How Much Homework Is Too Much?

It's Halloween today, and I'm bleary-eyed—not from getting ready for the holiday, but from helping my youngest son practice his Spanish presentation.
It wasn't a huge deal of an assignment. Just two minutes about someone deceased—he chose President Kennedy—for a Day of the Dead celebration in his Spanish II class. However, he also had homework for English, algebra, physics and Western Civilization—on a weekend.
He's a freshman in high school, and it's been a rough transition for him. His four older brothers and sisters all went to public schools, and they were whipped into shape early by homework drills: endless math sheets, word searches, posters. I gave up ever trying to clean off the dining room table, because somebody was always doing a project--or having a breakdown because a project wasn't done. Sometimes it was me having the breakdown.
These four older children all went to great colleges. Three have now graduated and actually have jobs, amazingly; the fourth is in her senior year and working on her college thesis. Good for them, right? And great for us, too, of course.
Did all of that homework get them there?
I have no idea. I never would have questioned the idea of homework—it was drilled into my head, too, that you should always have papers to keep you busy, even if it meant staying up until midnight to get it done—except that my youngest son went to a Montessori School. The Montessori philosophy was, hey, if you need to review something, here's some homework that can help you. Otherwise, go outside and play, cook dinner with your family, or draw a picture.
“He wouldn't be having so much trouble with high school if he'd gone to a 'real' middle school,” my cousin grumbles.
Maybe. But the thing is, our youngest son isn't really having trouble with high school. He loves his teachers, comes home repeating incredible stories about Chinese philosophers from his Western Civ class or trying out new physics theories. He loves to practice Spanish. He is making friends and shaving minutes off his time at every cross country meet. He's a successful high school student in every way—except for that struggle over homework.
The thing Montessori taught him—and me, too—is that there are lots of important things to learn in this world. Maria Montessori, in fact, had a theory that kids in early adolescence shouldn't even go to a traditional school, but to a farm school, where they could exercise their bodies as well as their minds and become truly engaged in the world. They should do community service and—gasp--hold down a small job, all as a way of stimulating intellectual curiosity.
Instead of doing homework, our son would rather be practicing flips on the trampoline, hiking with his dad and me, working in his father's wood shop, fiddling around on the bass guitar, and, of course, playing video games online.
“Computer games are ruining our kids,” a friend suggests.
Really? Why? Because he's playing games online with a team of kids from Canada, Spain, Germany, and the U.S.? Because they Skype and learn how to work on team strategies together, learning about how each of them lives along the way? Is that why those games are bad?
“He's always fooling around,” my mother argues.
I suppose that's what it looks like from the outside. Having been through Montessori, though, makes me question whether doing seven hours of homework on a weekend is necessarily more valuable than doing everything else that commands our son's attention.
Don't get me wrong—I'm highly impressed by my son's high school instructors and curriculum. And, given what research show about brain development—that our brains are the most plastic they'll ever be until age 16 or so, which means that whatever those brain synapses are doing during middle and early high school years truly impacts what kind of thinker your child will become as an adult--I'm delighted that our son is stretching himself in many different directions.
It's just the homework that gets me. Why isn't it enough to focus on academics all day, and then give it a rest?
In the incredible documentary “Race to Nowhere,” we see a series of students who have been crushed by homework, while parents and academics wonder how they can keep students engaged and inspired. Duh. If homework kills the creative buzz, why are we still letting it bleed into evenings, so that there's never time for a game of cards, never mind chess? Why do our weekends have to be spent figuring out physics vectors instead of hiking in the White Mountains?
The counter argument, I know, is that homework teaches accountability, reviews topics covered in class, and prepares your child for college. In college, though, students are older and more motivated to organize their time. (Plus, let's not kid ourselves, there's more free time in college than in high school.)
Meanwhile, what message are we sending by piling on the homework in high school?
Here it is: Stress is good for you, kids! See how stressed Mom and Dad are? That can be you, too! Stress is what you have to look forward to in college and beyond. Forget friends, fun, family, or even sleep! You'd better focus on school if you want to get ahead—so that you can take on even more responsibility later!
Really? Is that what we mean by preparing children for a lifetime of learning? Sounds like the School of Hard Knocks to me.

Grooving with Rihanna, S&M and the Kids in My Car

For the first time in my mothering life, I almost turned the radio off today.
Here's what happened: I was driving my 13 year-old son and his three friends to a skateboard park. The boys were busy doing what most teens do: multitasking with the help of an iPod, two cell phones and a Nintendo DS. As if that weren't enough, they wanted the car radio on, too.
Meanwhile, I was doing what most moms do: multitasking. I had tuned everything out to mentally plan my Saturday circuit: skateboard park, post office, grocery store, hardware store, skateboard park, dinner.
We were stopped at a red light when my son asked me to turn up the car radio. “Hey Mom, here's that song I was telling you about.”
“What song?” I turned up the volume. Frankly, as the mother of five, you could probably let a pair of rhinos loose in my car and I wouldn't even blink. I'd forgotten the radio was even on.
“Rihanna's Spaghetti and Meatballs song. Listen.”
You can see where this is headed, right? I turned up the radio, and there was Rihanna, whose music always has that wonderful danceable beat, but whose lyrics are so repetitive that I usually tune her out with the rest of the noise in the car.
This song, though, was enough to make even four teenaged boys fall silent.
Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But whips and chains excite me
This is one of those teachable moments that all the experts tell parents about, right? Well, I sure could have used one of those experts in my car right then.
I decided to play the dumb mother card. “I don't get it,” I said. “Why do you call this Rihanna's Spaghetti and Meatballs song?”
“Keep listening, Mom,” my son said.
Lord, did I have to? Well, it couldn't get much worse, I figured. I could survive this teachable moment. After all, just the week before, I'd managed to make it through the entire Greek exhibit in the Museum of Fine Arts with a pair of eighth grade boys, despite the seemingly endless array of ancient vases ornamented with satyrs chasing nymphs, penises thrusting like swords. Not to mention all of those paintings of nude women sprawled on couches, beds, chairs and fields. Sex in the air, indeed.
Alas, Rihanna wasn't through yet. Here came the cheesy spaghetti and meatballs chorus on a platter:
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
Oh, I love the feeling you bring to me, oh, you turn me on
It's exactly what I've been yearning for, give it to me strong
And meet me in my boudoir, make my body say ah ah ah
I like it – like it
“Huh,” I said. “What do you guys think of this song?”
“It's kind of boring,” one kid piped up.
“Yeah,” my son agreed. “You'd think somebody who writes as many songs as Rihanna would be better at it by now. All her songs are about how turned on she is.”
“What about what the song's saying?” I asked. “Do you think she really likes whips and chains?”
“Well, they probably look good in her music videos,” my son's other friend offered. “But most girls probably wouldn't like that.”
“No,” I agreed. “It's a bad idea to hit girls, right?”
“Duh, Mom,” my son said.
Duh, indeed. The boys went back to their conversation about skate parks and video games. Meanwhile, I put the grocery list out of my mind and concentrated on what Rihanna had to say:
Na na na na
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
I remembered Chris Brown, suddenly, and his assault against Rihanna a few years ago, and I couldn't help but wonder: Is this the song of a liberated, powerful, sexy woman with a message not just for my 13 year-old boys, but for all of those high school girls getting excited about prom night this spring? Or for all of those middle school girls giggling as they share the ear buds of their iPods and talk about boys? Really, Rihanna? Is this the best you can do for them?
Na na na na. You can do better than this.

Is Any High School Really Worth $136,000?

As always, my 13 year-old son has waited until bedtime to download his anxieties. He's a bright, sensitive kid whose worries run the gamut from global warming to how long his gerbil will live.
Tonight his questions revolved around his private school applications, which we submitted just before Christmas. Will he be admitted to any of the schools he applied to? We calculate the odds. What if he gets into all of them? How will he choose? We talk about visit days and how he can decide which school suits him best. What if he starts at one school and decides he'd rather be at another? We discuss that, too.
The one thing we don't talk about is money. I'm glad. Not because I'm avoiding the issue – well, maybe just a little – but because I still haven't managed to wrap my mind around how much money a private high school education costs.
My husband and I are already tiptoeing through the college tuition minefield. We have two older sons who have just graduated from college. Our two daughters are still at university. We've paid and paid for our kids to grow into educated, worldly citizens with college degrees in hand. That's been tough enough. So what business do I have, thinking that I should pay $136,000 for this last kid of ours to attend a so-called “independent school” for grades 9 through 12? What will our son get for this money? A gold-plated locker?
We didn't start down this road by choice. We went to public high schools. Our four older children also went to public high schools and thrived. They played sports, participated in music and theater, belonged to clubs, did the proms and parties. They complained about the usual things: boring classes, teachers who yelled, mean kids, crowded classrooms, stupid homework assignments. Yet all four of them were accepted by good colleges, even Ivy League schools. They majored in subjects that ignited their passions. Our two graduates – one in 2009, the other in 2010 – even managed to find jobs right away in their chosen fields. Hallelujah!
Our youngest son, though, has been different from the start. He always hated his public school, starting with kindergarten, where he fumed about rest time. Why would he rest, when there were so many other, more interesting things to do?
In elementary school, he was chastised soundly by one teacher for making a gingerbread house that wasn't like the A-frame house his teacher showed them, but more like a Frank Lloyd Wright design, all flat roofs and porches. A fifth grade teacher complained that he asked too many questions that weren't on topic, while he ranted about her making mistakes, especially in science. He was selected for the Gifted and Talented Program in fourth grade, but that consisted of just more research papers. He hated going, but went because it got him out of class.
Here in Massachusetts, we have a tense, worksheet-driven MCAS curriculum that puts teachers and kids through their paces so fast that there's little room to do anything else. “Don't learn the math in that chapter,” one teacher warned our son. “Those problems aren't on the MCAS test.”
By the time he hit middle school, our son was complaining about “having to learn too many dumb things that I can't remember” as well as the typical mean or absent-minded teachers. His classmates bothered him, too. Their idea of fun was to push each other into lockers, smoke dope between classes, or de-pants each other in the hallway. His “most exciting day at school ever” was when his seventh grade math teacher lost his temper and chased one ornery kid down the halls with a chair.
At home, meanwhile, our son continued to be enthusiastic about everything, especially when he was building machines, like an automatic card shuffler or a robot that fed his fish for him automatically once a day. “School is just something I have to get through until I can come home and learn things,” he told me with a shrug. “I can't wait until I'm old enough to drop out.”
Uh oh. In desperation, I stopped by a local Montessori School to ask about their middle school program. Amazingly, they had space for him. Even more shocking, we could afford it. Yes, ten grand was a lot of money. But, if it made our son love going to school, it would be worth it. We were fortunate enough to have an education fund for him. We decided to use part of it for middle school instead of saving all of it for college. “It's just a different resource allocation,” my husband rationalized. I saw it as an incubation period, one where he could take a breather from the rigors of public school.
The result was shocking. Our son was transformed within a few weeks. He was happy, polite, and sweet again. He was not only allowed, but encouraged, to follow his interests at school. The first year, he built a camel out of wire and paper as a visual aid for a research project on the desert; he also built an architectural model of our bathroom to scale, and performed as Lysander in Midsummer Night's Dream, reciting Shakespeare in the car on the way to and from school.
“This doesn't even feel like school,” he confessed one day. “It's more like a place where everyone wants to learn things, even the teachers.”
It was true that Montessori didn't feel like a “real” school to me, either. There were no chairs lined in rows. The students wore slippers in the classroom. They snacked when they felt like it, worked together or alone as they wished, and called teachers by their first names. It felt more like learning in someone's living room. The philosophy of Montessori – that each child is naturally curious, and will do the work of learning if you just get out of his way, guiding him only as necessary – might as well have been designed for our son. It seemed to work for lots of other kids, too.
Alas, our Montessori School goes only through eighth grade. Now we're making another transition. Hence our dilemma: We've seen what a difference this private school education made in our son's life. We'd like to keep his enthusiasm level for learning high. But is it really worth paying $136,000 for a high school education?
Most New England independent schools average around $32,000 per year just for day student tuition – not much less than most colleges. These schools look like colleges, too, with their glassy science buildings, smart boards, indoor rowing machines, ice hockey rinks, music studios and playing fields. You name it, they have it: debate team, Latin, Chinese, AP Physics, study abroad, science internships, math teams. The teachers have masters and doctoral degrees. There are just 12 to 14 kids in a class. Who wouldn't want to go to a high school like that, especially if it's filled with other students and teachers who actually want to learn?
But – and again, I ask this in all earnestness, because I really don't know – is an independent school education really a better start in life than a public school education? Part of me thinks yes, absolutely, at least for this child. My hope is that our youngest will find a high school that fits him as well as Montessori has, and that his high school years will help him continue to blossom as a passionate lifelong learner; a concerned citizen of the world; and a confident, loving, generous young adult.
Then I am seized by doubts that aren't just nagging. They're like hammerhead blows to the back of my neck: What if we lose our jobs, I wonder, and we suddenly can't pay for this mythical, magical high school with smart boards and, for all I know, unicorns? What if one of us dies in the next four years, and we can't afford college because there is only one household income, and we've blown our education fund on high school?
Or what if paying $136,000 for a private school education turns out to be a mistake for other reasons? What if this money only continues to shelter my son from knowing what it's like to be around people who struggle every day to put food on the table and gas up their cars?
What if, by going to a school where it's considered normal for every child to have a laptop computer and a North Face jacket, he becomes one of the elite people who don't try to change the world, because they're busy maintaining their status quo?
My son is asleep by now. But I am wide awake, thinking about all of the decisions that we parents make for our children that are so much bigger than the here and now, starting with the kind of education we give them – both in and out of the classroom.