Homework: Threat or Menace?

Turns out the process of switching from this element to that element involves the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom, concepts with which the best thinkers of the mid-17^th century were staggeringly unfamiliar. Newton could invent calculus and make lasting contributions to optics, whatever that is, but absent one of those billion dollar collider thingies, changing one element into another wasn’t happening.

Unlike Newton who never turned lead into anything but more lead, you have the power to turn your peaceful, pleasant, functioning household into a hellish scream-fest with only one seemingly innocuous interrogatory. “Did you do your homework?” can engender a plunge into a black hole from which-speaking of physics-no light or life can ever return.

“We didn’t have any homework!” “I already did my homework!” Why are you always hounding me?” are just a few of the more gentle replies from frazzled, frustrated students. At the end of which conversation-stop me if you’ve heard this one before-no more actual homework is done.

Remember your “friend” who is “helping” you to lose weight and be healthy by “thoughtfully” reminding you to eat right and get to the gym? Your friend many be right. We all could benefit from committing to less sugar and more cardio. But who wants to hear that shit? Especially because your “friend” with the advice is invariably a size two who runs marathons while pushing her gifted toddler in a stroller and getting promoted at her high-paying, work-from-home job. In any relationship, mentioning the same guidance more than three times in a year is nagging. Your kids feel the same way. Trust me on this one: they already know your opinion on homework.

Don’t get me wrong. There may be some benefit to homework for high school kids. If homework engenders learning beyond the classroom, who am I to suggest that it seldom does? My issue is with parents asking about homework getting done. Is “did you do your homework? Did you do your homework?” the revenge of the parents for the children’s incessant “are we there yet” of car trips past?

Whether or not your childlearns anything from doing homework (she doesn’t-homework is about compliance, not learning) is another subject. None-the-less, it may be in your child’s interest to do homework thus avoiding public humiliation and and a gpa lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut. If your child is going to do homework, she had better figure out how to do so on her own. Because “Do you have your day planner? Did you write down your assignments? When is your next test?” never lead to “Thanks, Mumsy. I had almost forgotten these important responsibilities. I’ll get cracking in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”

Martin Cruz Smith writes about a man who breaks a hole in the ice in Siberia in February and jumps in. Whether he crawls out of the water and freezes to death in the 40 below air or stays in the water and dies of hypothermia is of little concern three minutes later because dead is dead. If parents are yelling at kids to do homework, the train is already off the track.

Typically kids who can do homework do do homework.

You see your kids as movies. I see your kids as snapshots. That is, you see your kids every day. I only connect with them every so often. But I have seen the end of the film. Here’s what can happen when parents yell at high school kids to do homework:

1)   Kids can come to believe that their parents’ expectations are unreasonable, that their parents aren’t connected to their children’s abilities and limitations. And before you intone that the homework is asking him to write the definitions for and memorize 20 lousy vocabulary words not compose a violin concerto or remove his own appendix, remember that the kid has other responsibilities including sports and other classes and that he may be burnt out by the end of the day.

2)   The “noise” concerning homework can be so loud that other more important information is ignored or overlooked. In a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” scenario, I’d rather my kids hear “don’t take drugs” than “do your homework.”

3)   Kids will be able to find their own meaning, make their own priorities, figure out what is important to them, individuate from their parents if the responsibility for planning, prioritizing, and doing homework remains entirely with them.

And, if I may speak frankly, you couldn’t pass the final exam from the last math class you took for love or money, but your attitude about learning remains deeply embedded in your way of looking at the world. You may not remember much math, but you do remember your process of doing homework. Or as the only person ever smarter than Newton said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned at school.”

Let the kids derive their own meaning from homework. Einstein got it right.

So can you.

* Readers of a certain age may recognize the title of this essay as having been appropriated from “National Lampoon,” volume 1, number 16, 1971.