Is Homework Too Hard For Today’s Parents? By Sue Shellenbarger
- Steve Hebert for The Wall Street Journal
A growing number of parents are struggling with another homework trend that threatens to sink their juggle – an increase in extremely complicated homework projects, from neighborhood field trips to do research, to expansive dioramas or multimedia presentations to report on what students have learned, according to parents I interviewed for last Wednesday’s “Work & Family” column on homework.
Chris Jordan, a mother of seven children ages 7 through 18, has seen it all. Her kids have gotten assignments to make hand-crafted trading cards of endangered species; to embellish book reports with five-color hand-drawn sketches of the protagonist; to design a restaurant menu that might have been used in colonial Jamestown; to write a rap song about the elements of the periodic table; and to research, design and color a 30-square “poster quilt” about their family heritage. One of her friends, she says, had to drive her kid around town to be photographed in front of various businesses.
“One of the biggest challenges for me is not to be exasperated by some of the assignments,” says Jordan, a writer for AlphaMom. She sometimes yearns for simpler times, when parents drilled their kids on the multiplication tables or lists of spelling words.
Another mother said she feels like “a funding source” for her two high-schoolers’ elaborate projects, including purchasing posterboard and other materials recently to create a large diorama on the expansion of the American West.
Other projects demand speedy, ad hoc training in tech skills. One of my high-schoolers was required to research, produce and present a video on a favorite sports star or public figure. The assignment got done, but I’m afraid I learned more about using iMovie than my teen.
Teachers deserve credit for trying to design creative assignments that appeal to kids with varying abilities, including those who love art, crafts or music. And these challenging assignments may be great preparation for the jobs of tomorrow, when workers will need to integrate diverse skills to solve problems.
But they can be murder for the busy families of today.