my precious

homework

I hate homework.

I’m 41 years old, almost twenty-five years removed from public secondary education, and I believe I dislike it more now than I did then. It is the bane of my evening interaction with the kids, and I would much rather let them play and relax than work on tomorrow’s list of vocabulary words or next week’s history essay.

My question: is homework really necessary?

There are movements in the social and political arenas to do away with the evening assignments, and I can understand why for the most part. I do still see value in the practice, and good study habits have to be developed somewhere. But it just seems that the over-emphasis on testing, on raising scores, and on college preparation has made school more of a 24/7 proposition for our kidlets.

Maybe I’m just too crotchety. Probably a good thing I don’t have any homework.

almost november

This has definitely been a full and filling year so far. We’re at the end of October, just two more months to go. I’ve changed jobs, something I did not see coming from the perspective of last January. I’ve met new folks, stepping outside my own comfort space into the more social aspects of social media. I’ve scaled back on spiritual ritual while, I hope, ramping up a bit spiritually. I’ve been reading more, writing probably a little less, and tweeting at 140-characters-a-pop way too much.

One of the highpoints I hope to build on is being more “there” with Vicki and the kids. It seems like the stress of job stuff and change made me more irritable this past year, and that’s probably spilled out more on the kids than anywhere else. But I hope it’s changing for the better, too. There’s less PC time with having to ration minutes with them, and I hope the sharing is doing me sone good, getting me unplugged a little more (he types sincerely from his iPhone).