From the sound of it, children are getting assigned a lot more homework than they were when I was going through school. (Not that I ever did any significant amount of it anyway: the problem with being a smart kid is that you end up lazy and unmotivated.) This week, the Globe and Mail’s Erin Anderssen had two pieces on parents — yes, parents — who are fed up with the quantity and apparent repetitive pointlessnesses of their kids’ homework assignments, and are pushing back. Shelli and Tom Milley negotiated a “differentiated homework plan” for two of their children (not surprisingly, the Calgary couple are both lawyers). This article has more parents’ stories and gives a bit of the big picture:

There’s growing evidence that homework may hinder rather than help academic performance especially in early grades, and school boards have been revisiting their approach to it. But parents remain conflicted about how much their kids should do and how hard to push them — trying to balance a desire to see their child succeed against homework hostilities at the kitchen table.

While a survey by the Canadian Council on Learning found that the majority of parents felt that homework enhanced learning, more than 60 per cent said it was a source of stress in their homes. Many parents also quietly admit to offering more than just moral support — in a U.S. survey released last year, 43 per cent of parents (dads more often than moms) admitted that they had done their children’s homework.

One gets the impression that, when you factor in homework and extracurricular activities (team sports, music lessons, what have you), children today are expected to work longer hours than their parents.