Mental, physical, and financial hazards of homework




Over at Credit.com I wrote about the new anti-homework documentary that's being screened around the country, Race to Nowhere.

On Saturday my 13-year-old daughter refused go to her younger sister's music recital. The following day she turned down my offer to go skateboarding. She wasn't being anti-social. She was doing homework.
Her school assigns hours of homework every weekend (and every evening, too). My wife and I weren't happy about this, but we accepted it as a matter of course, just as we accepted that she'd eventually take a $990 SAT prep class and spend afternoons with a $60/hour tutor to keep her grades up.  (In America, parents spend $15 billion a year on academic tutoring.)

But after seeing the anti-homework documentary, Race to Nowhere, our attitude has changed from reluctant acceptance to one of alarm.

Read the rest here: Mental, physical, and financial hazards of homework