<p>In elementary school our PTA got together and had the school come up with a written homework policy with set goals for each grade. If my sons’ homework took too long, I’d just write a note saying, “Mathson worked on his homework for two hours, which is half and hour longer than the policy says an ___ grader is supposed to.” Never had an issue. Our high school was pretty reasonable, and both kids seemed to end up well prepared for college. I don’t think my older son would have gotten into Carnegie Mellon’s Comp Sci program if he hadn’t played around on computers for hours everyday when he wasn’t doing homework. I realize the GFG doesn’t think it will work, but if it were me I’d try to get a group of parents or the PTA interested. It’s obvious he’s not the only parent who thinks there’s a problem.</p>
<p>Theresa. </p>
<p>Teaching is a profession and if we would respect this and allow our teachers to teach the subject matter rather than the additional stuff there is simply not enough time or energy to do in a school day, then they could do the important job they’ve been trained to do. </p>
<p>It is disrespectful to the importance of actual teaching to continually pile on responsibility after responsibility for the things we wish we could change culturally. Teaching should be a profession without the added agenda of every politician and preacher in the country. </p>
<p>No other profession is so continually asked to add new parenting responsibilities to an already difficult job. </p>
<p>JMzo</p>
<p>What are food cops? I’ve never heard that before? What, to make sure kids don’t drink raw milk or something? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What are the “current social missions?”</p>
<p>poetgirl, I don’t disagree with you. What does that have to do with excessive amounts of homework? Especially if it’s busy work or has been so inadequately explained in class the kids can’t do it? I’m not going to make my kid do three hours of homework in first grade because the teacher didn’t have time to teach. If had ever gotten that bad, I’d have homeschooled.</p>
<p>My high school managed to teach courses (even AP courses) without piling on unreasonable amounts of homework. The elementary school started to go overboard we formed a committee (with teachers and administrators and came up with a solution.)</p>
<p>I’m in college now but when I was in high school (went to the #1 high school in the state) my mom told me I didn’t need to do chores unless I felt like I had time. </p>
<p>And my mom got a lot of criticism for “spoiling me” and all her co-workers and friends thought I would turn out lazy. </p>
<p>It’s not really relevant but I had a crazy homework workload in high school, seeing as I went to the most competitive and rigorous school, and no other parent understood that. When I got sick and went to the doctors, even the nurse criticized me for having no chores. </p>
<p>UMMM, is it really that bad to not have chores? I’m doing fine now in college. But are other parents getting critiqued for it?</p>
<p>I agree math mom. </p>
<p>I always remarked that I was doing ap and out on the weekends. Never more than a few hours of hw a night. </p>
<p>I think teachers teach the subject matter less and send more work home. I think they send more work home partially because of these extraneous issues. </p>
<p>JMO</p>
<p>QMP has graduated from college, but I still remember the time in 4th grade when our printer stopped working at about 10 pm, the evening before a big project was due, when it had just started to print out–to be taped to poster board, along with pictures. It was a bit too late to buy a new printer in our area! My husband took the printer apart to its last screw, eventually fixed the problem, and reassembled the printer. QMP had yet another night of less sleep than she really needed. </p>
<p>Ironically, later that semester, the school’s printer broke just before report cards were supposed to be issued (the “cards” were really just printed sheets). The report cards were sent home about a week later. I liked the elementary school, I liked the teacher, and I liked the principal, but I felt that there was something wrong with this combination of events.</p>
<p>I have recently seen a dressed-up stuffed mole, made for Mole Day in a high-school chemistry class, that is truly of museum quality. The thing is, no chemistry is learned while dressing a mole. It might be sort of fun to dress a mole, but other things of the student’s choice would probably be a lot more fun.</p>
<p>Hard-working students want to be in the honors and AP classes because that is where the other serious kids are, and often the better teachers. Obviously, they also need those challenging classes to gain admission to a good college, and for that they need the guidance counselor to check off the best or second best box in the rigor category. Our high school has plenty of honors and AP offerings, and yet quite a few students go beyond them to take classes at the local Ivy or state school. Furthermore, there’s s special program now where at-risk students are being funneled into community college courses taught at the high school so they can experience success and feel they can make in college. So, just having honors and AP classes and doing well only puts you in the top 10% or so in class rank. In addition, with our high Asian immigrant population, there is a lot of demand for the advanced classes and not enough sections to go around. (Immigrant parents don’t tend to ever complain to the school about homework either.) Students have to meet perquisites which include your grade in the level before. Therefore, it would be the kiss of death to in any way let the school know your kid was struggling in an ordinary freshman class. We’ve been through 8 years already at the high school and know the landscape. Heck, a friend’s kid was once told her D didn’t have the “social skills” for AP Calc. They needed an excuse, since there was too much demand and the girl was otherwise qualified.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think poetgrl is right on. Teachers are losing a lot of academic time in school teaching about internet safety/anti-plagiarism, bullying/cyber bullying, date rape, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, nutrition/food police topics (like the elementary teacher who lectured the kids about the evils of granola bars and pudding as snacks), values like respect and honesty and various other things which used to be taught at home. And then there are mandated curriculum elements which are certainly important and which would have been covered anyway during the appropriate class teaching the appropriate time period or topic, but now they apparently have to be covered at length EVERY year (like Martin Luther King, Jr./Black History, the Holocaust, 911 awareness) Also, we are adding daily to the body of knowledge that must be taught, esp. in STEM fields.</p>
<p>I think a bigger problem is that teacher quality is declining. Teachers have less subject competence, lower executive functions skills, and, in our state, less motivation due to a very strong union which keeps them from ever being fired. Therefore, a teacher will put a list of names on a worksheet and have the kids write down facts while in school, and then send them home to figure out all the hard stuff that requires thought and analysis. Not to bash teachers, but around here the majority were mediocre students at mediocre state schools. Most were not academic superstars and were not accustomed to challenging themselves. (D’s English teacher says he became a teacher because his grades weren’t good enough to do anything else.) This issue carries over into their jobs. Also, many of them fail to understand why some kids are worried about grades, because in their minds all you have to do is get in the directional state univ. and that’s good enough.</p>
<p>I really sympathize with you, TheGFG. Your analysis of the homework overload is correct for a lot of schools, and not just those on the coasts. Your comments on the responses to providing feedback about the overload are also very generalizable. I wish I could offer a workable solution to this.</p>
<p>Part of the issue, I suspect, is that many projects take far longer than the teacher realizes. I think it would be salutary for the teachers to spend a week “shadowing” their students’ homework, like the person who wrote the piece for The Atlantic. Preferably this would be a week when the other teachers did not know it was happening!</p>
<p>One of the most time-consuming (and harrowing) projects assigned to QMP in 8th grade has now become optional . . . just about the time that the teachers’ children were reaching 8th grade. But I am sure that is a coincidence. :)</p>
<p>My Ph.D. advisor used to tell me that the multiplier between how long you think a project will take and how long it actually will take is pi. </p>
<p>You might be able to persuade the teachers to try taking on the kid’s homework for a week, just to understand how much time it does take.</p>
<p>I am in awe of mathmom’s sending in a note about the time that mathson spent on the (incomplete) homework, and the teachers accepting it! I don’t honestly think that would have worked at our school, but I didn’t have the courage to try it, either.</p>
<p>It was elementary school, what were they going to do? I’d have been a lot more hesitant in high school, except by then I paid very little attention to homework as long as grades seemed reasonable.</p>
<p>I always made sure my son was present and watching whenever I did his homework. 
:D</p>
<p>3/4 serious here. My son needed lots of help when he was in school. He was classified - received lots of help at school, and we gave him lots of help at home. I tried very hard to instruct and assist and not actually do his work for him, but at times I probably crossed that wide gray line. Sure, I would do some heavy editing of a paper while he was not present, but I don’t recall ever doing an entire assignment for him while he was not present. And for him, the threshold of “too much work for one kid to do in one night” was much much lower than the average student.</p>
<p>The good news, gratifying part is that now as he is on the verge of college graduation, he does it all on his own; spends long hours in the library doing research, writing papers, gives presentations. He doesn’t even send his papers home for editing. :)</p>
<p>And might I add that when you have to study for a test where anything is a fair question, no matter how nit-picky and trivial, studying will take longer than it should as well. D just had a test on a novel that she not only read and reviewed, but poured over in order to write a long paper. She tends to have a good memory for facts, but did not know the answers to quite a few factual questions. I also read the novel, and I didn’t know the answers either. And let’s not even get into the subjectivity of tests and that some teachers have their opinions that not all would agree with. I, for one, would never say Silas Marner’s weakness was women, would you?</p>
<p>A cheap way to add rigor is to just pile on work and make the tests difficult in a capricious way.</p>
<p>TheGFG, sounds like good preparation for “Who Wants to be a Milionaire” or some other trivia based quiz show. :D</p>
<p>For $100,000 What was the full first name of Silas’ sister and mother?</p>
<p>a. Jezibelle
b. Godzilla
c. Hepzibah
d. Aamanpurah</p>
<p>Well, that one is actually easy by comparison and D would have known it because wrote about the meaning of the name and its significance to the story in her paper. It’s c.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for the support. I am feeling a little better.</p>
<p>Great question, NJres. I particularly like the Godzilla option! :)</p>
<p>Keep one fact in mind. No matter how they are challenged, no matter if they went to the most rigorous HS in area, they will be challenged much more in college. So, if they are challenged at the highest level and also engaged in many ECs, this will bring them somewhat closer to their load at college (think about cleanning, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and even frequent eating out as additional ECs that they did not have at home. Then there is Greek, sports, minor(s), trips abroad, JOB, volunteering, Research, internships and desire to have some kind of social life…
Keep them very busy in HS, otherwise they might not develop time management skills.</p>
<p>Agreed that time management is a critical life skill, best acquired incrementally, agreed that effort is typically critical to results, agreed that college typically ups the ante on both. That said, there is such a thing as too much. My question is this: where is the feedback loop that keeps things in check? </p>
<p>In our well-regarded public schools, it started in elementary school when projects came with 12 pages of printed instructions in 3rd grade and went on from there. If there wasn’t parental support (funds, team work, transportation, materials), nothing would have been done. In this context, it is not surprising to me that some find boundaries hard to determine. Some parents never shut it off and the context of their continued involvement is interesting. I often wondered how it would have been if parents had simply, as a group, opted out of the extravaganzas earlier. How much is too much is a great conversation for communities to have. These issues were not on the table when I was growing up in a similar town. Perhaps some of the over-involvement may be inadvertently fostered by the expectations of schools when students are younger. I realize that these assumptions may vary by school, though I don’t think our experience is unique. </p>
<p>I’ve enjoyed reading the responses here.</p>
<p>The main difference in college is that “busy work” goes WAY down. Nobody assigns pretty posters, decorating moles, coloring maps that are due tomorrow. Not many “pop” quizzes. And no homework usually unless self-assigned–you have assigned papers which upfront are part of a grade due at a pre-determined date, and a specific number of tests.Your homework is studying and doing work that allows you to pass that test or get the paper done in a timely manner. You usually know beforehand what is due and when which allows for time management. Hopefully the professor actually teaches and if he/she doesn’t then students skip the class and put the time to better use.</p>
<p>Good point about the school inadvertently contributing to the culture of heavy parent involvement by assigning projects well beyond the child’s capability in the early grades. There have been a lot of fun threads here on CC about those projects!</p>
<p>The assigning of work that is beyond the average student’s preparation is a significant problem with the first year of high school and could indeed be the root of what I’m seeing. Our middle school (and middle schools in general) is not as rigorous as it needs to be, and the high school teachers have neither the time nor interest in helping the kids cram in now what they should have learned two years ago. So what happens is that tutoring–either by a professional or parent–becomes a near necessity. I was really surprised to learn that some friends of my D were meeting with a tutor all summer so that the tutor could help them with their summer honors homework! Given that the students were selected for honors based on grades, test scores and teacher recs., presumably they were all deemed ready for the challenge and should have been able to complete the assignment on their own. Meanwhile, my D, who I know is not as smart as they, did her summer homework almost completely on her own. I am therefore concerned about what grades she will receive (HW not returned yet, believe it or not). </p>
<p>Anyway, now that tutoring is a necessary evil, I think the boundary between acceptable assistance and unacceptable is unclear for many. Personally, I resent the fact that teachers seem to feel that mom or dad helping a kid is unacceptable, but a paid tutor is not. I suppose the implication is that a parent might be more tempted to cross the line, but in my case it’s simple economics. I can’t afford to pay for tutors, so it’s me or nothing. My kid shouldn’t suffer for that, or be suspected of receiving too much help when countless others are meeting weekly with tutors for every subject.</p>
<p>“The main difference in college is that “busy work” goes WAY down”
-Do not kid yourself. The total amount of work and the challenge level of this work is going up up into the sky. Here is jJust one example. D. had very challenging Honors and AP Bio classes in HS. She got her As and 5 on exam, so she was NOT by far at the bottom, she was on top. The very first Bio class (no, she did not skip it, she was advised to take it despite of having 5 on AP exam), well, this class went thru AP Bio material in first 2 weeks and then they moved on to a new material. Pretty overhelming, right? It was for my D. who gradutated #1 from most rigorous private HS in our area. She realised right away that without adjustments to new level of hard work, her goal will be derailed. And in fact several valedictorians were derailed from their initial track by this single class in the very first sememster of their college freshman year.
Please, be realistic. The amounf of work and the level of challenge will be much much higher in college, ANY college, I am not talking about Ivy’s, or other elite places. D. went to state public.</p>