus of learning Yom vaLayla, and I list each day’s Pesukim and word list as a framework of something well-taught so the boy can feel success (the Pesukim and words “assigned” had been learned in class for a week in advance!). I ask to be notified if the boy has difficulty so I can adjust my teaching accordingly. Home Keriah practice is quite essential; I present it as an incentive program with unpaced achievement rewards. Quite often, parents tell me their sons want to learn more!
In all honesty, l started out with the standard “Rebbi schoolteacher” approach in my early years and grew into this way of thinking as time, learning and experience built up. There should be accountability – but Torah priorities must be maintained.
Hatzlacha Raba v’Kol Tuv!