I don’t see a very high ROI for the time the kids spend on projects like this and I’m being polite when I say this. And it’s completely inappropriate to suggest homework for parents. I can’t really use the word “assign” because parents aren’t students. It would be like me assigning yard work for the teacher.
I have randomly looked through the books and assignments of my nephews through the years and it seems like they do a lot more work for a given level of education than I did. The best way I can explain what I’m seeing is that the educational system seems to be trying to teach kids to think outside the box without every teaching them what’s inside the box.
mrAru mentioned that mission project is ancient, though he did his in first grade … back in 1969. His was San Luis Obispo, and he has actually visited 10 or 15 missions over the years.
excellent. can’t ask for more.
Wrong. If the only time the mother has to interact is while she is cooking dinner and the kid is doing homework on the kitchen table because she is holding 2 jobs and that is the amount of time she has at home, then wasting it by doing a craft and spending money that may be nonexistant on fast food so she can sit there and make some stupid project is outrageous. I do know a single mom who literally saw her kid while prepping and eating meals. She arranged her work schedule around his school and sleep schedule. They seemed to turn out fine.
And quality time learning that the world is not solid work and no play is not good. Humans need to interact in play, not only work. Play relieves stress, and stress kills. If the only time you interact with your family is full of stress, how is that a quality family life?
Wrong, again interaction is key - and play is as important as school. Kids now get fuck all for kid time. When was the last time you say a corner lot full of kids playing a pick up game of anything? I see them all shuttled off to jr sports, dance class, karate class, anything except play time.
aruvqan-by the time you are school-aged, you are being groomed to BE AN ADULT i.e. a contributing member of society, and the ONLY people who “play” as a job are professional athletes! We both know the odds of kids become pro athletes is ifinitessimal, so we need to teach them how to work, and contribute to society.
We have received your ‘family project’ assignment.
It seems a curious request to demand the active involvement of parents in what is essentially school work.
Though we consider ourselves supportive in our daughter’s academic pursuits and progression, there is some personal unease with the demands of the adobe project.
To gain a wider perspective on this issue, I put it to The Straight Dope.
After careful consideration of all views and attitudes here please furnish our family with a 500 word essay (including cites) as to the irrefutable value of your assigned project to our highly functioning and cohesive family unit.
I remember having to do a Mission project. My mother took me to Michael’s and spent $110 dollars on building materials, and a canvas board. She bought ceramic cows, goats, chickens, fake grass, paint, glue, and craft wood-type pieces to build the Mission. My teacher was shocked when we told her how much we spent. I am a product of LAUSD, and I think it sucks even worse now.
Pure, unadulterated bullcrap. Play is essential for children’s development. It is through play that they work out all manner of important things: social interplay, making sense of the world as they have experienced it. Play fosters creative, independent thinking. Play can provide exercise for both both and mind, strengthen friendships, and give an opportunity to release stress and frustration. A third-grader is not an adult, and a third-grader given no chance to play will turn into a poor adult indeed.
I think this is a really good point. Patterns get set up early: some kids start middle school with the idea that not completing your homework is literally unthinkable–they can’t comprehend it. Others start with the idea that homework is something you do when you remember.
I can easily see a 3rd grader without parental support not completing the assignment, thinking the world will just end, and then, when it doesn’t (because let’s face it, how big of a deal is one project?), taking away the lesson that you can just blow shit off and it all works out, or that “kids like me” blow shit off and no one really cares.
As far as expense goes, in my years in the classroom I’ve learned that it’s not the expense, it’s the time. If the school does a really cool field trip in May that costs $20 and they tell the parents about it in September and remind them at Christmas and again in the spring, most people will be able to scrape up $20 and be glad the school gave their kids the opportunity. On the other hand, if you send home a project on Tuesday that takes $20 of materials and is due in two weeks, that can cause real hardship on the poorest families. In practical terms, for many it means they charge the supplies and end up paying $100 by the time they are done paying it off.
ETA: as far as dealing with the situation, I’d do the project, and then after it is graded meet with the teacher and express your concerns. That way it’s clear that your motivations are altruistic and she can’t dismiss you as just not wanting to do the work.
Manda Jo, as always, has excellent advice. Alternatively, if you understand the pedagogical purpose of the project, could you suggest an alternate family activity that fulfills the same purpose? I’ve had parents do this before when their kids are in my class, and far from being offended, I’m delighted: it’s less work for me, and they’re almost always able to offer their own kid something that I can’t. (Of course, when I’ve mentioned it to other teachers, some of them get really pissed off on my behalf, which I find bizarre; nevertheless it indicates not all teachers would be okay with it).
The school is not the boss of me. Yes, working with a teacher is part of the deal. But that does not mean that the school owns all of our time and can just assign parents to do anything at all without regard to reason. It is not cool for a school to presume that it can demand more than a certain amount of time outside of school, and that time ought to be as little as possible, actually. And IMO family time ought to take precedence over school time.
That’s so wrong on so many levels it’s hard to address. Play is how kids learn best. It’s how they figure out how to become adults. And adults who know how to ‘play’ (in the best sense of the word, fooling around with stuff and coming up with ideas) are some of our most valuable and productive citizens. Kids NEED playtime in order to develop well. Everyone does.
Palo Verde stated above, I believe, that the teacher just thought this project would be ‘fun.’ If there’s a pedagogical purpose behind it, I don’t think it’s been explained or even hinted at. If a teacher is going to suggest stuff for fun, I’d much rather see a letter suggesting activities to do as a family that would be age-appropriate for the child. For example, a teacher could send a note home saying something like “We’ll be studying ancient Egypt for the next couple of months. If you’d like to help your child learn more at home, here are some great books to read together that you can find at the library: xxxxx Your child might like to make a costume, and here are some inexpensive ideas: xxxxx There will be a great show on the Sphinx on channel 3 on this date! Here’s a website with fun activities.” I’m sure lots of great teachers do exactly that.
We had some of these assignments in kindergarten. We just didn’t do them. Frankly, I’d be happy to help with interesting homework, but I don’t do arts and crafts. My son is the sort of socially oblivious kid who wouldn’t notice or care that most of the other kids had done something he didn’t do. Also, I don’t think those projects were graded, but I’m not sure how much a grade would have changed my opinion about them.
I had the temerity to go to bed early last night and the discussion has kind of got away from me, but other people have pretty much made the points I would have anyway.
I think that most elementary-level homework is bullshit in the first place and is, as someone said up-thread, mostly assigned so that the parents feel like the school is doing something worthwhile with their kids. Again, apart from the very specific writing homework that Whatsit Jr. gets as part of “occupational therapy” for fine-motor problems, I have not seen a single homework assignment sent home for any of my kids that significantly added to their education. IMO kids should be allowed to fill their free time with play, and games, and exploring their environment, and whatever else kids do, instead of even more academic work on top of what they already do for several hours per day at the actual school.
I don’t think the school should be responsible for fostering a happy home life. Yes, parental involvement is key to a child’s success. Parents should be aware of what is going on at school and should go to parent-teacher conferences and should help with homework when necessary, etc. Parents should not, however, be assigned homework of their own. I am not the third-grade student here. My kid is. Any homework assigned - and let me reiterate that I think most homework is bullshit anyway - should be to him, not me.
I will agree with even sven that all of this “what about kids in neglected homes?” stuff is a red herring. I want to be totally clear that I think that parental homework is completely pointless and nonsensical whether we are talking about an abused kid from the wrong side of the tracks, or Richie Rich with helicopter parents that do all of his assignments for him anyway.
I’ll also agree with dangermom that suggested activities to enrich a particular lesson would be great, and I fully support that. Mandatory homework that the parent must complete in order for their child to successfully complete a project, however, is ridiculous.
Aside from the fact that the teacher shouldn’t be assigning homework to anyone not in her class, what possible educational benefit does a kid derive from the parents completing a project? The OP mentions that the instructions are written as though the parents are supposed to do most of the work, so how does this accomplish the (presumed, I suppose) goal of having the kid learn something about an adobe shelter?
A project assigned to the parent teaches the kid jack-all. At least if the kid has to build the damned thing, they learn valuable life lessons about how to do craft projects and maybe remember that XX tribe of YY region lived in adobe huts, since the craft project may reinforce the day’s lesson. Assigning it to the parent neither helps the kid become more proficient at crafts nor reinforces the class curriculum, so I fail to see the point.
Well, luckily the assignment is building an adobe shelter, and not mapping the oceans. I think making things with clay counts pretty solidly as “play,” unless a whole shelf of Pay-Doh at Toys’R’Us has led me astray.
Really, none of us knows much about the project besides the OP. Obviously a project that was 100% the parents with zero kid input would be out of line. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. Without details, we don’t know the balance.
Projects that call for resources that parents will need to help with- like those involving costumes- are more complicated. Even the most hands off school does expect parents to supply binders, a backpack, notebook paper, pencils, etc. Kids don’t create the poster board for the science fair or the report covers for their book reports themselves, but nobody is up in arms about that sort of thing. At some point projects may start requiring trips to the library or other outside research, and that is pretty normal.
Wait a minute…I’m on to something! The key here is creative projects, isn’t it? The objection is not to parental involvement on school projects, but parental involvement on creative projects, isn’t it? If it was a project with a more academic focus…say “Go interview someone who is more than 60 years old about their experiences at key points in history” or “Go to a park or natural area and record the soil types observed,” would you object quite as strongly?
I wouldn’t object at all, unless the assignment were, “Have your parent go interview someone” or “Have your parent go record soil types,” and then my objection would be exactly the same as for the adobe hut thing.
Also, your idea that if it involves clay it must be “play” and not “work” is very strange. When my daughter gets out her crayons to draw pictures in her free time, that’s play. When her teacher tells her to draw a picture of the food pyramid and bring it back to class the next day, that’s work. See the difference? Maybe not, so I’ll be even more explicit: When it’s something that someone else has assigned you to do, and is not optional, that’s not “play.” Play is by its nature self-directed.
When I was teaching in a mixed-income public school in NJ some decades ago, we were told that it was not only inappropriate but forbidden to assign anything that required the student or her family to spend a dime. The school provided pens, pencils, paper, book covers, everything. We did not want to discriminate against or call attention to those students who had no resources at home to draw upon. Also it is the law in NJ that it is the responsibility of the public schools to supply all educational needs.
To the financial point: I think it’s not necessarily fair for us to label the teacher a cold-hearted bitch here. I coach a high school debate team (obviously, older kids- so it IS different, I’ll concede that) and the kids are required to wear suits as part of competition. We send letters home to the parents explaining that their kids need to be in business wear when competing (I also include a list of the current sales places like Kohl’s are having, coupons, and even how to pick out a good suit at Goodwill for a couple of bucks and the name of a crazy cheap tailor). That’s just how it is. BUT, I always make it abundantly clear to the kids verbally that if they have even the smallest issue with providing that, to let me know in private. And when they do, either I use our school budget to get them what they need or I pay for it myself out of pocket.
So, perhaps if money is an issue for certain families and they speak to the teacher (communication is key in any relationship, after all), she’ll have supplies they can use for free. Now, if she didn’t mention this on her little letter going out to the families, that is certainly a mistake, but who knows what resources she has available for families.
We also request that our kids’ parents help them with whatever event they’re doing- whether it’s helping them research a debate topic or watching them practice their speech. I suppose that’s “assigning homework” to a parent, but we (teachers/coaches) can’t do everything ourselves and still have your kid be the most successful they can be. And I can tell you that there have been a few times where kids have come to me privately and told me that they have unstable home lives or parents who work too much to help and in those cases, I set aside my personal time after school to work with the kid myself.
Obviously, the difference between a third grader and a high school student’s ability to be candid about these things is a tad bit different (plus debate team != regular, core class), but I suppose I’m just trying to provide the prospective of the teacher here.
I think a couple of people missed this part of the OP: “The instructions given make it clear that the parents are expected to do most of it…”
Assuming this is not hyperbole, I take it to mean the parents are expected to design and/or assemble the adobe hut. That and the requirement they use a specific type of clay (which almost makes me think the teacher got this from a Hobby Lobby “Craft Idea” hand out or something similar, where they specify which materials to use, by brand) are what make it inappropriate.
We had to build pueblos and salt maps when I was in the third grade. The salt maps, we did in class, with the parents providing a canister of salt and food coloring. The parent could provide whatever brand of salt or food coloring they wanted.
For the pueblos, we had to build them at home, using whatever resources and imagination we could muster. Parents were discouraged from helping, other than providing materials and possibly guidance. The work was to be done by the student, though. Kids actually had points marked off if their project was well above a third-grader’s skill level. Mine was made out of Kleenex boxes and other small boxes covered in homemade play-dough mom mixed for me and tinted yellow with food coloring, with some of my little plastic Indians glued around it. Other kids just used scrap paper and markers, mud, or other materials already in their house. A few others used stuff bought specifically for the project.
Both of those are examples of acceptable projects, because they are requiring the students to do the work and the parents can buy the material that they best afford, or even use materials already on hand. The OP’s project is inappropriate because, not only is the parent apparently expected to build the thing, they can only do it using specific, possibly cost prohibitive, materials.
The OP did not say what clay they have to use, but if the project is one of the ones I’m thinking of that I have seen at Hobby Lobby, then it specified either Fimo or Sculpey, which is definitely not a cheap product, especially if the hut is to be of any size. The one I saw at HL also specified buying Woodland Scenics model landscaping materials to put around it to make it ‘more authentic.’ All said and done, it put the price of the project into the $40-$50 range. Granted, this might not be that particular craft project, but it’s what sprang to mind when I read the OP. If that’s the case, it’s certainly not acceptable.
Parents of children have to work for a living and take care of a household. I can’t think of a more compelling reason than “you’re not the boss of me” when it involves a teacher budgeting the time and money of parents.
Ignore the fact that these projects contribute little to a child’s education. In fact, I will go so far as to say they harm a child. Schools should teach children basic information as well as the skill to learn on their own. My parents wouldn’t hesitate to help me with my homework but it was always understood that it was my function to try to figure it out myself first. Learning how to learn was part of the process.
OP, would you mind posting the text of the letter? Because if she definitely implied the parents need to do all the work for this project, then I would definitely take it up with the admin.
and the discussion has kind of got away from me, but other people have pretty much made the points I would have anyway.