CALL ME SNAKE

Sorry if I’m feeling put upon these days, but my homework schedule has become intense of late, on top of all the other things I’m supposed to do and still try to fit in a couple of minutes of sleep each day (doctor’s orders!). I shouldn’t say “my” homework schedule since, technically speaking, it’s the homework of my 6-year-old daughter who started 1st grade three weeks ago. The first week was great but then the homework kicked in–every single day of the week, plus an extra load on Friday, just to make sure you don’t have a moment’s relaxation over the weekend. I never had homework in 1st grade. Why is my daughter, a public school student, getting it every single day?

When I was a kid during that whimsical era dominated by the Cold War, we were in lockstep competition with the Soviets. But there aren’t any Soviets around these days, in case you haven’t noticed. Next there was the “made in Japan” scare. Our kids had to work extra hard in school so that at least one thing was still made in the USA, even if that meant it was actually manufactured in Thailand. But the Japanese have their own problems too, from what I’ve heard.

So that leaves the usual culprit, our “Education President” and his so-called “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) policy. Informed educators (as opposed to the unformed ones) uniformly consider NCLB to be a joke. The only thing it does accomplish is to waste most of our educational effort on largely worthless standardized tests. Which is why my 6-year-old has homework every night. Which is why I don’t have any time to watch television anymore, assuming I was the sort to watch television, which I emphatically am not. But when you throw in the homework time on top of all the other obligations a working parent has to meet, there really isn’t any time to sleep, my pledges to my doctor notwithstanding. So I’d like to register my own small protest against No Child Left Behind (though I won’t be setting up a tent in Crawford), while suggesting a name change that describes the program more accurately: No Parent Left Asleep.