Both my children – the first grader and the third grader – have one assignment per school night, plus they are expected to read 20-30 minutes. (Aside to Maggie: neither has a reading log.) The reading is enjoyable but the homework! the homework! It sucks.
Now, I do believe my third-grader's homework is reasonable. He can't spell to save his life, so he needs to work on it every night – but he won't do it without a fight, nor without a substantial amount of patience on my part. (Once in desperation I told him I'd pay him if he did his homework without argument. He said, "Mom, it doesn't pencil out." Pencil out. I taught him that idiom. I just love having the tables turned on me.)
My first-grader's homework, on the other hand, strikes me as busy work. I mean, it is busy work; I think that's the point. I think she's being taught to do homework. And I am being taught to help her with it. Unfortunately the teacher is so particular that even when I review it, it gets sent back as incorrect or incomplete. I told my husband that she'll fail first grade unless he – a much more detail-oriented person – helps her out instead.
Sigh.
I talked to my dad about this yesterday, and he said exactly what I tell my own children: Get over it. Every kid in America has to do homework, and every parent in America has to supervise it.
I sympathize with my son. I want to rage, "But WHY? It's STUPID!"
Because.
Just because.
Thanks for listening. I feel better now.
6 comments:
I hate it too. Very grateful that my kids' crunchy Montessori school gives minimal HW. But we do have the dreaded reading log!
Ulgh. Homework is a stupid invention. And the reading log is even stupider.
other than the stupid log, my kid's homework is pretty benign - a math problem or two, or a sheet of sentences to mark up.
When my son Boy in Black was in first grade, he had homework every night. He never did it. When I went to a parent-teacher conference, the teacher said I should help him with the homework. That didn't make sense to me because I knew that the kid was completely capable of doing the homework himself. He was academically gifted and just didn't see the point in doing busy work. I wasn't going to force him to do busy work since I agreed that it was pointless. So he pretty much never handed in homework -- but got pretty good grades because he did great on tests. To be honest, I didn't care what kind of grades he got anyhow -- I mean this was just first grade.
I didn't want to become the person in charge of Boy in Black's homework. I wanted him to be self-motivated. So whenever he chose not to do work (and that happened fairly often throughout his school years), I just shrugged, figuring it was his decision. He was a kid who had no use for busy work, but would spend all kinds of time and energy on projects that were worthwhile.
I had the same issue when he was in seventh grade and I was supposed to sign his "assignment" book every week. That seemed ridiculous to me. I told him that I wasn't in charge of his assignments -- he was. So I just went through and signed every week for the whole year right at the beginning of the school year.
Refusing to do busy work didn't seem to hurt Boy in Black. He graduated valedictorian from high school and is currently in a Physics PhD program.
I don't know if my parenting methods (that is, refusing to be in charge of my kids' homework) would work on all children or in all schools -- but it seemed to work out okay for my four.
I'd just like to salute jo(e).
Also, sixth grade homework? sucks really hard. And the teachers do not seem to communicate with each other about how much each of them are assigning.
Good lord, Magpie's kid's reading log is the stupidest thing I've seen in over 10 years of reading logs. I would forever mock the teacher that came up with "Good readers record how many minutes and how many pages they read each day and each night to keep track of their reading stamina and volume."
Because I'm a good reader - and one of my kids is a good reader - and the whole recording in minutia sounds like someone has a little OCD. You know, where the rituals are more important than the process.
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