It is a job for the mother to compel her child to sit down and do the homework. It is equivalent to punishment. There are schools which give no homework. They help children to learn reading at the age of 4 or even 3. Such a child, as soon as she wakes up, takes a book and starts reading. All day long that child is found reading. The job of the parent is to continue to supply books. This is not only true in learning. Teach workers the right skill of doing their work, and they won't go home until their work is perfectly done.
In a school where rote memory was insisted upon, writing composition was a punishment. In a year the students used to write twelve compositions of half a page each. Then they were taught to write English. The whole atmosphere changed. Every boy was anxious to write. That year they all wrote 45 compositions of 1½ pages. About ten of them started summarising retold stories. Most of them did so with ten or fifteen books. Two boys each wrote 600 pages summarising 52 retold stories. Work has a spirit in it. To evoke that will give great results. The British Cabinet, in the First World War, was afraid of not getting enough soldiers and pleaded for conscription. A few members differed and relied on the patriotism of the population. It turned out that before conscription had been laid down as law, a greater number of youth had enlisted in the army.
Management believes in authority. Exercise of authority does work. There is an alternative method, which is better. Release the enthusiasm of the worker. Then authority will be superfluous. Train the enthusiasm into a skill. In that case, no supervision will be necessary at all. Each will be conscious of his own skill. In such an atmosphere it is not easy to make the worker leave the factory at the closing hour. During the Second World War it happened in England. Workers came to the shift half an hour early, refused to quit when the shift was over. It is the authority of work which is far better than the authority of the management. There is something even greater than the work. It is the Spirit of the work.