She confided, I totally agree, and then declared that each grade-level team could act independently. By the time that rolled around, we had a new principal. When they couldn’t agree during the last staff meeting of the year, I printed another set for the first meeting of the next. I spent a week’s grocery money at Kinko's copying articles for every teacher at the school. So I went to the principal, who confided, I totally agree, but said he needed unanimous support from all the school's teachers to make a change. In the process of writing it, I learned about studies supporting my gut call that homework wasn’t benefiting my kid (see the “Arm Yourself With the Stats” section below). When I raised the issue with my daughter’s teacher, she confided, I totally agree, but asked me to write a letter she could take to her supervisors. I found pulling her away from pretend games for something that left her in tears excruciating, both undermining and cruel. She found first grade’s nightly math worksheets excruciating, both uninteresting and difficult. An accomplished mimic, she’d pull a chair up alongside a table of middle-schoolers at the public library, set out a sheet of paper, and begin chewing the end of a pencil, proudly declaring, “I do my homewurt!”īut the real thing quickly disappointed us both. That also had something to do with my kid, who regularly requested “homewurt” starting at age 3.

As a rule-follower and the kind of person who enjoys task completion so much that folding laundry can feel therapeutic, I didn’t anticipate having a problem with homework.

Is there any homework