We are two weeks into school and, after this weekend, I remember how much I hate homework. I actually hate homework more as a parent than I did as a child. I even seem to deal with more homework than I did as a child. Doing homework is more never-ending than doing laundry and more likely to burn than doing ironing. Boy, are we doing a good job of preparing our children for pointless drudgery!

Those who advocate lots of homework seem to miss the point. Activities other than school activities can be educational. I didn�t let school interfere with my education but I�m not sure that my children can do the same. My children would not be sitting on the couch watching television if they did not have homework. They would be reading and writing and dancing and drawing and such. I miss the wonderful short stories Kat used to write and the dances Day-Hay choreographed when they did not have homework.

Both of my girls are very bright. As a general rule, one can safely assume that the amount of time they spend on homework is less than that spent by the average student. I hate to think how much time that kid is spending. The amount of time spent by a slow student must be sufficient to make up part of a plot a horror movie that will never get written because that slow student will be too busy doing homework.

Every time I have asked about the amount of homework, I have been told that the amount is necessary not to teach the material but to prepare the student for the homework they will get next year. This explanation makes as much sense to me as saying that a student should get a shot this year to prepare them for the really important immunizations of next year.

All of this stuff makes as much sense to me as trying to teach kids to study information they already know so that they will know how to study�which seems to be what a lot of the homework is. We have a lot of homework because we are micro-managing our children�s learning. If doing six problems is good for reinforcement, it does not follow that doing twelve problems is better. If the first six problems were done correctly, it is much better to move on to something else more challenging. If the first six problems were done incorrectly, there is no point in reinforcing the mistakes by having the child do the next six incorrectly too.

In the years that I taught, both at the elementary level and at the junior college level, as well as the years I was a teaching assistant in law school, I rarely met someone at the bottom of the class who had to study harder. I usually found that they were spending more time studying than I ever had. What they seemed to do was study very inefficiently. They would spend a lot of time with material they already knew because it felt comfortable. The information they had trouble with got short shrift. When we teach kids to study by having them study what they already know, we teach them this inefficiency.

But I must live in the times I find myself in. I�m sure my children will survive the homework (albeit noisily). And surviving them surviving their homework is my homework.

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