I was shocked when I saw the amount of homework Rebecca brought home as a kindergartener. I remember kindergarten being mostly about cut and paste, coloring and crafts - with some numbers and letters thrown in.
Becky was having to do "book reports" in kinder. I would read her a story, then she had to write the title and author, draw a picture describing a scene from the story and two sentences about the picture.
Crazy!
Last year, she had no less than 30 minutes of homework a night. As a first grader!
I shudder to think how much she'll be bringing home this year. It cuts into our evenings together, which is the only time I have with my kids.
It seems like all we do during the school year is homework, dinner, bath and bed. It sucks.
But I'm calling the ranch today to make our appointment for this weekend's trail ride. :-D
I agree with you on homework. I didn't have regular home work until high school. That's gotten out of control. MORE is not necessarily better.
You know, there is no reason elementary school kids should have regular homework. Don't they have all day in class to do their learning? And then they get sent home? Sounds to me like the teacher's having you do her job for her in what should be family time.
My sibs and I never took more than three hours (when we applied ourselves) on school before high school. Granted, there's a lot of wasted time in a school setting that homeschoolers don't have to worry about, but just what are they doing with the kids all day?
(of course ya know I'm gonna weigh in on this) But it is counterproductive to saddle kids with that much homework.
It stems from pure hubris - the idea that schools and teachers know what is best for a child. This goes back to Dewey whose philosophy is the backbone of the modern education system. The idea is that teachers have to intervene in all aspects of the child's life so they don't pick up the bad habits of their parents. Dewey was a 'progressive', so conservative, traditional thought was 'bad' and needed to be corrected. Dewey felt that a child's first loyalty is to the greater society - not the family. Teachers work to build the village.
Most "El-Eds" aren't aware they're taught to be control-freaks. They'll smile at you blandly and bat their eyelashes and lay some learning theory jargon on you. But the truth is, they believe that any lesson worth learning will come at their direction and that time spent with family and friends won't learn you your multiplication tables.
This, of course, is dead wrong.
Kids need unstructured time. They're currently overprogramed by products of the same educational system that believes 'activity' is the same thing as 'accomplishment'. As *IF* you can't get into college if you didn't take tap and ballet and violin and softball and lacross all in the third grade!
They need time to play quietly, they need time to play rowdily. They need time to play imaginatively. They need time with their own thoughts to think about things; to wander around the backyard and discover bugs and flowers and such.
They need time to spend with Moms and Dads and grandparents and siblings and friends and cousins. They need time to help cook and set the table. They need time for chores. These interactions have far more of a lasting and formative impact on a young person than any worksheet or textbook.
Instead kids these days don't have time to hear themselves think. And it's sad. They are taught that Mom and Dad are usually wrong, that you can't learn something until the teacher teaches it, that rote memorization is learning (and once you take the test you can forget about it), that quantity of effort is more important than mastery of the material, and that learning - real learning - is pointless.
Sorry for the rant.
I hate what we do to kids in the name of education.