Homework

Man, homework is not fun. Not my homework, mind you. Sometimes, I have to schelp work home and that's not my favorite thing, but it goes along with being an attorney and the associated deadlines. So that kind of homework is just an occupational hazard.

No, what I'm talking about here is The Mermaid's homework. I don't mind helping The Mermaid with homework in the abstract and, in fact, The Muse does most of the work in helping The Mermaid with homework. (Thanks for that, Muse.) No, what mostly gets me is the sheer amount of homework. We're talking about at least an hour, sometimes two, just about every weeknight. Part of that is due to the fact that homework takes longer with The Mermaid due to her condition, but I don't think that the amount of time that The Mermaid works is a quantum jump from what other kids do. And I don't think that our local school district is especially burdensome in this way. The Mermaid's in fifth grade. I don't remember anywhere near this much homework when I was in the fifth grade. The Muse doesn't remember this level of homework in fifth grade either, and her school wasn't just across a chain-link fence from a working cow pasture.

Why are we doing this to our children? Why are we burying them in homework? From what I hear from teachers and other school-types that we know, it sounds like a lot of it is driven by the new emphasis on standards and testing in the last 10 years or so and The No Child Left Behind Act, in particular. That kind of stuff seems to be driven by these things you hear about "American children ranking 47th out of 50th industrialized countries on math tests."

What exactly are we trying to achieve in doing all of this? Certainly we need to improve our schools. Any time you have to fight and get hostile over a period of a couple of months to get your special-needs child the assistance that everyone agrees is necessary, things aren't perfect. And we live in one of the best school districts around.

But dumping all kinds of homework on fifth-graders and kids of similar ages really limits the time that they have to be kids and do the things that teach them to be creative. And isn't it being creative that really is what makes things work here, in California and in the U.S. generally?

There was a very interesting article in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago about this. The columnist -- I think that it was Fareed Zakaria -- interviewed the education minister from Singapore, which has some of the highest test scores in the world. The minister was saying that Singapore really needs to learn from the U.S. about encouraging that. The columnist also quoted a friend of his who was from Singapore, but who had lived in the U.S. with his children for several years. According to the friend, in American schools, his children had picked up that it was good to comment and to express their ideas, but that, in Singapore, when his kids tried to that, they were viewed as weird and obnoxious. The friend moved his children to Western-style private schools in Singapore.

Kids definitely need to know their multiplication tables by fifth grade. They need to be figuring out word problems, grammar and basic analytical skills in social sciences. But lots of two-factor algebraic word problems? Geometry in 8th grade (which apparently is now available)? Settle down, people.