Maybe the lesson that life is pain is not such a bad idea?

There is so much wrong with the education system in the U.S. I hardly know where to begin. At least Ms. Waldman's children are doing homework and finding out that learning means work. This is better than many other places. For example, one of my nephews endured a few months of the Oakland (CA) Public School system. There a D+ was the only socially acceptable grade and the other children would accuse any who did better of "trying to be Asian." The practice of "social promotion" -- the passing of students into the next grade regardless of whether they did any homework or passed any tests -- has created a huge number of people who have no concept of school as anything other than a parking lot for their bodies. Surveys of college freshman have uncovered an epidemic of cheating and plagiarism. Oh, and we have schools graduating students who can not read.

Salon could run stories on the demise of public education in the U.S. The problems occur across state boundaries and have far reaching implications. But instead we read about yet another middle-class parent complaining about how difficult the middle-class life has become. The U.S. has droves of children not receiving anything even pretending to be an education. At least when they grow up Waldman's children will likely qualify to perform jobs that pay well enough for them to live.

I sympathize with Waldman's frustrating situation, but as a fifth-grade teacher, I'd like to share a possible alternative telling:

Three weeks ago, I told students all about our new history assignment. They were going to research the Iroquois, write a report, and also demonstrate their knowledge artistically -- with a poster, a painting, a craft, a dance, a musical performance, or any other attempt at experiencing the culture for themselves through a medium that makes sense to them.

I took the kids to the library. I guided them through making notecards and outlining their report. Every day in school, I reminded them that they should also be developing their artistic project. I asked them to pick something they found exciting and, especially, something they could do by themselves. I encouraged them to come talk to me if they were having a hard time.

The projects turned out great: Danny's going to play an Iroquois folk song on his recorder, and Kareem went to the museum and painted what he saw there, and Sediqa learned an Iroquois poem by heart, in Iroquois and in English.

But little Sophie, bless her heart -- she never writes down her homework, and she never does her work on her own. She finished the report, which we mostly wrote in class, and when I asked her if she had an idea for her artistic project, she told me about the cradleboard, which sounded fine. Then she forgot all about it.

And, worst of all, her mom leapt to the rescue -- which means that I'll never know she had a problem, and she'll never know she had a problem, and Mom will continue to earn good grades and seethe. Wouldn't it be nice if Sophie came in without her project, and had to struggle to do it late, and got a lower grade this quarter, and learned a not-too-serious but still-helpful life lesson about starting projects early, when they can be fun? I promise, it won't keep her out of Harvard.

This article is typical of the constant stream of complaints coming from students and parents that is constantly working to undermine education in America. Kids will always complain about homework and school work in general. It is not in most kids' nature to enjoy sitting down and doing homework. I remember hating homework at that age and fighting it every step of the way. The difference for me was that instead of enabling my whining by agreeing with me and lending credence to my argument that I shouldn't have to do 10 spelling words a week, my parents just told me to suck it up and deal. Which is the better lesson for kids? That they should constantly complain and try to avoid doing hard work by arguing or that they should do it because their education is paramount and worth the hard work it takes to get it?

As an educator, I have seen that with many of the older students I teach, any amount of homework/classwork is too much. Any task more difficult than a multiple-choice worksheet is considered cruel and unusual (God forbid they have to write an essay). This attitude, once again, is to be expected. Kids are kids. But when parents take the kids' side and start lobbying against spending time and effort on education, everyone suffers. The kids' standards for work are lowered, the educators lower their standards to accommodate parents, and the parents end up with whiny, lazy and willfully ignorant children.

The author should keep in mind that the workload for US students is relatively low compared with workloads for students in other countries. Not to mention that many kids don't even get the privilege of being educated at all and instead pass their days helping earn the family's living. Parents in this country need to realize that hard work and education is what got this country where it is and that abandoning that by lowering standards and reducing workloads to accommodate the puling of parents and students will only further erode the quality of American schools.

Ayelet Waldman's article on her children's homework reminds me of why I am generally opposed to it.

Throughout school, I often received D's and F's for classes even though I often did A and B work on tests. Why? Because I wouldn't do homework.

I always felt it was an intrusion into families' and children's personal lives. Based on my own experience and what I see my nieces doing today, I could say it is quite easy and possible for a minor child to spend more than 40 hours each week between school and homework. Does that leave any time or energy for recreation or household chores?

With the current brouhaha over childhood obesity has anyone considered that homework might be a contributing factor? Time spend going over something at home that should have been taught in class could be spent running, jumping rope, shooting hoops, swimming, bicycling, playing in organized sports, etc.

And, as was pointed out in the book, "The End of Homework," assigning homework gets the teachers out of the job of teaching and allows them to dump that job onto the parents. Ayelet Waldman's article exactly describes that situation.

This dumping work onto parents explains why lower-income students generally don't do as well as those from upper-income families. It's hard to learn your reading, writing and 'rithmatic when the teacher doesn't do her job and the parents are too busy working overtime just to keep a roof over the kids' heads to try to teach the kids what they should be learning in school. A school which is supported by the tax dollars of those same overworked parents.

Several years ago, I read an article about the homework policies of the Piscattaway, N.J. school district. Under their guidelines, teachers were not only limited in the amount of homework they can assign, but they couldn't hold it against students if they didn't do it.

Doing homework would only count as extra credit when report cards came out. A student who did well on their in-class work would receive a grade based on that work.

But until such a system becomes the rule for all school systems, the concept of "unschooling" described in a recent Salon.com article is looking a lot like what I will do when I have children.