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Very interesting, and a different perspective on what, with this topic, is usually the same old thing.

I know that as I have progressed with homeschooling, I've grown to consider the question, "What's the point of this assignment?" much more important, as well as, "What's the point of learning this material at all?"

Sometimes the answer will be, "Because you're going to be tested on it at the end of the year," or "Because this is an important skill that you'll use on the SAT," but we try to minimize that sort of instruction.

My whole high school experience seemed pointless to me.

My college experience wasn't any better. It was rehashing the stuff I was supposed to have learned in high school, with just a little more detail.

As the article says, perhaps this is just what guys do. Maybe we should be taught things that have more immediate paybacks, or at least frame subjects in a way that kids can relate to.

Why not teach kids skills they really want to learn, and could get genuine use out of?

I've never understood why we should waste time on Shakespeare, for instance, when reading him requires that we acquire an entirely new vocabulary we will never use again for as long as we live.

I definitely think I would have gotten a lot more out of school if I'd been able to learn more creative writing and less reviews of books I wasn't terribly interested in in the first place. Creative writing, after all, is something you can do as a career. Nobody's interested in your review of 'Henderson, the Rain King' save your teacher. And maybe, not even her.

So why make assignments like that the center of education, when people could be taught how to be creative and how to stretch their imaginations?

D

My kids asked that question all the time. Come to think of it, so did I.

I always tried to give them answers because I, too, hate busy work and if I felt something in the curriculum was just that, I didn't make them do it.

The one example that comes to mind is when they were learning to write out numbers in words. When they wanted to know why they needed to know this, I showed them the next time I wrote out a check and told them this was a skill they'd be using the rest of their lives. That settled that. Other things haven't been so easy to deal with; it's taken more creativity.