Schoolwork

[conuly]

1. Is it wrong, when Ana comes home without spelling homework (and I know she usually has spelling homework) that I make her do it anyway? Because she seems to think I'm "a big fat meanie", and I think I'm just being prudent and also, don't care what she thinks.

But I do want to be able, next time it comes up, to say "SEE? EVERYBODY does this!"

2. Evangeline brought home a math test today. At the back she had "extended response" questions where she has to write down her reasoning. (I think this is absurd, but all the schools do it now, it's on the tests.)

I wish I had a scanner, but I'll retype.

For one of them, she was told that there are six wheels on a number of tricycles, and asked to find out how many trikes there were. So she drew her picture, and then wrote "I know tata 3 + 3 echwos 6."

On the other, she was told that somebody had 5 cookies and then got 3 more. How many altogether? So she drew her picture (neatly making the 3 cookies chocolate chip, and the 5 NOT chocolate chip), and then wrote "I cowtib the cookies attr I brow dom."

Huh. And today she wrote "friend" in a sentence. She started off fr, then stopped and neatly inserted an e between the f and the r, ending up with "ferib". (Or "ferid", really.) It's interesting to watch her write, but a little scary as well.

I gotta go up and make sure Ana's starting her homework, and then I have to start grating and grating and grating and grating potatoes. Any excuse to gorge myself on potato pancakes and doughnuts, I'm gonna take it! Happy Hanukkah : )

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Sorry about this, m'friend, but I have to say it is wrong.

In the first place, it's not doing her spelling any good, and may well be doing it harm. From what I've seen of the child's writing - admittedly not much, but its features seem pretty consistent - I surmise that the problem with her spelling is neurological, the result of a glitch or delay in her ability to hear the component phonemes of a word in sequence and reproduce them in visual signals.

You can't fix a neurological glitch with brute-force drill. If the history of early education over the past decade has proved anything, it's certainly proved that. What you can do, by 'cracking down', applying pressure, pouring on the practice, is exactly what would happen if you tried to upgrade your computer with a pair of pliers: you can damage important components so they will NEVER work correctly, and the only solution is to wire around them, or just never use the programs that require them.

IMHO, the child would really be best-served by having NO spelling at this point; if all the grown-ups pressuring her would back the heck off, just let her write however she writes for a year or so, and instead focus on developing her auditory/spatial body maps. You guys are all banging away at the surface symptom - the girl's spelling sucks - and you're not accomplishing a damn thing besides making her feel bad.

If there was any possible way to run the experiment, I would bet you whatever you cared to wager that one year of never mentioning spelling to her at all (except to politely spell for her any word she asked) would lead to better results than ANY instruction program you could possibly inflict on her.

I realize you can't do that because you're dealing with the public schools, which have never been about respecting anyone's learning-readiness or working with anyone's natural glitches. She HAS to do the lessons they assign, even if those lessons make no sense to her. She HAS to do the homework they assign, even if she isn't developmentally able to succeed at it, so what she mostly learns is resentment, anxiety, aversion to the topic and poor self-concept. Nobody in the public-school system cares what she thinks, or how she feels, or how she'll be thinking and feeling when they're finished processing her.

Okay, so, she HAS to be in public school, because there's no better option available. Regrettable, but a lot of things are regrettable; one sucks it up and makes the best of things. The public school routinely intrudes on what is supposedly her free time at home with her family, sending homework home practically every day, and she HAS to complete the wretched busywork as neatly and correctly as possible, because the Law Says So.

But what's the big idea of inflicting the school's agenda on her on the rare occasions when they've given her a night's rest from it? Yes, it IS mean, and it's even more mean to tell her that you don't care what she thinks. That's invalidation; it's always mean, and it's particularly mean when done as a reaction to a justified protest against unreasonable demands.

Your homework tonight will be to re-read John Holt, Alice Miller and John Taylor Gatto, and write a 2000-word essay on how core concepts in their work foreshadow the findings of 21st-century neuroscience regarding the effects of positive vs. negative affect on how learning takes place in the brain.

Meanwhile, a shout-out to Ana:

"Yo, hi Ana - I'm an old teacher, and I NEVER made my daughter do extra homework. In fact I complained to her teachers all the time about how much homework they gave her, and I even did it for her sometimes, when there was too much. I probably did a full half of her total homework in her senior year of high school! I also let her stay home from school when she didn't want to go, even if she wasn't sick, or sometimes kept her out to go do something more educational together. She graduated on time with a high grade-point average, and is now a college sophomore with an even higher one. Lots of teachers and educators say homework is BAD for children; I'm just one of the many."

[conuly]

Ana doesn't have a spelling problem. Eva does. I had Ana do her spelling homework anyway because I had a clear suspicion that she was fabricating, that she HAD been assigned homework but hadn't bothered to copy it down in the hopes that we'd all let her not do it. (She's tried this sort of thing before. Persistence would be a virtue if it weren't so darn annoying.)

And while I think homework at this age is just wrong (well, a little less wrong in third grade, but still not helpful), I don't think it's good to let her think that she can get away with NOT doing it by lying.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry; my mistake; I do get them mixed up sometimes, especially about the reading/spelling thing, because their class curriculum sounds so age-inappropriate. Anyway if her teacher assigned homework, it's not that Ana came home without any; it's that she's lying about not having any.

It's not you 'making' her do it either; didn't she have to sign a contract with her school about all that at the beginning of the school year? Usually those contracts require the student to agree to obey the teachers, follow the rules and do their work as instructed, and they ALSO require the students' guardians to agree to enforce the keeping of the contract.

Ana's in third grade now; sheesh, time flies! No, it's not good to let her think she can get away with lying, but she might be old enough now to understand the Talk About Consequences. Specifically, you can ask her point-blank whether she wishes you to LET her get away with lying about homework, or with doing a half-ass job of it, and what she supposes the consequences would be if you did.

Bad homework==>bad grades==>loss of status in grades-driven system. That right there is the only valid reason for doing one's homework, but it's a very compelling reason when one has no choice but to be part of the system. If Ana is old enough to list the disadvantages of being labeled a lazy, stupid and/or dishonest student, she's old enough to be told frankly that if she chooses to BE lazy, stupid and dishonest by lying about her homework, you won't stand in her road, even if it means she has to be held back a grade.

It's a powerful threat: "Don't lie to me, because if you do, I will let you fail." It only works on people who grasp cause==>effect, though, so if Ana's 'supposed consequences' aren't realistic, she will still need a Homework Cop for a while, till her thinking matures a bit and she can look more than one move ahead. It's not fair to let her fail when she's still too young to grasp the fact that it's possible, and what it would mean to her.

After that, though: her work, her life, therefore her choice. Then when she comes for help with the eleventh-hour paper that she ought to have started researching last month, instead of scolding her about 'should', you can instruct her in the intricate art of producing an 'A' paper on any topic in a single night, whether or not you ever heard of it before, and without plagiarizing a single sentence. This is a crucial lesson in how Academia works; of far more practical value than whatever topic one is 'researching'.

"To get a (chance at a) good job, get good grades." Getting an actual education is unneccessary or even counter-productive, but if one wants one, or wants one's kids to have one, it's got to be done on one's own time... what little of it's left after school, work and homework.

[conuly]

No, they don't make you sign contracts until middle or high school in NYC.

And because she reads quite well and isn't testing as behind in math, there is NO way she'd be left back at this age. Quite honestly, there IS no penalty for children not doing their homework until middle school (except being kept in, maybe, if that), and even in middle school they only care if you TEST badly, so if you test well you can, as I did, do no work at all and still pass every class with a 66. (But 100 on the final!)

The moral lesson students really learn, then, is the same one that was the REAL moral in Evangeline's book - it doesn't matter if you do the work. Which will bite them in the butt when high school comes around and the teachers do care, at least some of them.

That's what really bugs me about homework, at this age it's more likely to teach bad habits than good. STARTING homework later wouldn't teach any habits, but not CARING just teaches bad ones.

After that, though: her work, her life, therefore her choice. Then when she comes for help with the eleventh-hour paper that she ought to have started researching last month, instead of scolding her about 'should', you can instruct her in the intricate art of producing an 'A' paper on any topic in a single night, whether or not you ever heard of it before, and without plagiarizing a single sentence. This is a crucial lesson in how Academia works; of far more practical value than whatever topic one is 'researching'.

LOL, one day I intend to do a post about how my family handled homework growing up. Many, many stories about both parents bluffing their way through classes, passing without doing any work because they were smarter than the teacher, or very nearly failing because even though they knew the subject they didn't do the work at all. (And this is how my mother failed first year French, when that was her first language.)

Edit: Also, I felt kinda bad, because Ana didn't immediately go "Oh, no, here it is after all!" so she probably wasn't lying. But if you let her call your bluff like that, she's a smart kid, she'll figure out that adamantly declaring she has no work will work, so I have to carry through with it.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"That's what really bugs me about homework, at this age it's more likely to teach bad habits than good. STARTING homework later wouldn't teach any habits, but not CARING just teaches bad ones."

You're absolutely right; sheesh, talk about a way to screw up the whole Homework Problem even more than it's already screwed up.