Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
The homework diary is the thinnest book in a Class 3 bag, and in my twelve years of teaching it has caused more trouble than all the others put together. Every evening it carries home a worksheet, a page of sums, sometimes a project on the solar system that no eight-year-old could finish alone. Every morning it comes back with the answers filled in, often in handwriting that is clearly not the child’s.
So I understand the schools that have dropped homework for their junior classes. Children of seven or eight already spend six hours a day at school. Research on homework for young children is mixed, and most of the gains seem to come later, in the senior classes. A tired child copying sums at nine at night is not learning arithmetic. Much of what we send home only keeps the pencil moving.
Yet I would not stop it altogether. Some things grow only with a little practice every day, and reading is the clearest of them. A child who reads aloud for ten minutes each evening comes back after the winter break a different reader. For children whose homes have few books, the school bag may be the only place a story comes from.
What needs to go is the heap of worksheets, not the habit. This year my class takes home one short task a night, and on Fridays nothing at all. Last Friday a boy asked if he could take a storybook home anyway. I let him, and did not write it in the diary.
The phrase ‘keeps the pencil moving’, as used in the passage, refers to work that
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → makes children look busy but teaches them very little
Work that keeps the pencil moving keeps a child writing, but the child does not really learn from it.
- The sentence just before shows this. “A tired child copying sums at nine at night is not learning arithmetic.”
- The word “only” matters too. Such work does nothing more than keep the hand busy.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: helps children learn to write faster and more neatly — Incorrect. Misread: This takes the pencil too literally. The writer is not talking about handwriting at all.
Option 2: trains children to finish their tasks before bedtime — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage mentions a child working “at nine at night”. It never says homework teaches children to finish on time.
Option 4: gives children daily practice in a skill they need — Incorrect. Contradicted: This is what the writer says of reading, the homework worth keeping. The pencil phrase describes the work that should go.