Homework strike called for Spanish schoolchildren

A parents' pressure group in Spain has called on schoolteachers not to give any weekend homework to their students during the month of November and encouraged students who are given homework not to do it in what is effectively the first "homework strike" in Spain.

The initiative by the Confederation of Associations of Parents of Students (CEAPA) is part of the "No to homework" campaign launched in October which aims to draw attention to what they consider "excessive time" that students spend studying at home.

CEAPA said their objective is for parents and children to be able to spend more quality time together.

"We want to give priority to family activities and if the teachers refuse to support it, then they are responsible for invading time that doesn't belong to them," CEAPA president Jose Luis Pazos commented in the Spanish press on Wednesday.

Pazos said homework was an "invasion of family life and in the right of parents to determine how their children are educated."

He said he was "optimistic" over the strike, adding that CEAPA had received many letters of support.

"We hope to go far because when we talk about homework, we are also talking about the model of education in our country," explained Pazos, who used Finland and France as examples of countries which have an education system without homework.

The campaign faces the opposition of teaching union ANPE, which believes the strike "questions the work of teachers and attacks the pedagogical and organizational independence of schools."

The Catholic parents association (CONCAPA) has also criticized the strike, saying it is "incredible" that parents should encourage their children to not do their homework. Endit