Did you guys have 4-6 hours of homework every night 7 days a week? Maybe less some nights, but still... I mean it's almost midnight here, and my daughter is still trying to complete her homework. She's been home since 5:45, had time off for dinner & a snack. WTF is wrong with this picture? She's 13!!!
My sister-in-law mailed this article to me, and I found it online to pass along:
From the Wall Street Journal 10/21/07 by Jeff Opdyke
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119283763964265526.html?mod=pj_main_hs_coll
It's official: Parents hated homework as kids, and now they hate their kids' homework.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the ridiculous amount of homework my son has these days -- and the toll it is taking on our family time.
My inbox has since filled up with more than 1,000 emails from parents, teachers, principals and guidance counselors who unleashed a cumulative "thank you."
* * *
Many parents told of the emotional toll homework was taking on their kids. They spoke of crying fits, angry outbursts, frustration. And worse.
Lydia Hulka, in Huntington Beach, Calif., says her two daughters can't even recuperate over holidays because of the "piles of projects and homework." She has talked to school counselors and teachers in both middle school and high school about the stresses her daughters are experiencing, "and I was sent twice to see a psychiatrist to put [them] on pills. When I look at my childhood, I actually had time to play. When I compare it to the life of my children, I feel helpless and sorry for them. Society does more harm to our kids with this overload."
"Is there something we can do as parents," Ms. Hulka asks, "to stop this insanity?"
Christina Wester, in Dallas, thinks there is: She recently started home-schooling her son, in part because she felt his school was giving too much homework. All schools care about, she says, "is the test score that maintains their 'blue ribbon' status or ensures the funding they need." And yet, she says, the "test scores are really meaningless."
What is meaningful, she says, is "free time after school playing outside, family dinners free from stress and pressure, lazy Saturday mornings filled with tickle fights, cartoons and a big pancake breakfast, Sunday evenings spent relaxing rather than dreading school or cramming for a test."
* * *
Jobie Brooks, in Arroyo Grande, Calif., says her two girls (in eighth and ninth grade) work four to seven hours a night, six to seven nights a week on homework.
"There's barely time for dinner," Ms. Brooks says, "and no quality family time with our children that isn't controlled by upcoming tests and papers due." Homework also has interfered with church, vacation, movies and visits from friends and family. "The weekends are so jammed with studying and writing," Ms. Brooks says, "that we've reached a point where we've actually told our girls not to worry if they don't get that almighty A."
Ms. Brooks says she has told teachers and school-board officials that the stress level on kids is "absolutely unacceptable." But her complaints were dismissed. "Teachers," she has concluded, "seem to be relying on homework to do the teaching."
* * *
Tara Woods, in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., says she and her husband are "big believers in formal education," but that the amount of homework was so absurd that she decided her son did not need to do his homework any more.
As long as he knew the material, "I was fine, and he could skip the assignment," she says. "If he messed up on a test, but knew the material, I was fine. I told him no one ever was going to care what grade he got on a second-grade math test, and I made it clear that as his parent, I was making the decision to override the teachers because I believe the school system has some fundamental problems."
Ms. Woods told her son's teacher of her decision as well. "If you maintain regular communication with a teacher, explaining that you are on top of your child's progress and that the stress is too much, most teachers will be OK with it," she says. "The ones who aren't should be ignored anyway."
Still, Ms. Woods says, her son is leaving his school at the end of the year for a local magnet school, "because the entire education is geared toward standardized tests. The school system has become bent and warped, and we, as parents, have to take a stand."
* * *
The last word goes to a reader in the Southwest, who says that as she drove to school one recent morning she kept thinking "I hate school." The thing is: She's the school's guidance counselor.
"I've sat with kids who are in migraine mode or taking pills for stomach problems they never had before, sobbing and in existential crisis," she says. "I have had more than a few eighth-graders tell me that their lives are meaningless, that all they do is go to school, go home and do homework, and come back the next day to do it all again."
She says her school created a detention program for kids who are late turning in their homework. A few weeks ago, a parent forgot to pick up a child in detention and the sixth-grade girl began the two-mile trek home in 105-degree heat. "She was on the verge of passing out when I picked her up" and took her home, this reader says.
"When I told the teachers the next day that they should be more careful about making sure parents pick up their kids...one teacher said, 'Then she should do her homework on time.' "
So, she says, "I also hate school. Unfortunately for me, I love children. And so I'm here."