Homework Hassles

“Education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment."

---Dr. Maria Montessori

Growing up, my parents were as serious as a heart attack about school. My father was elected to his hometown school committee long before he ever had children. My mother chose to go to a private Catholic high school using her babysitting money because the public schools were, in her mind, "Not up to the task." She wanted more than sewing class and home ec. In private school, she was allowed to take biology and physics instead, and when she graduated, she joined the Navy as part of a flight crew. While neither of my parents went to college, they were two of the most educated people I've ever known.

 Naturally, when I had kids, I was committed to being the "Education Mom." I bought flashcards and worksheets the summer leading up to the first day of Kindergarten for my oldest. As a writer, I filled the house with books. The answer was never “No” if we were out and he wanted to buy a book. Not that math and science and history are not important subjects, but it mattered a great deal to me that my kids learn to love words. Reading, writing, and really, almost every other subject in school all starts with having the right words.  Looking back, I think I might have been overdoing it. This was pointed out to me when I went to my first back to school night and read the cute note that all the kids leave for their mom or dad on their tiny little desks. For what it's worth, it's overkill to take a red marker and make edits in the margins. Sorry, Andy.

Once my other two children came along, I relaxed. Schoolwork was (and still is) always a priority, but I didn't go all Tiger Mother about it. With my first, I would never have considered giving him an answer to a math problem. Mostly because once he got past third grade, I usually didn't know the answers, but still, homework was his job, not mine.

Now, with my third? Yes, OK, maybe back in elementary school I "helped" her with the spelling word sentences a few times. I specifically remember her thinking the word “underdog” referred to body parts that were on the underneath of our puppy, Oscar, the Wonder Pug. There was no way she was going to school having written, "Oscar likes to lick his underdog parts." That wasn’t something I wanted on her permanent record.

Homework has changed over the years; actually, it seems to change every school year. With each new teacher, new grade, and new school, the homework issue morphs into something different. The teachers I always respected the most and who were genuinely gifted educators, were the ones who didn’t make a big fat hairy deal over homework.  They looked at the child’s entire set of skills. What they did well, what they needed help with, and they went from there. 

If I had my way? Homework would cease to exist. While my background isn’t in child development or education, I’ve read and written about enough neuroscience studies to know a little bit about how the brain works, and pages of math facts, test prep worksheets, and arts and crafts do almost nothing to help children really learn. The dreaded "Group Projects" should be entirely done during school hours because then there is no 9:30 PM mad dash to Staples for poster board, note cards and at least one impossible to find item like green play dough. Then it becomes a Google search for "Playdough recipes" at ten o'clock because your kid forgot to tell you his part of the eco-system project was pond scum. Children are already too busy, and so are their families. Most homework, in my not-so-humble-opinion, is a waste of the precious hours kids have after school.

We need to take education seriously, but it doesn’t need to involve math homework that takes ten minutes to finish the equations and another hour to illustrate a cartoon story of Pete Protractor and the Pythagorean theorem. Why do students in some other countries have higher test scores than we do? Because they don’t color in math class, that’s why. 

Homework is here to stay, despite a lot of evidence that it doesn't improve the education our kids are getting. I just wish it could be more thought-provoking than the latest photocopies of MCAS "practice" tests and more relevant than whatever bits of glue and construction paper you can shove into a shoebox diorama. But what do I know, I got all the way through college without ever having to make a model of the Great Wall of China out of sugar cubes. It's a wonder I can think at all.