*#$% homework! A parent's perspective.

I received an email from the teacher of my son in year 6 last week just reminding me why he hadn't sent homework home for the class.  Instead of sending their homework "contract" home, he wanted his class to spend their time completing their assignment on Australian immigrants.  Hang on; probably better if I just show you the email:

I wanted all boys to use the time to get going on their recount story of an immigrant to Australia. They have a planning sheet with their questions and room for dot points which will be composed into sentences. They also need pictures to help tell the story. This story with pictures then will be  transferred either onto Photostory or Powerpoint.  If your son cannot find someone to interview then he can go to google –type in Australian Immigrant stories and many sites are available. Two that are good are ...

 This recount will be our major piece of English writing assessment for this term. They will be telling this person’s story.

I thought I should put you in the picture as we only have 3 weeks of school to go and we needed to get going on this so it is completed  before end of term. Thanks and Regards.

To me that just screams "Can you parents just get on top of this?  Only 3 weeks left of school and I've fucked around all term telling stories about myself and sectioning the kids into teams that I then allocate points to for good behaviour.  You may have to teach your children the skills they will need to put this into PowerPoint as I've been a tad busy talking with the kids about my motorbike during school hours.  Oh, and can you drive them to interview one of the local immigrants in your area?" 

Personally, I'm OVER it!


This is how I see it.  I work in a hospital.  I help the patients in the hospital in some way by doing my job.  It's knockoff time, but I've just stuffed around a bit during work hours, or for some reason I've not been able to accomplish the work that is expected of me.  As I grab my bag to head home after a long day, I click onto my emails and quickly compose one to the spouses, children and parents of the patients I am there to help.  I very matter-of-factly request that they continue my job for me while I'm at home enjoying some downtime with my family.  I sign off with "thanks and regards" and hey presto, no one complains and everyone is happy and my job gets done while I head home.

Perhaps you think I'm being a little harsh.  Ahh...no, I don't think so. I've had children in the school system for 11 years.    That is a lot of homework and assignments I've had to help with.  I spread myself pretty thinly with each child, but it never seems to end. Of course, everyone blabs on and on about how their child does all their own work, and there will always be the occasional adult who has no children ready to tut tut when you whine about the laborious task of completing children's homework.  Character rescue is what I call it with the people who have children.  Delusional child versus dog syndrome* for those who don't.  

One of the first things I yell as I walk in the door as I come home from work is "Ok start your homework."  It even makes me want to vomit.  Poor kids (poor me).  Usually one of the kids is anxious about an assignment that's due and is asking me to read what they've done - usually what they've done is inadequate for the year level, so I spend a bit of time helping them fix it up, or just fixing it myself if it’s getting too late.  I format it, read the assignment and make sure the question has been answered, help them reference it correctly.  Voila!  He/she can hand it in and it can be marked against all the other assignments that have had the same amount of parental input.  What a joke. 

Of course, there's all that research that shows that brighter children who complete their homework do better in school, and that children from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to complete their homework.  Wow.


I want to draw the attention away from the children for a millisecond.  A hard task to accomplish these days.  I want the attention to be focused on the army of fathers and (predominantly) mothers who spend their hours after 4pm Monday to Friday slogging through work that someone else is already being paid to do.  Give us a break.  We just want to get home from work, do the food shopping, put it away, cook dinner, empty the school bags, wash up the dishes, put the washing on then put the clothes in the dryer, have a shower and then maybe, just maybe, grab a wine and watch some TV or read a book before we sleep, wake and start all over again.  Don't half of all marriages end in divorce?  How many single parents are coping with the entire homework load?  Maybe we should be looking for ways to decrease the stresses for families, not add to them.

Kids aren't going to get any dumber by not doing their homework. Their intelligence doesn't decrease. Relaxing and enjoying life after 6 hours of schooling is not going to stop them being what they want to be when they leave school.  Isn't 30 hours a week long enough to educate our children?  If you need more time to teach them teachers, maybe we should be looking at tacking an hour a day onto the school curriculum rather than getting the already unsung heroes of society to do your work for you.

* Delusional child versus dog syndrome:  A syndrome characterised by a childless person's belief that children respond like a dog to discipline and this same person's mistaken belief that it they had a child they would handle behaviour modification in a much better way than you do. (Doris, 2012)