Last week I had an interesting discussion with my sister about her daughter's school. My niece is attending a Classical Academy in Colorado Springs. It's a charter school and Colorado Springs seems to have a lot of them lately. My sister shared some of her frustrations with me about the school. One of those was the amount of homework given to her daughter, who is only in fifth grade. Now, my niece is a hard worker and is also intelligent. If she's struggling with the hours of homework, can you imagine what the average kid is dealing with on a daily basis? I was talking with a friend at church who is a public school teacher who also teaches fifth grade. She was telling me about the long hours some grade school kids put in every night doing homework. She, however, sounds like the exception, and doesn't give homework on the weekend. Now, I'm not saying homework is bad, but how much is needed for kids so young? I almost feel as if this is some kind of a response to all those Reader's Digest articles that talk about how dumb American kids are. I'm not saying we should lower our educational standards, but is piling on the homework the answer? Can't learning be accomplished without assigning three hours of homework? When do they have time to play or pursue other interests? When my sister, along with other parents, addressed the homework issue, one of the teachers said, "Yes, but how will they be ready for college?" I have a few responses for this. Number one, if you burden them too much now, isn't possible that they will want nothing to do with "higher education"? Again, I'm not saying that our children shouldn't be taught. I think it's important that they have a basic understanding in mathematics, English, science, etc. but it's just impossible for them to truly master all these areas. I also agree with the point my sister made, which is that not everyone is meant to be a scholar. We all have different gifts. I really don't think the guy at Jiffy Lube is a failure because he may not be able to quote Shakespeare. I hope he doesn't have a problem with me because I have a minimal understanding of how a car works. All this to say-ease off the homewok! So, maybe the Japanese kids do score better on test scores. They also have a higher suicide rate in their country.
"The fear of the Lord...That is wisdom." Job 28:28
4 comments:
This is Angela. I wanted to comment on this blog since we are encountering the very same frustrations here in Los Angeles. Our daughter is in 6th grade at a Catholic school. She does well but the amount of homework is ridiculous. There are nights when she is working until 10:00 pm. And this is not because she is fooling around. She is hard at work trying to meet deadlines, fulfill the stringent requirements her "junior high" teachers have set and "doing things the way they are told" even if another way might result in a correct answer anyway. There are projects on a regular basis. Most week ends are spent working on those since there is no time during the week for them. Another huge gripe I have is that tests do not come home. We receive a sheet of paper with a grade on it and are told that this is to prevent copying of tests and possible cheating for younger siblings at the school. The kids see the tests and are supposed to be able to relate the results to us at home. We can schedule a meeting with the teachers if we want to see the tests. I have done this on several occasions but it is time consuming and unnecessary. After school sports become a burden since any free time away from studies is stressful for everyone. My daughter loves her after school sports activities and I find myself sometimes discouraging her from attending practices because of the homework load. I admit this with sadness and shame. What is to be accomplished by this overload of academics? I fear that my bright, intelligent child will continue to "hate school" and possibly lose what should be a valuable and fun time in her higher education. It really upsets me and the other parents in our class. We stay in our school because we value the religion that is integrated into daily studies. Most of us hope to continue that into high school. We realize that there are only two years left in this school and so we "wait it out". We know that kids who have graduated from this school come back to say that high school is nowhere near as demanding as our school was. I look forward to this time and pray that it won't be too late to salvage my daughter's love of learning. I know this was long, but thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Ugh-Angela, talk about frustrating. Have you and the other parents thought of getting together and talking to the principal? I'm glad my blog gave you an opportunity to vent.
I wonder if some of this (as you hint) is the pendulum swinging way too far in the other direction in reaction to the accusation that our schools have been "dumbed-down." 1: I don't believe the accusation and 2: even if true, the response should NOT be to pile on homework. Sounds as if this is WAYYYY out of hand.
A group of us parents actually went to our school board last week with a carefully thought out paper that we signed, read, and presented with a very positive response. There was an immediate decrease in the amount of homework and the board thanked us several times for the manner in which we approached them. The school is new and probably going through some growing pains but we aren't sure we want to be a part of that next year. I do encourage speaking up to your principal and school board when you feel you aren't being heard. Other things will have to change as well for our daughter to return to this school next year. I find I am doing alomst a 180 degree turn and more concerned about extra-curriculars right now compared to academic as this seems to be the prime age for tweens to explore interests/gifts. Perhaps there are children feeling like failures at academics but they are gifted artists and if they had a chance to explore that area, they could find their place to shine. Overall, I'm told that heavy homework is a pervasive problem in Middle Schools but personally I don't think 6th grade burn-out is the way to inspire young minds. At our school, many teachers weren't aware of what the other teachers were assigning for homework and so one night there might be 20 minutes of homework and the next night, 3 hours. I think that's going to change now but it took parents being persistant and insisting that we wanted our lives back. Of course, being a new school, they may have been more open to changing things compared to an older more established school.
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