It has been more than a couple of decades since I was in high school. Earlier this year my wife and I had our first child, a total gem of a little girl.
The idea that schools will torture her with hours of homework EVERY SINGLE NIGHT is something that I can't stand.
My idea of a fair nightly homework assignment falls along the lines of "Read chapters 4 and 5, and be prepared to discuss them in class" or even "Read the chapters and write up two or three questions about the material that will be asked and discussed in class"
I do not intend to send my little girl to a public school, but I can only hope to find a place where her mind will be nurtured adequately.
One of the blogs I follow had a similar observation:
http://www.ttgnet.com/daynotes/2006/2006-35.html#Tue
I question the sanity of our school system officials. A 13-year-old girl shouldn't have to do what Jasmine is doing. She gets up at 5:00 a.m. to shower, dress, grab a quick bite, and head out to meet her school bus at 5:45. When she gets home from school, she immediately starts on her homework, which she works on straight through with only a short break for dinner until 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. most nights, and sometimes until midnight. Then it's to bed for a few hours sleep and the same thing all over again, five days a week. She also has gymnastics three evenings a week, which she isn't willing to give up. Her weekends aren't free, either. She has projects to do for school.
This just isn't right. School requirements are leaving her no time to be a kid. They're also leaving her no time to sleep. A 13-year-old girl needs at least nine hours of sleep a night. She gets five or six, seven if she's lucky. Jasmine was working on her science homework when I arrived yesterday. I tried to help her with it, but it was clear that she was dead on her feet. She wasn't tracking what I was saying. The kid was exhausted, as I would have been if I'd risen at 5:00 a.m., worked hard all day, and knew that I faced several more hours of hard work before I could sleep.
All of this is the predictable and predicted result of the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools are no longer interested in helping children to learn. They can't afford to be. The federal carrot and stick means that schools now teach children to score as high as possible on standardized tests, which is a very different thing from real learning. A school is supposed to be a log, with a teacher sitting on one end and a student on the other.
I think some teachers/schools assign lots of homework so that they can tell parents that they assign lots of homework and, hopefully, they will look like a school that has high standards.
Most of my son's 4th grade homework seems appropriate, but he doesn't spend more than 20 -30 minutes on it a night unless daddy checks the penmanship...and then it can take awhile.
I can sympathize, but unfortunately any and all fields of study require considerable amounts of reading, writing, and memorization. In your shoes, I would suggest home-schooling.
Schools are no longer interested in helping children to learn. They can't afford to be.
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Government schools were NEVER interested in "helping children to learn". Never!
(By the way, spend 30 seconds obesrving a classroom, and you'll see that they're not exactly breaking a sweat in there, either.)