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"Homework Hell" just struck a very raw nerve in me. Thanks heavens my three children have been pretty good about, and at, doing their homework.
My 10 year-old nephew, who is a bright and kind child, has the attention span of a flea. Each evening he comes home from his upper-middle-class suburban school with three hours' worth of homework, which consumes the entire evening.
I thought my sister was kidding, until the evening I dropped by, unannounced, around suppertime. As my sister slaved in the kitchen to finish preparing a meal, my nephew was chained to the kitchen table, doing inane spelling and math worksheets. I spent the next four hours giving my sister some parenting backup (my brother-in-law often works evenings) and helping nephew get through his worksheets.
When Sister complained that there is too much to do in a night, Teacher responded, "have him do what he can." Except, the next night includes all the new day's materials, along with the uncompleted worksheets from the previous evening. By the weekend, the child had an accumulated 16 hours' worth of uncompleted worksheets!
In the immortal words of my mother, what the kid really needed to do was go outside and "get the stinks blowed off." Five hours of pushing papers after seven hours strapped to a desk is not what education should be about.
