As a parent of young, elementary-age children, I am amazed at the amount of homework my kids bring home on an almost daily-basis. It’s insane! Kids need to be kids. They need to play, have fun, stretch their imaginations, and explore. A second-grade student does not need to be spending five or more hours each week on homework assignments.
What do they get from these assignments really? Do they really learn from them? I don’t believe the learn very much from worksheets and other time-wasting homework assignments. Memorizing facts and learning useful skills are two entirely different things. The focus should be on expanding a child’s scope of interest and teaching them how to learn, not inundating them (and their parents) with gobs of busy-work.
How is pushing hours of homework on a kindergartner going to help them in the long-run? Are we really teaching them to grow into well-adjusted, knowledgeable, adults who have real problem-solving skills? I don’t believe our education system spends enough time teaching these fundamental concepts. Perhaps some of the problems we are facing in society today are due to the fact that our kids are not getting the opportunity to be kids. As humans, we need our childhood to expand our minds, not force-feed them with information.
Worked up over homework
Assignments pile up as pressure builds to improve school performance. But everyone fails to agree on the right amount. The daily grind starts as early as kindergarten, sometimes even preschool, for today’s kids, as any parent will tell you. And it rarely lets up.
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