Homework Gone Gaga

Today, I received several emails from my children's teachers.

One was a whole page long, telling me what homework assignment she is giving the class.  Okay.  Hopefully, she told her students, too.  Because if I'm supposed to read, digest, understand, and teach my child that (times seven teachers in her school), I need to retire now.

One email was telling me that my five-year-old, with two whole weeks of formal school under his belt, ". . .is not regularly turning in his homework assignments."  Would I please make sure to go through his homework each night and make sure he is doing all the homework and turning it in?

The third was telling me that my little girl's homework-on-the-computer requirements are tripling.  I've already told this teacher that my little girl doesn't own a computer.  Do I have a computer?  Sure, and I was in my thirties when I acquired it.  And--I need it for my own work and homework.  After my full-time job, I write.  And I am studying for my own test.  Suddenly, I cannot study because all of my children are doing their homework on my computer.

I find that children have their own computers to be a huge assumption on the teachers' part.

So, the last email went on to say, "I am going to put their math homework up on [some website].  Will you please go over it with them and check and recheck their work?  And always make them show you their work?"

Sure.  Just as soon as she helps me with my daughter's laundry and dinner.

I may be alone in this, but this is how I look at it.  Children already spend six hours a day at school.  That's almost as much as a full-time job.  And they're not adults.  I really don't believe small children should have homework beyond school hours.  The work of a child is to play.  When is a child in full-time school with homework going to play?  And, if children have homework, I believe it should be something they can do by themselves.

Personally, I don't need seventeen teachers assigning me homework to do.  I've gone as far in school as I intend to, and I think I'm old enough to assign myself my own homework.  I am now working on 54th grade, I guess.

Also, I send my children to school for six hours each day.  That six hours is the teachers' opportunity to teach my children whatever they need to teach them.  I certainly don't have six hours a day with my children.  In the two or three hours a day that I have with my children, I already have to make sure they get fed, have baths, have clothes to wear, have time to practice, have time to play, and learn the things that I want to teach them.  If teachers give my children homework, they are infringing on my time with my children.  The least they can do is teach them how to do it and not expect me to.

Plus, as an adult in my own right and the mother in this household, I just might have something of my own to do. (After my full-time job.)

Not that I shouldn't help from time to time--I don't mind that.  But I don't need pages and pages of busywork every night to track. My children feel overwhelmed by the amount of homework they get.  Unfortunately, they don't feel any more overwhelmed than I do.

I never wanted to home-school my children.  And I don't have time for it.  I'm not their teacher, I'm their mother.  Our roles are different.  That's not to say I don't teach my children, but the things I want to teach my children may not be the same things they want to teach my children.  Let's not get confused.