Dear Dr. Fournier:

I've never seen homework like what my 10-year-old son and daughter bring home. It's not like anything I did called "homework" when I was in school in the mid 70s. I had the twins late in my life (when I was 40), so something must have changed between the time I was in school and today. It's triple - sometimes quadruple - the amount I had to do.

They come to me telling me they don't know how to do parts of their homework. I ask them to think about what they learned in class on the parts they say they can't do and they tell me the teacher hasn't taught it yet.

What has happened since I was in school?

Cathy R.
Tupelo, MS

Dear Cathy:

It is important for you and parents around the country to recognize the change in what homework asks children to do today as opposed to when you were in school.

You were in a generation whose homework assignments were mostly review or practice. This makes it difficult for you and the millions of other parents and grandparents around the country to understand why - after doing hours and hours of homework nightly - our children aren't ready to continue in class the next day.

ASSESSMENT

In the generation after yours Cathy, the function of homework changed dramatically. That change has become a major cause for the classroom failure we see today all over the country.

While the name "homework" remains the same, it has undergone several drastic changes since you sat at your mom's kitchen table in the afternoon and did yours. Some of the changes include:

• The expectation that students, on their own, should be able to do the tasks assigned. This has one result: The child can't complete the work, parents come to the rescue, and no one is saved in this disaster.

• The expectation that students should do perfect work. Responsible students already overwhelmed by homework itself are expected to turn in perfect work rather than use homework to identify what is left to be learned. This expectation of perfection seems to rise in direct proportion to the increased importance of homework grades on total grade.

These changes have intensified the parental fear that, "If my child doesn't know it all tomorrow, he or she will be the only one."

This is true only because parents all over the country are helping their children by using their adult knowledge to fill in the homework answers their children cannot do.

The focus on doing homework is best expressed in the traditional sayings, "Did you do your homework?" and "Hurry up and get it done." This was acceptable for a generation when doing homework was for the only thing it was intended for, review.

But now homework requires learning, not just review - learning math facts, learning a portion of the social studies chapter, learning how to write a book report, etc.

Just as homework has changed so must the focus change from doing to learning. That learning is accomplished when children can demonstrate or explain that the knowledge is now theirs.

Rote doing is not enough.

WHAT TO DO

With this new focus on learning, parents can attack the false expectations of the "new" homework. To do so, parents and teachers must first recognize another expectation - the specific tasks expected of students.

It's time to stop asking children, "Did you do your homework?" and start asking "Did you learn your homework," so children can clearly understand that they are expected to learn and not just to do.

Tonight Cathy, ask your twins, "Have you learned your homework?" and then ask them to show you. If they struggle with demonstrating or explaining what they learned, it will be easy to see where more teaching is needed but by the teacher, not the parent.

Help your children formulate precise questions for the teacher to be addressed in class the next school day. And start today by changing your language from doing homework to learning homework.