Homework - A Rant

I hate homework.  So much.  My kids hate it less than I do because they can't conceive of a different option.  But I hate it personally because no matter how much time there is in any given after school day, homework takes too much of that time.  And I really want that time for other things like playing outside or with some friends or a game or reading or drawing or even playing around on a computer and surfing things that I don't want to know about.  I want those things because they are different than what a kid does all day long.  They build some new and different skills like having conversations and filling boring space with fun stuff.  You know, the kind of skills that we all use every single day. 

Practicing what you already spent all day learning and then proving that you learned that all day seems like a mission to lengthen the school day to “all hours available every day” and seems like maybe perhaps kids aren’t learning the really important stuff in a day...  I am in favor of homework that teaches something new or explores a topic that I might not otherwise care to engage in with my kids (like tying a shoe homework or running around after a kid on a bike homework)  but some life skills they are never assigned on that pesky homework agenda.

Before you say "they have to practice what they have learned".... I get that.  And studying and tests and all that.  But I assume that if you have a homework doing kid you have more than once thought that some of that pile of day-stealing work is rubbish.  

So I actually have made in a mini-life mission to find and send my kids to schools with as little rote type homework as humanly possible.   Because I do want to make them uncompetitive with other nations, chiefly.  My mini-mission, if you must know, is pretty much a failure.  For the younger children even in schools that claim no-homework there is most often  something called “here is homework so you get used to doing homework”. For middle aged children there is often something called “see, I told you there would be homework, I’m getting you ready for high school”.  And then for the older child the invariable “life isn’t fair, there is homework everywhere you look in life”.  

I still rage against the homework machine in spite of my miserable failure at its avoidance. Extra credit is my arch enemy, long term projects the bain of my existence, test studying – well that is simply the worst.  Of course, it’s school and I suppose that I have to just resign myself to the fact that kids can’t just come home and spend the evening running around and snuggling with me.  But I’ll make a party out of every last day that we have a homework pass and every single vacation day without a blog entry requirement.  I know it’s education and stuff but I’ll go down working to skirt homework as much for my own gain as theirs  
– just you watch.