Is there EVER a night that kids do not have homework? I am so sick of it I could scream. Brian has yet another large project that will come due by the end of the year. Enough already people. The kids are mentally done - I am done - we all are done.
I am tired of teachers saying that homework should only take 45 minutes (at the longest) each night. Really? I just want to decapitate a Barbie doll every time I hear that statement. Have they ever seem my son do his 45-minute-takes-two-hours homework? And he is not the only one. Even as a math whiz, the math part is 45 minutes alone - then add on the other crap. It is an easy hour to three hours a day depending on the subject.
How many of you have an extra 45 minutes a day? Brian isn't coming home and watching TV, surfing the net or playing videos. He goes out and rides his bike, plays with the dog - boy things - experiences he needs at the end of a day of being cooped up in a classroom. This also varies depending on swim lessons, football practise, catechism and any extra curricular activities.
I have dinner to prepare, laundry, and the usual nightly rituals that seem to make the night a blur. 8:30 is the bedtime, of which I use the time after to write, read, paint or watch an adult show.
Brian needs help with everything but math and i usually have him sit at the dining room table while I work in the kitchen, close enough to stop and help him. Tonights project was long and difficult. I reflect on the fact that college was not this complicated. What are we doing to our kids?
I try to contain my dislike of school, but I can see why boys are not entering college at the pace women are now. If this is what we are doing to boys in the name of education, then no wonder they run from school as fast as they can as soon as they are out of high school. I don't blame them. College was much more rewarding to me than my son's grade schoolexperience. How sad is that for him?
My own mother, a brilliant scholar, who often tutors Brian says, "I look at his homework and wonder what this is suppose to be teaching him."
It is attempting to teach Brian to sit in a cubicle without windows and stare at a desk all day long, make lots of money, never see his kids, then cheat on his wife while searching for his lost life's passion and die of a heart attack at age 50, wondering what his life was for.
But we all know me - it will be over my dead body.
Sigh...Brian and I need a vacation.
Until next time-
C
PS. The government and media fear would have us believe that we are "falling behind" in the global economy with our education standards. I heard the same rhetoric when the Japanese started making cars in the 70s and we were told how great the Japanese work ethic was and how lazy we were. Everything was about Japanese schools and their educational system and how lacking we were in comparison. Their children started school at 7 and ended at 5 - blah blah blah. Now correct me if I am wrong, but is Japan not ending one of the worst recessions in history? How is this possible since in the 70's we were told THEY would be the economic power??
The best part of America is something that it does to people that live here in that we create amazing feats from nothing - which the world copies. There is something about us that we shake our fists at the sky and take on the impossible. Everyone else rides our coat tails. I don't think it will ever change.
