Letters to the Editor
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Homework Hell
I've got three kids - ages 13, 9, & 5 and Ayelet is right on the money. First, these kids are in school from 8:30-3:00 5 days a week. I work five days a week from 8:30 -4:30 unless I am in a crunch period and need to work longer. Usually when I get home I am not in the mood to start a second shift of magazine work. Why should my nine-year-old?
My five-year-old brought home coloring pages that the teacher had written "Handed in Late" in bold red marker. Can you hand in coloring late? When I asked him about it he said "but she told us not to go fast, she said to take our time." Poor kid, he believed what she told him.
I do not know how old the angry letter writers are or where they went to school. But I can tell you this: My husband went to the crappiest public schools in rural Colorado in the 1960s - in good weather they hiked after lunch from @ 1-3. Evidently the teachers were finished for the day around 12:30. I have no memory of doing any substantial homework until 7th grade. My husband has a PhD from an ivy leagaue unviersity and is a professor of history. I have an undergrad degree from a good private college and edit a magazine. Our futures were not compromised by playing after school. Our parents never even checked our homework or even knew what we were supposed to be doing and both of us appear to have good work habits. Our experiences are not unique. On the contrary this was public school in the 1960s and 1970s at least in eastern Penn. and Colorado. Futures were not destroyed by lack of homework.
Most of my kids' homework is make work. We did not have this. They are being killed by work sheets. Every year we ask the teachers how long homework should take and every year they say 15-20 minutes a day. And then they promptly assign an hour's worth of work for my grade schoolers. Forget my 7th grader. She and her friends work on average (according to discussions with their moms) @ 5 hours a night. How many of the nasty letter writers work 11-hour days five days a week.
It also presupposes that children have no lives other than school - no family obligations, no chores, no church obligations, no hobbies.
That the U.S. is lagging behind in science and engineering is not because kids are shirking their work or are being coddled by yuppie parents.