My cousin in NJ has an 8 year old who does really well in school. He gets pulled out class for *challenge math*, *challenge reading*, and one other subject - which is all well and good.
I looked over his math and was pretty impressed at the difficulty level - a lot of word/thinking problems and whatnot.
Of course almost all youngsters, no matter how advanced, will struggle with word problems involving *new* material.
So my cousin has to sit down, every night, and do her son's homework with him.
Again, the questions weren't easy by any stretch.
CaptiousNut - What....do you spend an hour or so with him on his homework each night?
Cousin - AT LEAST!
CaptiousNut - Well, you're doing exactly what I'm doing then....I spend about an hour a day grinding through math with him. You may as well become a homeschooler!
The only difference, of course, is that she has a teacher choose the worksheets whereas I do it independently.
This is total bull$hit, by the way. Parents send their kids to school for 6 hours TO LEARN; and teachers send them home tired, ignorant, and with an assignment for Mom and Dad! Homework is nothing less than an admission of school system failure.
And I do feel for those parents who work all day long only to come home and have to spend their quality time with their kids doing torturous *homework*.
5 comments:
It is more like seven hours at school with FOUR hours of homework for the boy that lives with me.
And it is EASY stuff.
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure it would cost me a lot more than 5 grand a year to get a babysitter to watch my kids 7 hours a day, 5 days a week while I try to get some work done.
Now if the government would just step up to the plate and get someone to come in and do the homework with them at night so I'd have time to go out boozing...
But what if you were self-employed?
I am self-employed. I took care of my daughter during the day and worked whenever I had the time until she was old enough to go to school. But I was so much younger then.
I was half joking about the government daycare. I'd be lying to say that I don't cherish that 7 hour break from playing Cruise Director to a 7 year old. I'd be dead in the water without it.
Seriously, I don't know how you do it without losing your mind.
JT,
One of the keys is to get them *self-propelled* ASAP.
My wife has been doing stuff one-on-one all day today (7 hours?) and I just yelled at her.
Use audio-books, online sites like time4learning.com, make them read, put out edu-toys, make them draw, etc.
Quote from yesterday's post:
I do not think that education ought to be anyone's whole profession: it should be undertaken for at most two hours a day by people whose remaining hours are spent away from children. The society of the young is fatiguing, especially when strict discipline is avoided.
Two hours!
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