First time

[peggyfromwastate]

That I actually said *You don't have to do your homework*. That's because I just don't have it in me to explain to Luke what a *rectangular prism* is and how to identify if a poorly drawn shape is a *rectangular prism*, *cylinder*, *cone*, or *pyramid*. Pyramid he could get, maybe, and ice cream cone... BUT...



Kindergarten homework is getting ridiculous. I told him to draw circles over everything and I'm sending a note to his teacher that this is beyond him. Never mind that these words aren't *kindergarten wall words*.

Is my 5 year old just not getting it? Sigh.

We've been reading Ramona the Pest this week, and she's in Kindergarten too, and they barely learned how to write their names. And they still have nap time. Ahhh, the good old days.

[fluffhead]

I wish they had a better name for a rectangular prism - it's silly that 5 year olds have to call it that, but unfortunately that's what it is.
Call it an irregular cube.

[scrub-jay]

Good for you.

[PrincessFiona]

Hanging on by a thread with you.

Too much too soon IMO.

Andrew didn't learn to read until he was 7 and in first grade, btw. He just wasn't there developmentally and back in the good ole' days, that was perfectly normal. He is at the top of his class, is up for the Physics award for the year, placed in the top 10% nationally for german this year and has been invited to take the national physics test (as one of 5 students selected from the school.)

Just a few years later came the obsession with wall words, whole language reading and repetitive reading. Alex was placed in Title I in 1st grade after switching schools. He could sound out words but didn't have the wall words memorized (purple, butterfly, dragon...wtf?). To this day, he hates reading. He is capable, but when he has a big reading project due, he literally makes a sign that says "I hate reading" and tapes it on his door.

Aidan is in Montessori and is playfully learning...and reading...and dealing with prisms...but it is a low-stress, fun enviroment without the pressure.

Man....why can't kids just be kids anymore? And we wonder why our kids are stressing out and can't sleep. sheeeesh!

Kris

[moonlight]

You are freaking kidding me, right???

Is this public school????????

[rainbabies]

Can't stand it, myself. Ds--first grade, is in the whole geometry phase right now.

That's crazy! I learned colors, letters and numbers in kindergarten. The things they are doing these days is insane!!

Lacy

[PrincessFiona]

We had a mom's night out a few weeks ago here and one of the moms of a first grader said she started to be concerned about her son because he was walking around mumbling to himself. He seemed stressed and irritable and she thought there was something more serious going on.

She sat him down after one episode and asked him what was wrong. He was reluctant at first and then confessed "Mom, I have to know my phonograms. I HAVE to know them." :0 Poor thing!

Kris

[Deebs]

For the record, my kids are 4, 2, and 5 months - and I am so glad we're not there yet. I hear these complaints from my friends all of the time. Friends in different states, different districts, and all friends who are paying a boatload in taxes. I hear it from educators also. We've demonstrated that pushing kids like this isn't making them any further ahead by 6th grade than they were 20 years ago. So why are we continuing to do it? And, how do we change it? I'm serious. We've gotten through "healthcare reform" - whatever that's going to end up actually being, now can we move on to education reform, and this time make it something meaningful? My kids are districted to go to one of the top elementary schools in IL. I'm so terrified that DD will end up in a kindergarten class of 30-40 because of the state's failure to pay the schools that I've enrolled her in the Catholic school pre-K program. That way, if the schools are in crisis, she'll at least have the option of going there. I have no desire to homeschool my kids, but I'm really starting to see why it's so appealing to so many.

[L.Jane]

Oh don't even get me started... And I am the teacher... I am so angry about the school systems and I just started. I am forced to teach my poor kids crap too early, too fast, and then test them on it. The theory is everyone is an advanced student is an above average student so lets take the old fourth grade curriculum and move it down to third grade. Never mind the kids can barely subtract but lets go head and start on multiplication and division. Never mind the kid barely can multiply but lets get into fractions... and lets only spend a week or two on each subject and move on and not talk about it again until next year. And we wonder why kids today are stressed, failing and miserable.

[houseelf]

Um...you had me convinced at "homework in kindergarten".

WTF is wrong with this system? Homework for kids who occasionally still wet their pants and forget to wipe? You have GOT to be kidding me. I had to memorize my phone number and write my name in kindergarten. I somehow was able to overcome this gross negligence in my education to eventually obtain a doctorate degree. My husband didn't read until second grade. Neither of us had appreciable homework until junior high and we did just fine.

IMHO, the ONLY "homework" permissible until adolescence should be mild suggestions like, "Johny needs a little more help in handwriting, can you sit down with him on occasion and work on this?" or "Molly could use a bit of math fact review, how about occasionally going over some facts?" Worksheets are beyond ridiculous for this age and only quash a love of learning.

Kelly

[fluffhead]

While I agree that many schools have gone way overboard with homework and rushing advanced concepts at early ages, I do not agree that NO homework and dumbing down the curriculum is the answer. How can everybody complain about the sad state of knowledge in american teenagers, and at the same time demand that no math hw be given in the early grades? My son in kindergarten has about 10 minutes of hw when he gets home, and frequently chooses to do more. I think it's an appropriate amount. My 3rd grade daughter frequently works an hour or more when she gets home, and sometimes it's a bit excessive.
But for some of this stuff, rote repetition is the way to get it. OK, it's silly to teach a 5 year old "rectangular prisms." But is it just as silly to teach what a cube is? A r.p. is just an oblong cube, isn't it? And as I'm teaching these kids in their later high school years, I realize more and more how necessary it is to grasp those concepts early on.
Now the ridiculous testing mandated by the feds in the past decade has made many districts paranoid and overzealous, and certainly there are awful schools and awful teachers who end up traumatizing the kids and nobody wins. There are ways to work this out, and I don't think the answer is "I didn't learn how to add until 3rd grade and I came out fine" - things are different now.

my $0.02, as usual the outlier.

[DCJenn]

We have homework but it's things like circling the words that start with P or finding the words that contain "ch". Math is colors and numbers. AT HOME because he thinks it's fun, we work on double digit addition. Our friends just pulled their daughter from the 5th grade immersion program because they were dealing with three hours of homework a night. She was miserable, they were miserable. How can you have a life with three hours of homework every night. I mean MAYBE if you have no after school activities then you could do it without developing elementary school sleep deprivation.

And Fluff, I actually agree that that the kids need to learn these concepts from an early age. I disagree with the entire concept of testing being the sole indicator of a child's success. (and the teacher's success and the school's success). No Child Left Behind has turned an entire generation of educators, administrators AND kids into paranoid masses of doom and gloom.

I can tell you that the school district we're in is an urban inner city one with all of the problems of declining enrollment (not in my neighborhood) and declining property values (again, not in my neighborhood). Some of these kids showed up for kindergarten w/ nothing- didn't know letters, colors or numbers. Some barely recognized their own names.

I don't know what the solution is- I know that where Peggy's kids go to school (where I went to school) there is serious competition to be THE BEST at everything.

and lots of the private schools seem just as bad. I was looking at one on the recommendation of a friend of ours and at third grade on through 12th they were military uniforms. I mean SERIOUS military uniforms. Uh, no. and this coming from a military spouse!

Jenn

[PrincessFiona]

I agree with....everyone. I do think that we could introduce some more advanced concepts as kids are ready. Something that I love about the Montessori program here is that they get this stuff into the curriculum early and do it in a fun way. Aidan (Kindergarten) does not feel stressed out or act stressed out at all...but he is great reader and is good at writing and math...all a credit to the teachers! It seems like there is some inflexibility in our educational system...At the same time, a lot of the homework that I see is busywork. Example of a middle-schooler's Social Studies assignment: Create a replica of the Capital Building using only items that you have in your house (ie toilet paper rolls, shoe cartons, etc.). The educational value in that project for again ... Social Studies...was zero. It took a few hours on two different nights and involved me ultimately unrolling toilet paper from rolls to get the last pieces. At the end of it all, we got a B...I have no idea why.

Andrew is at a private school for 9th grade and he does have 3 hours of homework a night. His homework is truly valuable in my eyes. He works Geometry problems, reads novels and writes literary responses, etc. These are all important assignments.

I compare what he did in 7th and 8th grade to what Amanda is doing and it isn't even comparable.

At the same time, Andrew is very stressed out by all of this. They take 9 classes and are pushed hard. On top of it, they are mandated to participate in 3 activities/year. So right now, he has school from 8-3:15, baseball practice daily from 3:30-5:30 (we are blowing off all morning practices!) and then he comes home and has dinner and starts homework. If he takes any time to relax, shower, etc, he can be doing homework until midnight.

It's...too much.

Another issue I have is with the constantly changing new pedagogical ideas. We are in the midst of the block system bonanza for high school. So our daughter (who already struggles in math) will be on a college block system. She will take an entire year's worth of algebra in 1 semester and then not take another math class until the following year. She will take all of german I in 1 semester and then potentially not take German 2 for another 1-1.5 years. This is all in the name of progress. Forget where their brains are at, that things like math, science and languages require regular repetition and not just firehose learning at the early levels.

Actually, I feel so disgusted writing this that I have to stop.

Kris

[houseelf]

Fluff,

I think we are closer to agreement than it might appear at first blush. I think that HW until grades 5, 6, 7 should be minimal and serve as a basic reinforcement of what is currently being taught in the classroom. For example, kids should review math facts or perform a quick 5 minute review of whatever type of math problem the class is currently working on, etcetera. This type of HW engages the parents and keeps the family plugged into the child's school life. Anything more than this is beyond ridiculous. In fact, there has been no statistical correlation between eventual academic success and the amount of hw given in lower grades. (I'm not going to cite an authority other than invite you to do a google search or read 'The Case Against Homework').

These kids spend seven hours in school a day. That is ample time to educate them on the basics. Generations of kids learned the bulk of their primary education at school. This isn't dumbing them down, this is squarely placing the fundamentals of education on the school and not the parents.

I understand the rebuttal to the above. The system is bogged down with a bunch of extraneous b.s. that the educators must permorm which denigrates educators' ability to teach. Therefore a lot of actual learning is abdicated to the family. My kids' job at home is to be engaged in our family and our community, not perform rote repetition worksheets. This family has values, norms, and experiences that are equally important that we need to share with them without the school's unfortunate shortcomings encroaching on our precious time. I politely disagree with the characterization that this represents a "dumbing down" approach. I expect the schools to do their jobs just as the schools expect me to do my job.

For the record, I have incredibly high expectations for my children's education. I also realize that I am fairly radical in this opinion in light of today's norms. I think that this issue will be revisited in the future and the current primary hw standards will be used as an example for what doesn't work.

Kelly