Stop Homework

Today’s guest blog­ger, “FedUp­Mom,” had been advo­cat­ing for home­work reform in her daughter’s pub­lic school in sub­ur­ban Philadel­phia. This school year, she decided to try pri­vate school for her fifth-grade daugh­ter; she is hav­ing more suc­cess in get­ting the school to respond to her con­cerns. This is FedUpMom’s fourth post; you can read her other entries here, here and here.

A Pri­vate School Lis­tens
by FedUp Mom

We fled the pub­lic schools last year and enrolled our kids in a pri­vate Quaker school with a rep­u­ta­tion for being nur­tur­ing and child-centered. When my daugh­ter vis­ited the school last year, the teach­ers were con­cerned that she seemed with­drawn and depressed. I was hope­ful that they under­stood the issues in her case.

Every­thing got off to a good start until the begin­ning of the sec­ond full week of school. When I picked my daugh­ter up, she told me that she had been held out of recess because she for­got to do part of her home­work! I was furious.

A cou­ple of days later I brought my hus­band along and had an impromptu meet­ing with the prin­ci­pal and the school psy­chol­o­gist. I explained that I was ter­ri­fied that we were walk­ing right down the same path that led to my daughter’s depres­sion last year, which started when she was held out of recess for neglect­ing to get our sig­na­ture on a test.

The prin­ci­pal said, “We all want your daugh­ter to be happy.” I said, “You know, I believe you want her to be happy. But the prin­ci­pal back at the pub­lic school said the same thing, and I believed her too. None of that mat­ters if we don’t get change on the ground.”

My daugh­ter had one of my least-favorite home­work assign­ments, writ­ing out def­i­n­i­tions. I said at the meet­ing, “This sets up an adver­sar­ial rela­tion­ship between the stu­dent and teacher. The only rea­son to write the def­i­n­i­tions out is to prove that you looked at them. The mes­sage is that the teacher doesn’t trust the child to do the work. Couldn’t the assign­ment just be, ‘study these words’?” The psy­chol­o­gist, of all peo­ple, said, “But some kids need more struc­ture than that!” I said, “Fine, so give those kids more struc­ture. But let my daugh­ter do what feels com­fort­able to her.”

The next Mon­day when I picked my daugh­ter up after school, she told me that her teacher had announced a new pol­icy; they wouldn’t hold kids out of recess for unfin­ished home­work any­more (the new pol­icy is that after three incom­pletes, they con­tact the par­ents.) My daughter’s new home­work assign­ment was “study these words…”

I wish I had a magic for­mula for suc­cess­ful nego­ti­a­tions, but I really don’t. In my expe­ri­ence, it’s just about impos­si­ble to nego­ti­ate with peo­ple who have no inten­tion of lis­ten­ing to you. You can try to be polite, you can start off with a com­pli­ment, you can have the best diplo­matic skills in the world, and it will get you nowhere if the peo­ple you’re talk­ing to think they can afford not to take you seri­ously. On the other hand, it’s not that I did such a fab­u­lous diplo­matic job with the folks at the Quaker school. The dif­fer­ence is that they really wanted to hear me and help my daughter.

And of course, we haven’t reached Par­adise yet. There’s still more rote home­work than I’d like (I’d really be happy with zero home­work). But it’s still an improve­ment over where we were. When­ever some­one men­tions the pub­lic schools in my daughter’s pres­ence, she says she never wants to go back.

Posted in category Moms (and Dads) on a Mission on October 21, 2008 at 9:26 am
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