Letters to the Editor
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Speak Up
I am the mother of two boys who are in first and third grade. This academic year I cut back on my already part time job and their after school programming in order to be around more to supervise homework. Working for me is not a luxury item. To compensate for the loss in pay we have stopped eating out (not even Friendly's), cancelled cable and Netflix and any activites that cost money.
I am now home 4 days a week right after the bus arrives. Both of my sons are having a tough time learning to read. I find practice is helping them so, we do a combination of homework and mom assigned work. I split their work between before and after school with the goal being half an hour of work a day.
At my fall conference with my first grader's teacher, I talked to her about the additional work we were doing at home. She wanted us to add reading early reader books to our schedule. I made it politely clear to the teacher that we were already spending about half an hour a day and that I would be happy to take her suggestion, but was not willing to add to the total work load. I had her choose one of the regular tasks to cut and replace with her suggestion. I figured she was the ceritified teacher so she should know best what work should be done, but that I am the parent and I get to decide how much.
One of the strongest points I took from the article was to SPEAK UP. When Ayelet went to the teacher and said that the homework took to long, the teacher told her how many minutes should be spent and that her child could then stop (assumedly unpenalized). It is unfair to expect a child to be able to speak up for themself to a teacher. That is your job as a parent. When the homework is too much, call or email the teacher and talk to them! Be a grownup and stick up for your child. If necessary call a meeting with the teacher and principle.
Even with all this, about twice a week my older son breaks down in tears while trying to do his homework. He is exhausted and overwhelmed by the many tasks expected of him. Typically I have us stop, have a snack and a rest and then discuss what he needs to do and return to his work.
Part of my son's difficulty is that everything is reading based. He excels in math, but is weak in reading. All of his math work is word problems. Once the actual math is teased out of them, it is below his level. In second grade his math homework was taking forever, not because of the simple addition in it, but because he couldn't read the problems. I called his teacher and explained the problem. Her instructions were that math homework was for the math, so I should read the problems to him. Again, talking to the teacher was a big help in solving the problem.
Now I am off to call my younger son's reading teacher about a problem we are having with a new book. Lucky her :)
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International Perspective: Kids in Korea
I work at an "academy" in Korea. There are thousands of these schools in Seoul, and each afternoon, brightly coloured buses trundle through the streets carrying children to their lessons in English, Math, Chinese, Taekwondo, etc. The "academies" are open until 10 or 10:30, and many children attend classes that run 3 times per week. Often a child will attend more than one academy. Add to this the crushing homework load assigned by both school AND the academy, plus the fact that the kids go to school on Saturday, and you have some genuinely exhausted students.
It's depressing to be in this "industry" (and believe me, it's about pleasing anxious moms and dads with pleasant reports and inflated grades, not about genuine education) and I intend to make my exit soon. Memorizing long lists of English words or Chinese characters by rote is mind-numbing work for these kids. Most parents aren't satisfied by anything less than a 90% score. Academies publish the marks and ranks of each student, visible to parents and children alike.
In my position, it's hard to find too much sympathy for children who are given creative (albeit silly ) assignments and have their parents to work alongside them for only an hour a night. I doubt that my Korean students are learning critical thinking or genuine communication skills in their long evenings, but I'm certain they know how to put their nose to the grindstone. They astonish me with their dedication and diligence.
North American culture does not accomodate this sort of ruthless self-sacrifice, but I think it would be wise to tolerate the dreaded "homework hour" for the sake of future viability.