I was chatting on the phone to my fourteen-year-old granddaughter today, and she told me she has nine pieces of homework to do over the weekend. That's right. Nine. "The weekends are just school, but at home," she said. How sad. I certainly don't remember my own children ever having this amount of homework.
Some of this homework is Spanish. She has to learn over 100 new words. They include the Spanish for "widower" and "step-brother". "I don't even use these words in English," she told me.
Now, have you ever, when abroad, needed either of these words? I would have thought phrases such as "please return this to the chef. It's inedible," or "please don't do that. I have a boyfriend/fiancé/husband at home," or even "do you have aspirin/sticking plasters/pair of crutches" might possibly come in handy for a young woman abroad, rather than the words she has to learn.
My poor daughter grieves for the (triplet) children she used to play/walk/ picnic with at weekends, but they don't have time to play with her any more. I've invited her to come down to Devizes to play with me. I hate Ludo and Monopoly, but I'm a dab hand at Scrabble.
Tempted, Daisy?
(This post pinged off too early yesterday. Apologies.)
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The Spanish reminds me of my own daughter's plight approximately 12 years ago but the good news is that she is now bi-lingual and that it did pay off! Especially later when she was heading the local Spanish speaking American Airlines desk and reading Law at the same time. And she's English! Worry not. They find their way.
ReplyDeleteThank you - that's reassuring. and congratulations on having a bi-lingual daughter. Such a huge gift for any child.
DeleteI think she could do with a more imaginative teacher.
ReplyDeleteNot that any of mine were.
School is just something to be endured as is homework.
Adrian, I was over-worked as a child, and finally broke down. Long story. I hated school!
DeleteThat is sad and maybe why you are very protective of your granddaughter. I agree with Adrian - maybe the teacher isn't very imaginative which is always a negative for a child. Having had a father who once told me that my best wasn't good enough, I ensured that my children weren't subjected to that sort of discipline. He wasn't an unkind man at all but expected a great deal from me - I put it down to being an only child.
DeleteI don't know how to put this without being offensive. I'll do my my best.
DeleteIn my experience teachers are not inspiring, my son's teachers were appalling. I stopped going to parent/teacher evenings as it was too depressing. Their lack of knowledge was frightening. It can't be that hard to leave school, go to college and then go back to school and regurgitate what you learned there.
Bee Blog, I used to help my father rebuild engines and he used to say good enough is near enough but near enough is not good enough.
Adrian, I think you're right. But as to sheer amount of work, this school is very competitive, and it seems to be all about results. My late husband was a headmaster, and his priority was the kids' happiness. Not a fashionable priority, but.....the children loved him and the school. I know I'm biased, but the entire school turned out for his funeral, although nobody has to go.
DeleteMy French text book, at school, was all about a family that had two children andd a pet monkey. I since spent 5 years in France, without many monkey related challenges to my vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteWe need to be able to say "effing morons" in all kinds of tongues! It would be so much more relevant.
ER, I love the monkey thing! What kind of French holiday were they preparing you for?
DeleteI do have a French husband. Maybe that's prophetic, after all.
DeleteUm....how do I put this, ER? What exactly does your husband look like?
DeleteThe only sentence I can remember from my French classes is, 'Can you check my tyre?' On a recent weekend to Bordeaux with seven of my girlfriends, I was challenged to use this sentence. Please note, we didn't have a car!
ReplyDeleteDid you have a bike, Wendy??
DeleteThat's absolutely awful making children work so hard at home - when are they supposed to have fun! And I quite agree about those words - why can't they give them useful (age-appropriate) vocabulary that they can use on holiday?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rosemary. I think it's the age-appropriate thing that is so silly. She will have forgotten those words by this time next week. Unless she comes across a Spanish widower.
DeleteThe school nearest to us finishes at 3.10 each day - that's an hour earlier than when I was at school, so perhaps the students need more homework to make up for shorter lessons?
ReplyDeleteI don't think they come out as early as that, Patsy. The school is very academic, and that seems to be all that matters.
DeleteOh Frances. And this from the novelist who wrote, for example, Dead Earnest! (where the word "widow" appears already on page 9... just checked) OK, you might manage to order a meal on holiday in Spain without involving too many family references. But if you want to pick up a novel (any novel!), watch a soap opera in the original language, or actually get to know someone, I'd say that being able to sort out phrases like "my step-grandmother's half-brother's ex-wife's widower" can be pretty essential. (Take it from someone who started learning English as 2nd language in school at the age of 10 and in my early teens began reading novels in English - like Agatha Christie mysteries, and Oliver Twist.)
ReplyDeleteYou've obviously done very well, DT, and I take your point. But she is in the early stages of Spanish. I was very much grown-up and had been widowed myself when I wrote Dead Ernest!
DeleteI get that, Frances. Still, learning a foreign language inevitably involves learning a lot of words. There's no way around it. Even if perhaps it can be argued that there are better or worse ways to accomplish it, and different opinions on which words ought to come first!
DeleteAnother good point, ER. But perhaps just as a child learns words in his native tongue in the order in which he needs them - mummy, daddy, book, dog etc. - wouldn't it be better for students to learn words they're more likely to need? But my main gripe was really about the sheer quantity of homework these kids have. It seems to be getting worse, too.
DeleteWell as I don't have any grandchildren (as I also don't have any children) I really can't compare. As for my own school years I know there was a lot of homework but again I'm not sure how the amount compared with English schools. I think there may (perhaps) have been a policy of no homework given from Friday to Monday. But that did not necessarily mean one did not have to use the weekend to catch up. There was no doubt a lot I found more boring than learning words though (as I always liked language).
DeleteI am a retired English teacher but I was never a big fan of homework. Surely thirty hours of schooling a week should be enough for any child if the school hours are used productively. One thing that families may not often appreciate is that teachers themselves are customarily pressurised into setting homework these days and proving that it has been set. I wanted children to take up hobbies, climb trees, play sports, laugh with their friends. How can you do that if there's a cloud called "Homework" hanging over your life? Another thing I would like to say on this topic is that schools pay little attention to checking out the amounts of homework that different subjects ladle on to the pupils. Very little co-ordination. I do not accept that widespread assumption that there is a correlation between the setting of homework and good quality education.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that thoughtful comment, YP. It occurred to me too that there seems to be little communication between departments as to how much homework each child receives. A local secondary school headmaster did away wth homework altogther, although I'm not sure whether the school was able to keep it up.
DeleteHere's an unhelpful comment. I didn't do homework. My parents didn't pressure me and I lied about it anyway. When any was done it was in detention. Finally school gave up on me and asked me to leave. Oh, Happy day!
ReplyDeleteUnhelpful? Maybe. Entertaining? Certainly! Thank you, Lynne.
DeleteI don't think I was ready for education when I was at school. I also think our convent school was uninspiring. I would love to go back to school now, and might even enjoy nine lots of homework. Sadly, I would have to pay a fortune to do so. Tell Daisy to make the most of it while she can.
ReplyDeleteDaisy's my daughter, and she left school quite a while ago! She loved school. I hated it. Mine was a hot house and they cared only for results. Maggie, start applying now, before it really is too late!
DeleteSorry, of course I meant your granddaughter. Easier said than done re the studying, for many reasons.
DeleteI suspect that schools which give this amount of homework are putting unfair pressure on the kids. They'll probably survive, but it really does seem unbalanced. Life is about more than exam success.
ReplyDeleteI think it's the loss of chidhood that's particularly sad, Jenny. You really can't have that time back again.
DeleteMy homework experience is rather similar to Lynne's... If it was for a subject I didn't understand at class, I wouldn't even be bothered to get the book out at home. If it was something I liked, I had no trouble coming up with good (sometimes even great) results. It all depended on my mood, and my parents couldn't - and didn't try - to put much pressure on me, although they certainly weren't happy about the outcome (I never went to university).
ReplyDeleteMeike, I think the pressure has got so much more intense than when my kids were at school; in England, of course. I can't speak for Germany! And you seem to have done well without university?
DeleteI hated school. I love languages but struggle to speak adequately those which are not my native tongue. Those who are brought up bi-lingual tell me that once you are bi-lingual other languages come easily. So I suppose if homework helps achieve that it is a Good Thing. Whether it does or not for non-native bilingual children is, in my mind, open to question. My parents didn't pressure me and my wife and I didn't pressure our children. As it happens our children did/have done very well in life. Would we all have done better with more pressure? Who knows? Would we have been any happier? I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteI am not so sure that everyone brought up bi lingual find other languages easy. Having an Austrian mother and obviously other relations - such as a grandmother, uncle and great aunt, and spending the first three plus years of my life in occupied Austria, I spoke German before I spoke English. To the point where my father asked my mother 'will this child ever learn to speak English?'!! Of course I did learn to speak English although I translated everything and when asked something in German would respond in English or visa versa! Confusing!. I stopped speaking German when I was about ten. Spoken French came quite easily to me but I could not write it to save my life so because of that, when it came to languages in school I was not allowed to take German which was ridiculous! I cannot speak Spanish or Italian to save my life but perhaps it is that I didn't put my mind to it. It's interesting that this post has inspired commentators (myself included) to share their language experiences when in fact you were Frances, apart from the Spanish, talking about the amount of homework that 'children' are expected to complete. Children in this country (Trinidad) have so much homework from a very early age, that most have trolley bags or hunched shoulders!
DeleteI remember showing a girlfriend in England my six year old daughter's school report from here and she wanted to know if she was about to sit the equivalent of the 11+. When my daughter was 10 she sat an entrance exam for a boarding school in England instead of the Common Entrance exam for a school here. The English school had sent the papers to the headmistress here. After the exam, the headmistress called me and said she had looked at the paper before sending it off to the UK and I was not to expect great things as she felt the child had sabotaged the exam. But the child was accepted. Circumstances dictated that the place for her was not taken up and that in itself, is another story! I agree with Graham that a child should not be pressured. What works for one, does not work for another. We did not pressure our children but I was adamant that they learned how to manage their time and that meant extra curricular activities were not given up to accommodate cramming. Neither liked it at the time but both now agree that it taught them an invaluable lesson for later life. I don't think I was the best mother in the world, but I did what I thought was best for them by ensuring they incorporated the academic with the fun things. Hearing them speak now, I don't regret it but it wasn't easy at the time by any means!
It was interesting, Bee, to hear your view on languages. Interesting too that I started my original comment on the topic of homework and when I went back to it (dinner intervened) I deleted it and wrote the one I did.
DeleteCoincidentally I had lunch out yesterday with friends in a wonderful community café in Killearn. There were 9 of us ranging from 2 to 74. Between us we spoke (either fluently - the young mother is German and the father a Scot - or to a good conversational standard) four languages with at least another three to 'tourist' level. The subject of homework cropped up (it being the October school holidays here) and the amount of holiday project work the teenagers had was astonishing. However they seemed to accept it with equanimity.
Going back to Frances's original post about her grandchildren not having any time to do things with their mother that really does seem an odd and unacceptable state of affairs if it's all due to homework.
Graham, I really do think children are under a lot more pressure nowadays then they were when mine were young. And (some) parents are even more competitive than the the schools. Tutoring is common in order to get into the 'best' schools, and the range of extra-curricular activities for some children is eye watering. My own three boys did absolutely nothing up until GCSE, then panicked, and did well in their A levels. I tried to push them enough to at least get their homework done, but to no avail. The day when I no longer had to push anyone to do anything was a great day indeed!
DeleteBee, I'm rather losing track of this! But it sure being bi-lingual,has to be an advantage, doesn't it? My triplet grandchildren have a father whose first language is Welsh. Not a useful language on the whole, but I think anyone who can get their tongue round all those guttural Welsh noises has to,learn something! Sadly, he never spoke Welsh to them, and so now they can't speak to their other grandparents in their native language.
DeletePerhaps I should have made the point that I live in a bi-lingual community: the Scottish Outer Hebrides. I and not, however, bi-lingual.
DeleteApologies for the length - won't happen again although it's a fascinating topic!!
ReplyDeleteBee, you're welcome to comment any time at any length!
DeletePS I used to dislike Scrabble more than any other game I can think of. Now, however, I play the equivalent (Words With Friends) with about five friends and enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I have a horror of board games (bored games, to me), but Scrabble is the exception. I'll look up yours.
DeleteI look forward to a challenge from you Frances.
Delete