But it kinda pains me a little to say to say how disillusioned I am quickly becoming with the educational system now that my children are part of it.
My daughter, who is in grade 1, comes home with a standing order of 15 minutes required/supervised/logged daily reading, a weekly vocabulary project with it’s pertaining daily assignment, and any additional homework that may be assigned for that particular day. Did I mention she is in grade 1?! - and already averaging about 45 minutes of homework, requiring parental supervision, a day?
Once upon a time, especially before dual incomes were all but required to survive in society, this might have been far less of a concern. But I still can’t imagine EVER going home and saying: “Mom. Dad. It’s time to go over my Word Wall Words!” I’ve heard of and read articles talking about parental involvement being a key to success but I’m curious when that eclipsed instilling the sense of self-reliance, independence and personal accountability. And when a teacher says - “take this home to do with your parents” - I do wonder how much that blurs the lines of responsibility and then inevitably becomes the ‘cub scout wooden racecar’ approach to teaching/learning (where ultimately the parents just take over and do the work for the kids.)
I want so badly to be in the teacher’s corner here - but am really having trouble wrapping my head around this one. I’m doing my best to teach my kids all kinds of things already (while feeding, clothing, and sheltering them…) I kinda figured that I was going to be able to leave the schoolwork to the teachers.
Anyways… That’s two weeks in a row I’ve kinda gone off on a bit of a tangent. I’ll do my best to get back to fart and booby jokes for next week. Thanks for reading, though!
-
With my parents in town over the weekend and needing to take 3 trips a day to the kids’ school - I haven’t gotten too much done on the workfront. We’ve just solved the childcare issue now, though, and I am looking down the scope at being to get nearly full days in again! I am pumped! Hopefully I can start getting into a pretty good/productive routine fairly soon… I just feel like I have so much cool stuff I NEED to get outta my head!!!! And can’t wait to hit the ground running.
Thanks again. Hope you’ve had a good week!
Rod
I hear you on that one. first off First grade and 45 minutes of home work is overkill. give a kid time to be a kid. I never remember getting homework until third or fourth grade. if we did get it earlier then that is was usually fun work for a project or something. there is plenty of time for homework when the get older. giving them to much this early on will have an adverse effect on their learning. I think they will get overwhelmed to young and start to hate the learning process. Its better to teach kids how to learn and enjoy learning rather then force feeding them everything all day everyday. And having parents help all the time is out of control. As parents we should help when help is needed but i 100 percent agree with you Rod, kids need to learn to do this on their own and feel a sense of accomplishment. when they get stuck they will learn how to ask and when to ask. May father would help me anytime but only after i gave it a good go myself.
ReplyDeleteThe next thing that ticks me off at least up here is the fact that thy are teaching math in a totally new way. I've talked to parents that cant even help because they don't know this new process that some scholar came up with. The work has to be shown in that way and not the old way. There solution is having parents come to the school and learn it. what was wrong with the old method. if you come to the end of a question with the correct answer it shouldn't matter how you got there as long as its right. This is what happens in the real work. your boss or your client does not care how you got the job done. They only care if it done right to there satisfaction.
There is my rant for the day. thanks for getting me riled up