Karol Markowicz

Karol Markowicz

Parenting

I’m always stuck doing my kids’ homework — and it’s not their fault

If you’ve ever wondered exactly how many pictures of dolls there are in the American Girl catalogue, which magically arrives at our home addressed to our 6-year-old as if she had her own Visa card, I can now assure you that there are more than 100.

I know this because I painstakingly cut out 100 of them for my daughter to glue onto a board for her 100th-day-of-school project.

If you Google “100th day of school project” (and if, like me, you have three children and a job and decide to get started on it the day before it is due, you will be Googling), you’ll find thousands of ideas for a project that seems to exist in schools all across the country.

You’ll also find plenty of posts from parents tearing their hair out and wondering, “Why am I doing homework?”

The fact is, so much of the homework assigned to kids these days has a parental component. I have a smart, independent, motivated daughter, but it would take her three days to cut out 100 pictures of something for her project.

As it was, it took me over an hour to do it, and it took her another hour to glue them on. She’s in kindergarten — why are we spending multiple hours on homework?

More importantly, why am I? Shouldn’t any homework assigned to the child be limited to their independent abilities? You’d think that it would get easier as a child gets older and acquires more skills to do his or her own work, but, in fact, it only gets worse as the work gets harder.

While blame can certainly go to overzealous parents who want their precious snowflakes to get high marks on their projects, it’s actually the education system that’s at fault for not tailoring a curriculum to what children are actually able to do on their own.

A column in The Atlantic last March explained how assigned science projects are way over a child’s ability and ultimately seem like a project for parents:

“Much of the parental anger seems to stem from the fact that the bulk of science fairs ask children to produce something, in some cases competitively, that is well beyond their abilities.

“Last year my son, who was in third grade at the time, came home with a sheet of paper from his school that listed three categories for appropriate projects: developing a hypothesis and conducting an experiment to test that theory, inventing something new, or researching ‘something specific.’ The guidelines listed ‘whales’ as an example of something specific.

“Given that my son was 8 years old, the idea that he could, on his own, do any single one of these things seemed ludicrous.”

M, a Manhattan mother of three who wishes to remain anonymous, said it’s so bad in middle school, she overhears moms say to their kids, “Come and look at your project so you’ll know which one is
yours.”

Worst of all, parental help with homework likely does more harm than good. One book, “The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement With Children’s Education,” found that the help actually leads to a “decline in achievement.”

Which makes sense: If a kid can’t identify which science project is his, he probably didn’t learn anything from the assignment at all.

It’s time to end the insanity and leave parents out of the homework process. We already have our own homework — either work from our jobs, which continues long after official work hours are over, or housework, or any number of things adults have to do that shouldn’t involve glue sticks and cardboard.

And by the way, you’re welcome for that American Girl doll catalogue idea.

Karol Markowicz lives in Brooklyn and writes in between helping with her kids’ homework projects.