I also learned from professor Cooper -- aka the homework guru -- that there is no correlation between how much homework young children do and how well they comprehend material or perform on tests. Why? For a number of reasons. Because their attention spans are just too short -- they can't tune out external stimuli to focus on material. Second, younger children cannot tell the difference between the hard stuff and the easy stuff. They'll spend 15 minutes beating their heads against a difficult problem, and leave themselves no time to copy their spelling words. Finally, young children do not know how to self-test. They haven't the faintest idea when they're making mistakes, so in the end they don't actually learn the correct answers. It isn't until middle school and high school that the relationship between homework and school achievement becomes apparent.

So why the hell do Zeke and I have to spend every afternoon gnashing our teeth over the communicative and associative properties of numbers when we could be playing catch?

The reasons, Cooper says, extend beyond Zeke's achievement in this particular grade. Apparently, by slaving over homework with my son, I am expressing to him how important school is. (Of course, this rationale assumes that I'm not also expressing rage, or muttering curses about the authors of Zeke's math textbook.) When younger kids are given homework, Cooper says, it can also help them understand that all environments are learning ones, not just the classroom. For example, by helping calculate the cost of items on a trip to the grocery store, they can learn about math. The problem is, none of my children's assignments have this real-world, enjoyable feel to them. My children have never been assigned Cooper's favorite reading task -- the back of the Rice Krispies box. Instead, we're up all night weaving hemp.

The final, and perhaps most important, reason to assign homework to young children, says Cooper, is to help them develop study habits and time management skills that they'll need to succeed later on in their academic careers. If you wait until middle school to teach them these skills, they'll be behind. I suppose this makes sense. Spending their afternoons slaving over trigonometry and physics will come as no surprise to my kids. By the time they're in seventh grade they won't even remember what it's like to spend an idle afternoon.

According to Cooper all three of these rationales are based on the idea of keeping homework simple and short, and gradually building on its amount and complexity. The guideline educators typically use is the 10-minute rule. Children should be assigned 10 minutes of homework per grade per night, starting in first grade. So how about kindergarten? Well, Cooper's a circumspect kind of guy, so he wouldn't condemn it outright, but he did say this: "At this age, kids should not be expected to do much on their own."

And what about those long-term homework projects that involve a lot of "integration of skills" -- that favorite phrase I've heard again and again in all my children's classrooms? When used in younger grades the lesson those projects often teach is, "When the going gets tough, Mom gets going," says Cooper. "Complex projects should probably not happen in the lower grades, and when they do, there should be clear expectations about parental involvement." Amen to that, I say, because otherwise the only skills being integrated are those of procrastination and panic, and those are plenty finely honed around our house by now.

Take heart, parents, and bring the quotes from the homework guru to your children's teachers. I did. When I e-mailed Zeke's teacher to say he was too loaded down with busywork, she agreed and said he shouldn't do more than half an hour of homework every night. She instructed me to draw a line at the bottom of the page once we've both had enough, no matter where he is on the assignment.

Last night was the first of the new regimen. After soccer practice we set out the homework on the kitchen table. A page of spelling, two of math, a sheet of cursive. We got through the math OK, with me trying to hide the fact that I had to count on my fingers to check his work. He labored over the cursive, making rows of perfect "u's" and "w's," the tips of his fingers white on the pencil, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. Then it was on to spelling. We made it almost to the end of the page, to the paragraph full of errors to correct. He made his proofreading marks, and as he got ready to copy out the corrected paragraph I looked up at the clock. It had been 40 minutes.

"That's enough, buddy," I said. "You did a great job." And I drew a line.

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