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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What I don't understand is why parents don't mind their child being on sports teams for up to 20 hours per week even in elementary but then gripe about 30-60 minutes of homework a night? Maybe you'd have more family time if junior wasn't playing travel soccer and baseball at the same time.[/quote]

Yeah, this is the crazy part to me.

If you break it down, two to three hours of homework is roughly a half hour of homework per class you have the next day.  So:  a half hour of reading for English, a half hour of Algebra or Calculus math problems, a half hour of History reading, a half hour of Chemistry or Bio problems (or reading), a half hour of World Religions or Health or whatever (for me it was another English class).  If you're a fast reader or worker (or, really, if you just don't care) you can get through the reading more quickly.  If you had study hall or extra time at lunch, you could knock some of the easy stuff out of the way earlier.  (I always used to try to do the work with the heaviest textbooks first, so I wouldn't have to carry them home.  Maybe textbooks are all on the computer now!)

But if kids don't have a new Chapter to read before the next class happens, what exactly do people think the kids are going to talk about in class the next day?  If it's a particularly difficult concept in Chem or something, sure, maybe they need another day to discuss it.  But most kids need to do the reading in advance of the lecture in order to understand WTF is going on.  And you certainly can't have a meaningful discussion of The Canterbury Tales if nobody in class has actually done the reading.  And then there are days when you need to write a paper or study for a test or turn in your lab results or whatever.  For the people who are advocating that 2-3 hours per night is too much homework, when do you think the kids are going to read their textbooks or the novels they're discussing in class?  Or do you think they should be doing the homework in class, and never discussing the issues together?  I don't understand why you think this is crazy, because this is what I did as a high school student and I suspect it's what you did, too.

I agree that I'm sure that some kids are putting too much pressure on themselves and are too stressed out, if they're doing 4-5 hours of homework every night and they want everything to be perfect.  But 2-3 hours is not craziness.  That's what you need to be prepared for classes the next day to have something to discuss together and have a meaningful conversation, or understand the lecture (unless you are brilliant and don't need to do the reading!).  I just don't understand the whining about 2-3 hours, especially from the parents who go along with their kids' crazy time commitments to sports teams.  Your kid probably won't be playing soccer when they're 40, but hopefully s/he'll still be using that brain of hers in some job somewhere that his/her academic interests led her to.[/quote]

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