Are Homework and Testing Measuring Up? - Jessica Joelle Alexander

When I talked to my Danish husband about getting grades when I was in kindergarten, he almost fell off the bed. “What in the world did you get grades for?”

We would discuss our childhoods at length and I remember thinking that my poor husband must have been neglected. Apparently he just played a lot, he didn’t start school until he was 7 and grades were not important until he was much older. I felt sorry for him that no one had taken a more active role in his academic development and just let him play so frivolously as a child. I assumed his incredible sense of self-confidence, intelligence and general positive nature was an anomaly for Denmark.

Many years, two children and four countries later, and I have a much deeper understanding of what different parenting models look like in other cultures. And I can honestly say that I now have a very different opinion.

You see, after my daughter was born a strange thing happened. Instead of referring to all the parenting books I had read, I began deferring to my Danish family and friends for advice on anything from breastfeeding to education to language choice, and I really liked what I heard.

This continued well after my son was born until I became a total convert to the Danish Way of Parenting.

So I was even more reassured when I read that Denmark had been voted as one of the happiest countries in the world for over 40 years in a row. This was news to me but it suddenly all made sense. The Danish parenting philosophy is based on children needing to be children and playing. The goal for children is not to be measured but to be able to get along, be empathic and enjoy the learning and creativity that comes through playing.

Once I finally got over my need to have measurable proof that the Danish way was working, I relaxed and stopped feeling like a bad parent.

But what better measure is there than topping the world happiness reports for more than 40 years in a row I wondered? As an American, I started to wonder why this philosophy hadn’t caught on more considering we have the pursuit of happiness built into our own Declaration of Independence and mountains of books devoted to obtaining it. Why were we going in such an opposite direction with parenting and education?

One of the main reasons free play has decreased in America, is partly because we can’t measure it’s worth. And if we can’t measure it, we don’t believe it is doing anything. We feel lazy or like we aren’t doing enough. How can we prove our kids are learning or developing well without a measure? So we test and we grade and we strip more and more recess from kids’ schooling. We replace play with more homework, tutors and adult led activities to provide a competitive edge. We measure the teachers who have to measure the kids who have to stress the parents to push them to perform and measure up.

But then it struck me. Has anyone ever measured all this measuring? Do we have any proof that measuring even works in raising well adjusted happy kids? It seems like a valid question worth asking as we see rising anxiety levels across the board and kids as young as 4 being subjected to standardized testing.

Research is coming out left, right and center that homework isn’t necessary, that testing is harming kids and that no matter how early a child reads, it evens out eventually. The only difference is that the kids who are pushed to read earlier will get higher test scores along with higher levels of anxiety.

Where are the studies that assure us that more grading and more testing for younger and younger children is actually doing any good for the wellbeing of society?

If we can’t look the country with 40 years of happiness as a measurement for success than what about the country that is a global leader in education? Who are they and what are they doing we might learn from?

Oh, that’s Finland, Denmark’s northern Scandinavian neighbor with an extremely similar parenting and education model to the Danish one. They have a great respect for free play, they start school at age 7 and “teaching to the test” or measuring children, as we know it, doesn’t exist.

I can’t help but wonder why we aren’t asking why all of these measures aren’t adding up?