Letters to the Editor
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homework
hmmm,,.... I do indeed think there is pain and suffering in homework. the problem is, literacy takes time and effort. lots of hw is mindless. lately, i started escaping out of that mindlessness by going beyond the hw, and even spending more time on it. the rewards later in life are worth it. and, I would imagine that the soccer game could take 3+ hours between transportation and play. the article failed to state why soccer is worth the time. i'm a graduate student and am finally starting to realize that a 4 credit class takes 8+ hours of study outside of class.
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homework
i see many kids now getting off school buses with huge backpacks full of books. i wonder why manytimes this is so. this article i feel was correct in its statements of frustration. the other letters, especially by teachers and their homework load made me laugh. all worked out in their lesson plans and with times attached. what a grim business school has become.
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Homework
To the writer appalled with one hour of homework per night: One hour of homework is appropriate (even for a seven year old). You want your child (I'm sure) to do well in school and compete effectively with other kids as he moves into higher grades. Kids these days need to learn how to focus and complete homework efficiently. Once in junior high and then high school, the homework burden will expand to two to four hours per night (sometimes more). This homework must be squeezed in among sports and other activities in which a child must participate to have a hope of entering a college of his/her choice. My tenth grader leaves home at 7 am, attends classes until about 3 pm, sits in the school library and does homework from about 3:15 to about 5:30, goes to water polo practice at 5:40, gets home at about 8:30, eats dinner, completes his homework, and is in bed by no later than 10. My seventh grader similarly has about two - three hours of homework he completes every night, while still attending various activities for 1 - 2 hours per day. I don't have over acheiving kids. These schedules are necessary to achieve the basics to compete with other kids for a spot in a California public university (a UC). This type of performance is quite normal for kids now, and utterly belies the common misinformation campaign asserting that our schools and kids are going down the tubes. You and your son need to work together to make homework a part of everyday life that you both can tolerate -- it simply will not go away, it will only get worse.
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Mandated homework
I read this article with a lot of interest because I am a high school social studies teacher in the Chicago Public Schools system. CPS requires that teachers give homework every night, and theoretically we do, since we must indicate the assignments in our lesson plans, which are submitted to both the department chair and the Board on a weekly basis.
However, many of us do not actually give homework every night, maybe only three nights a week. For one thing, most of us high school teachers have around 150 students each. I already work a 10-hour day (and only get paid for 6.25 hours). It would be even longer if I had to grade about 600 assignments every week. I also have to take into consideration that, unlike Ms. Waldman, most of my students' parents do not help them with their homework because they don't have the skills or they are working and therefore not available. Therefore, the homework has to be such that the student can complete it on his or her own without assistance. So, what do I do in this situation? I'll give the students the class time to do the assignment, making it due at the end of the period. Or I'll give them a reading assignment, with the only related work being that they identify the main ideas of the reading and write a short paragraph summarizing it, to be sure they understood what they read. If they don't, we then go over it again, together, in class. Or I'll give them a short, 15 minutes at most, reinforcement assignment. Of course, I do give them tests and quizzes, which they must take more time to study for, and longer-term projects, but overall I try to keep the homework assignments short.
And by the way, my mother rarely helped me with my homework, not because she didn't want to, but because she didn't have the time as she was a single mom who worked two jobs. I managed to get it all done on my own and still have time to do the things I wanted to do. I complained about homework, but her attitude was that it was a fact of life, and sometimes we have to do things that we don't want to do, so I should just stop whining about it and get it done. It didn't stop me from wanting to learn, and it certainly taught me responsibility. Perhaps Ms. Waldman should stop whining about her kids' homework and stop helping them with it except to check to make sure they actually did it. She would be helping them more in this way.
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You've got to be kidding me
I realize that in America we have this loving infatuation with the notion that childhood should be spent doing almost nothing but having fun. I have to point out that this type of attitude in the last twenty years has produced children that are completely unprepared for the real world. I should know I'm 23 years old I've gone to school with them. American students are coming in dead last in education throughout the industrial world. Part of the reason is indeed our education system, the other half of the equation is the students and the parents. You may think that your an hour a day "being bored" or "shooting hoops" is important but in Europe, India, and China there are parents who make sure that homework gets done. And when your children and theirs grow up, statistically speaking, their's will be smarter, harder working, and willing to work for far less. As a future employer which would you pick?