Homework Blues

The more kids I have enrolled in school, the more homework bombards us. All of my school-aged kids, from my seventh grader right down to my two kindergartners, are expected to complete homework assignments nearly every day. And the longer this goes on, the more my resentment over it is building.

It's not even that my kids dislike doing their homework. Fortunately, we don't engage in too many homework battles around here. Joey thoroughly enjoys homework, in fact. For the twins, who just started bringing home their weekly homework packets a couple weeks ago, homework is at this point a novelty that makes them feel like big kids, and they're eager to get to it every afternoon. Even Kevin doesn't put up a fight about doing his homework - and he's got plenty.

There are a few things that bother me about homework. First of all, the sheer volume of it, and here, I'm really talking about Kevin. He's in seventh grade. He spends seven hours a day at school and then comes home to, on average, two to three hours of homework every day. That means he's effectively putting in a ten-hour day, and he's 12. On a typical day, he's holed up in his room from the time he gets home from school until dinner time, and often beyond dinner time. Why? What is the value of this? The argument, apparently, is that the work he does at home reinforces what he learns at school, and teaches good study habits. I don't know if this is actually true or not. Kevin does well in school. He's a bright kid, he enjoys learning. I don't know how big a role homework has played in his success at school. I suspect very little. What seems utterly unfair about all of this is how little time there is left over for him to just be a kid. Ride his bike. Hang out with friends during the week. Lay in the grass and stare at the clouds. Torment his younger siblings.

Kevin has recently expressed a desire to reinvolve himself in Little League baseball in the Spring. The truth is, I just don't see how it will be possible, knowing that it would require practice two or three times a week, and two games a week. There is just no way he can be involved in any type of extracurricular activity that requires that kind of time commitment, not with his homework load. So, effectively, he's being deprived of activities that have their own very real value, like building self-esteem, and teaching teamwork and good sportsmanship - because of homework.

The younger kids obviously don't have that kind of homework load - yet. But even their homework is a thorn in my side - mostly because it's not just their homework, it's our homework. The twins' kindergarten homework isn't even intended to be self-directed. It's expected that I, the parent, will sit down with them and do their homework with them. So I am effectively being forced into the teacher role, and I am the first one to say that I'm no teacher. I never wanted to be a teacher. And I don't want to be my kids' teacher; I want to be their mom. And while Joey has no problem doing his daily homework on his own, he came home today with a daily activity calendar for the month of November (I assume this will be a monthly thing), with a learning activity listed in each daily square of the calendar. Accompanying this calendar is a note from "The Second Grade Team" asking us, the parents, to encourage our kids to complete at least 15 of the activities for the month. And then there's a "journal" to be sent back to school at the end of the month in which not only the child, but the parent, is supposed to write about what they learned from the activities performed during the month. This is on top of the daily homework.

Really? Like I need one more thing heaped on my plate?

I mean, I know the school didn't aim this directly at me, mother of six, wife of sick husband. But it just seems to me that the assumption should be that every family already has enough going on without piling more on their plates.

And I mean no offense to my teacher friends. I really don't even know how teachers themselves feel about homework. I'm sure their feelings on it vary. I'm sure there is a lot of pressure on teachers relating to economic matters and test scores, and maybe homework plays into that. I don't know. I'm just saying, as a parent, I think homework kind of stinks.

I found a really good article on this issue written by a school principal: Rethinking Homework. Food for thought.