Right here in my own backyard. You have to read these snippets to understand just how selfish and/or over-protective some of the people in Seattle are.
Too much homework can be harmful, critics assert
Is homework a waste of time?For years, students have whined that their book reports, math problems and science projects were pointless. Now, several authors, and even some parents, agree that homework isn’t worth much, at least for early grade-schoolers.“Homework generally is worthless. It’s all pain and no gain,” said Alfie Kohn, author of “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing.” “No study has ever demonstrated any academic benefit to doing homework before high school.”
Â
Â
Tough tittes, boys and girls. If you haven’t the time to devote to parenting, maybe thou were not ready to become one? I can guarantee that a goodly number of these parents are only complaining because their “Me” time has to be spent on little Johnny and Suzie.
“How am I supposed to pay attention to Desperate Housewives when Billy keeps asking me math questions?”
But it gets worse
This fall second-grader Julian Forester has had plenty of homework, causing nothing but frustration inside his family’s Ballard home.
Many evenings Julian and his mother, Anne, sat down at 5:30 to tackle two sheets of work and finished at 7. The district’s guidelines say Julian shouldn’t have more than 10 minutes of homework a night.
The ordeal led to tears, eye rubbing and ultimately one exhausted 7-year-old.
“It was shocking how he was just so frustrated,” Forester said. “He was being so difficult, and he’s not a difficult child.”
So Forester pushed back. After a friend sent Julian’s Loyal Heights Elementary teacher an e-mail complaining about the work, Forester did the same, and the teacher responded. Now after Julian spends 15 minutes on one worksheet he can stop, as long as he has a note.
Fifteen minutes and then Mommy can excuse little Julian from hurting his wittle brain. What kind of lesson does she think this teaches the kid? Oh, that’s right, she’s not thinking, at least not about why baby Julian became a whining, co-dependant mama’s boy at age 30 when his boss asks him to work a little overtime at the deli-mart. Too bad Julian hadn’t learned to put enough effort forward to finish college.
It’s two damn sheets of either spelling or simple math exercises! How hard can it be? I don’t care that he’s seven. Finishing an assignment outside of instructor supervision is a scale model of self-governance. It teaches the student that there are rewards for doing what is right instead of what is easy.
Does anyone want to take me up on the bet that in ten years, mommy here will be complaining that Jules isn’t learning anything?
I think less homework would be fine if the time saved were spent with the parents, doing things. If the child does not play actively (not gameboy xbox etc) and only watches more TV, then the lack of homework is a bad thing. Before Sputnik (for all you young’uns, that happened in 1957) and the satellite and missle gaps, elementary and middle school children did not do as much homework as now. Reading scores were up then, as were math scores.
Besides the homework now is merely another opportunity for indoctrination.
90 minutes to tackle two sheets of second-grade math homework? There’s got to be something else wrong here besides “there’s too much homework”.
There’s got to be something else wrong here besides “there’s too much homeworkâ€.
The problem is that true parenting just isn’t much of a popular sport anymore!
Great post!
At some time market forces will kick in when colleges stop accepting kids that “graduate” from certain school districts. Too much effort and expense in remedial education just to get them up to the level of the rest of their entering class.
The problem with the math sheet is that the parent is a product of the same “education system”; ie. she can’t add “1+1 and get “2” either…