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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Doing Your Child’s Homework: Is It Ever Acceptable?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My colleague Aileen Dodd had an interesting article this past weekend about how some schools deal with parents who give children too much help with their homework.
It seems some teachers now require major class projects to be done mostly at school where teachers can guide the students, instead of at home where meddlesome parents can take over the work. Others deduct points when it’s evident that another adult completed the assignment.
I was floored by a story in Aileen’s article about a Gwinnett County fifth-grader who turned in a report about World War II, which, it turned out, had actually been written by his grandfather. This would be comical if it weren’t so common.
Now I can attest that my mother never once completed a homework assignment for me. She may have checked that I had done my work, but that’s about as far as she would go.
But these are different times. Times in which kids with stellar grades, activities galore and above-average SAT scores are a dime a dozen. So I wonder: Is academic competition driving parents to cheat for their kids or do well-meaning moms and dads sometimes just go overboard?
