2023-06-07 14:45:46
Last days of school for Italian students. Millions of kids, except for those who still have to face the test of exams, will begin the summer break from next week. But not sitting among the desks for a couple of months for many of them may not be the equivalent of totally disconnecting from the books. Because, punctual as every year, homework for the holidays is around the corner, an extension of the study activity that will carry them through to the next school year. And punctually the dilemma also arises: is it right or not to give books to fill in and deliveries to be fulfilled during the summer? For the pediatrician Italo Farnetani the answer is “no, without a shadow of a doubt”. His message is: free time is as useful as books.
The expert has made it a real ‘crusade’: “I have been fighting against homework for the holidays for twenty years now. They are useless and harmful”, he explains to time.news Salute. “I must say that there has been progress because a considerable debate has been fueled in this regard and over the years many have taken positions less favorable to summer study. I recall, for example, the message launched in 2013 by the then Minister of Education Maria Chiara Carrozza” , which suggested less homework for the holidays and more reading and visits to art cities.
Farnetani, full professor of Pediatrics at the Ludes-United Campus of Malta University, delves into “the valid reasons” for banning homework for the holidays. “First of all, it should be clarified that a long period of interruption from normal activity is not dictated by the fact that teachers need ‘long holidays’, but it was a way to ensure that pupils, i.e. children and adolescents, could count on a rest period which is useful not only to break the stress of learning (an activity that requires considerable effort from the point of view of reasoning), but also to get to know the external environment better. commitments posed by education leave little room for pause. A period of free time in the summer allows you to explore the environment more, get to know it – and therefore learn new things – and also dedicate yourself to some extra-curricular activities”.
Another point highlighted by Farnetani: “Some teachers argue that an interruption of a few months can make people forget what they have learned. But – objects the pediatrician – school notions are acquired through the mechanism of ‘long-term memory’ and the name already indicates the duration of the forfeited concepts. Among other things, the ‘lessons’ learned during childhood and adolescence are the most lasting, they remain for life”. There is also an economic factor that plays against homework for the holidays, the expert points out. “We remind you that the purchase of holiday books is a considerable commitment for families and, especially in this period of dizzying increases in all costs, with many lower-income households in difficulty, it is not really the case to charge other expenses “.
Finally, there is a problem of the wrong approach to holiday homework. “In the majority of cases – he warns – they are carried out immediately, as soon as school is over to archive them by June at the latest, so parents and pupils have ‘taken their minds off’. Or, at the other extreme, there are those who continue to do them throughout the summer, taking them with you even on vacation and doing them listlessly. A way, the latter, which risks being harmful because it gets used to a lack of concentration and incisiveness of the performance. Instead of dedicating oneself to homework for the holidays – concludes the pediatrician – I recommend parents to have their children attend swimming lessons, possibly on the beach, for those who go to the sea, with authorized personnel. And in general my suggestion is: get your children to do as much physical activity as possible, even by simply taking them on a bicycle. summer is the best choice to fight a sedentary life, which causes overweight, obesity and metabolic diseases”.
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