Hey Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone!

Things used to be so simple back in the day.  You either took a regular class or you took an honors class.  The highest your gpa could be was 4.0.  The SAT was a maximum of 1600 points.  Sports had a season and they weren’t played year round.  You got Thanksgiving and the day after off.  You got two weeks at Christmas and one week at Easter.  Pardon me, I’m not being politically correct.  I should have said winter and spring break.  Back in the day, summer was very long.  You got out of school around the middle of June and always went back the day after labor day.

Things have gotten so complicated.  There are regular classes, honors classes, AP classes and international baccalaureate classes.  They even have honors classes in Spanish in case you can’t speak English.  What’s the point?  Why so many classifications?  It turns out the colleges don’t give a rip whether you were in regular or honors.  The colleges only care about your gpa.

I personally am not sure the regular classes are rigorous enough, so I have suggested, encouraged, pushed and demanded my son be in the honors classes.  I don’t expect the international baccalaureat because that’s just too much work if you’re in sports and not inclined to that much academics.  My son is with the program.  He hasn’t balked at the challenges and did well last year. 

Getting to the point of all this, I really want to know who the moron is that starting assigning homework over the summer.  This is what happens to honors students these days.  They get homework assigned over the summer.  This is really irksome to me.  Do these teachers have any idea how hard it is to get a fifteen year old motivated to do homework over the summer?  Talk about government intrusion into my life, I just can’t take it anymore.

You’re probably not much that different than my wife and I.  We divvy up our parental responsibilities.  It just so happens that it has been my responsibility to make sure my son does his summer homework.  This has been like pulling teeth.  At the beginning of summer, we decided he could have until August 1st without having to worry about any school work.  So on August 1st we sat down and made a schedule of how much he should do per day, so it could all be done with a week to spare.  In this way, the last week of summer could be totally carefree.  I don’t think it’s going to turn out that way.  The educators have turned this into my angst and I’m not happy about it.

I can honestly tell you that growing up I never had as much homework as my kids do.  I never did homework over any summer.  I don’t even remember doing much homework during the week during the school year when I was growing up.  I feel sorry for this generation.  Why is everything a race and a pressure cooker?

I’ll never forget what my dad told me on my graduating from UC-San Diego with my bachelor’s degree.  He shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, nobody cares.”

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