DOWN WITH HOMEWORK!

So it's 10:30 at night and I'm driving to Kinkos to print out my daughter's social studies paper because our printer is, mysteriously, out of ink again. Like it's got a leak. I get to Kinkos and they're closed. So I have to call and find the 24 hour Kinkos where all the employees are failed dot com millionaires and screenwriters and perform their duties with the grim disaffection and terminal hatred you'd expect from vassal slaves and I'm thinking--this isn't life: it's survival.

When the hell is my daughter going to lie on her bed and daydream? When's she going to read something that's not assigned to her? When's she going to hang out on the stoop with her friends and shoot the $%!^? When am I?

Anyone with a new teen knows that this is the point in a child's development psychologists call the FU phase because pretty much that's the attitude a teen has and, for some of us, the words coming out of their mouths. Kids are beginning that slow burn into adulthood (for girls, that's 17; for guys, 37--maybe) and the key manifestation is the explosion of intellectual disdain for their poor retarded parents.

Sarah, for instance, proved this point last night when, at 9:45, still doing homework, she emailed a paper to me (she had to, I was on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TABLE) and in proofing it I noticed she'd used the word WARE for wear. I called her on it and she made a face I'll never forget, a face that spoke volumes about the pain and frustration of bearing custody for a vegetable like myself. It was a cross between a resolute "duh" and "it'll be ok honey when they take you back in the home" and she rolled her eyes and said "Dad, you're a retard."

She adamantly argued that there is no such word as "wear" and that "ware" was correct.

Dad: "Use it in a sentence."
Sarah: "I'd like to ware my new dress but my dad is a retard."
Dad: "That's w-e-a-r."
Sarah: "Re. Tar. Dead."

My daughter is brilliant. She goes to Lincoln Park High School. It's been in NEWSWEEK. She scored in the 97th percentile on her ISATs. She's in double honors. For Christ's sake, our bumper sticker, "My child is measurably more intelligent that yours and, thus, attends LPHS. Booyah!" is in latin!

I blame homework. There's just too much of it. She has no time to read and when she does, it's Japanese Manga like "Boys Over Flowers" which she adores that I finally looked at and, after burning them all, told her she can't read them because they are, apparently, gay porn. When's she going to read Nancy Drew And the Case of the Past Participle, or Elmore Leonard's classic western, Guns of the Wild Dipthong? How is she supposed to actually learn anything worth learning if all she's doing is hitting the points required to merely exceed the standard standardized learning standard?

I realized that my family life is manic. We carom through our day from 6 am till we crash at 11:30. We don't eat together, we don't retire to the parlor for tea and talk. We don't sit on the porch and occasionally say "Yup." We're in a runaway car.

The other night I was on the couch tweaking a website and I heard the dog barking. I knew my daughter was doing homework on the back porch (which, to be honest, probably is a parlor) so I sent her an instant message: let the dog out. The dog is 4 FEET from her crossing his legs at the back door and whining. She IMs her cousin who is in the basement to let the dog out then the cousin IMS ME TO TELL ME THE DOG NEEDS TO GO OUT. I looked down at the screen and thought--I actually thought this--my son needs a laptop so I can IM him to let the dog out!

All of which would be instantly better without homework. If the kids came home and could just jet out and play (or in my daughter's case, preen), and If I didn't have to task-master biology experiments or rush to the library to check out books on Greek Mythology while they finished their algebra, we could all sit around the dinner table to a home cooked meal and talk about real stuff (in my daughter's case, preening) and just be together.

But don't take my word for it. Read this book: The Case Against Homework, by Sara Bennett. I spent the morning talking to her in prep for the radio show and her argument is not merely compelling: it's what we're all griping about every night. Teachers assign homework without truly considering what they're doing. Why do first graders have homework at all? Why do teachers assign ridiculously complex diorama projects? I got home an assignment from my son's teacher a few years ago that was a coloring book page. I said "I don't spend [amount not disclosed] $%^ing dollars a year so he can distinguish brown from burnt sienna! Bennett's book makes an elegant case against homework. Some interesting points:

• Psychologists have expressed concerns about the amount of free time kids enjoy--33% less than 20 years ago and, on average, a half hour a day or less.
• Eating meals together as a family is better at building enthusiastic, confident students than homework.
• In her research, including calls to Harvard, Bennett could find no educational program that taught teachers how to develop effective homework assignments. No teacher that she talked to had ever studied homework.

You can find the book on Amazon or visit Bennett's website, Stop Homework. You can also visit my radio show website after the weekend and listen to what I promise will be a lively conversation.

In the meantime, I need you to write 500 words, in Latin, in the efficacy of using the word efficacy.