Say No To Homework
If you are an educator I am sure the headline brought you here to argue the point, and let me say I am not totally opposed to homework if it truly serves a purpose, however at this point in my child’s life, I am seeing little point. Now, hear me out here.
We are three weeks into the school year and strep hit our house week one. My daughter missed a Friday and had more seat work to make up than she had done in three days time last year, including three pages of math. So when my child comes home and tells me she is exhausted and has hardly left her desk during the day I have no doubt it’s the truth. Currently, it is 5:45 and she is ready for her shower and if she makes it to bedtime before she falls asleep I will be highly surprised. She is mentally drained, she weeps about homework because she is tired, and her communication abilities are broken down. When school is done she is just not able to function anymore. Tonight is a light homework night, we need to study. Yep, just study. For an English test, a Spelling test (those are only every two weeks, vocabulary definitions are written.), Verse test, and Reading test. There’s a math test this week too. Which I get the studying but imagine coming home after work exhausted emotionally, physically, and mentally. Now try to make your mind focus on studying. Hard? Now, add like yesterday a worksheet to the mix or having to read more and attempt to retain it in order to answer questions the next day. Nearly impossible? That’s where we are and it is only week three.
I have always been supportive of her teachers and I am attempting to encourage her to tough this year out, but her love of school has quickly become a subject of hate and anxiety. For those of you who have just joined me on this school journey, my child craves school. She enjoys the routine, she relishes learning new things and jumps at a challenge. Her goal is to be the student body president one day and to help make her school the best school ever. She insisted we go to her school clean up day and she wanted to know if she could go to Summer school. She wants to have a Science Fair for her grade because they don’t and “that is just disappointing”. So it is heartbreaking for her to come home like she is. I was told this year would be a hard year, I didn’t think it meant breaking her spirit about loving school. She has never been a social butterfly if anything she struggles to make friends and often feels as though she doesn’t belong around the other kids. So it is not as though she has been wanting to go for that aspect of it. The homework truly feels like another nail in the coffin for her love of learning.
I set a new president yesterday and I assume some will croak at the idea but I told her I wasn’t going to ask anymore. Her homework was up to her to get finished and if she didn’t then as long as she did well in class it was okay. I wasn’t going to poke or prod, I can’t. I can’t be the cause of her breaking down after every school day. I can’t have her sitting on the couch in tears hyperventilating because she just “can’t do it anymore.” a true quote. Some I’m sure will read this and say she is being dramatic and in truth, I wish it were the case in some way, but for someone who has been eager to do their homework in years past minus the odd assignment or two, it’s not that. This year has reminded me already of the horrible years of my elementary and middle and high school career where I was up till midnight doing my work and crying begging not to do it. Now, she wouldn’t be up till midnight but she is simply mentally unable to function any further. So, I implore you if your child is not able to continue on after the school day is done and you know your child and if they are being serious or putting on, don’t risk their mental health simply to please their teacher or make a grade. Those grades right now are not going to make them a better person, they’re not going to teach them empathy, and they’re not going to teach them respect for their own emotional needs or later the emotional needs of others. But you recognizing their needs and prioritizing them can change their entire perspective on the world.
