This past weekend I went to an exercise class entitled Body Works Plus Abs, a class designed to improve overall fitness, muscle tone, and balance through high repetition weightlifting. Although I enjoy the instructor, I really hate the class. It is misery crunching out set after set of lifts. While I am generally proud of myself as I walk out the door and gain the benefit of a few endorphins swimming around inside, after-the-fact I cope with sore muscle groups and a sense of dread about attending the next class. The work ahead seems unending - use it, or lose it, as the saying goes.
I believe that my experience with exercise class is akin to how many of your children feel about homework, especially math homework where routine practice builds cumulative skills. They may dread doing it but feel more competent after completing it, notably when they do so thoroughly, with attention to detail.
As parents, our first tendency may be to sympathize with our children. Parents appreciate the sense of foreboding that comes with homework. Many parents, though, commiserate with their children but rarely direct them to “suck it up.” We may excuse our children from embracing math homework: “I was bad at math, too, so you come by it naturally.” We look the other way when our children bring home A’s in math classes that clearly lack rigor. Moreover, we may encourage our children to enroll in classes with teachers whose expectations are truly minimal but who award the easy A.
Just like hard work in the gym, though, students cannot gain true growth in a subject matter without sufficient at-home practice, and I am constantly amazed at how little homework some math teachers assign.
I see math teachers who do not assign any regular homework, which I deem completely unacceptable and, frankly, unbelievable. I see math teachers who rarely assign homework, and for the work that they do send home with the students, they readily award credit for it whenever it is complete, provided the work is submitted before the quarter’s end. I see math teachers who assign homework but too few problems to assure retention of the concepts. Fortunately, I also see math teachers who appreciate that repetition breeds understanding and competence. They assign a healthy, sometimes lengthy, problem set nightly. These math teachers in the final category, I believe, get it right.
Where teachers and often parents miss the mark, though, is in not setting expectations that push children to their capacity. Indeed, I suspect that many readers, right now, are wondering incredulously how their children could possibly handle any more homework than they already have.
In the process, our conservative expectations lull children into laziness. They do not exert effort when attacking math problems that require more than rote skills. They begin to seek the easy out, the “gut” class. We have become so convinced that homework causes anxiety that we have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction, especially for students who imminently face college.
I believe that we should expect more of our children. They are more resilient than we know, and, moreover, they want us to think they can accomplish the unexpected. My message to you this month is to raise the bar, both in math class and in the gym!