Summer homework, or not

My son—for better or worse—falls in the camp of kids whose school requires a certain level of homework during the summer vacation months. (His buddy Conor, from the next town over, has no such burden, Nick reminds me. Cheap!) It’s not such an overwhelming load—a dozen pages of math review problems from the past year plus three books to read. Oh, and a science project.

The math is almost done. Two and a half pages to go, and apparently it was no heavy lifting (though my wife and I have yet to check his calculations.)

The science project isn’t so bad either—an expanded version of a water-cycle write-up and drawing that his class did this past year. I can’t say I get the point of it, but that’s another matter.

And the reading has been happily consumed. Nick’s on the third of his required books (Fever 1793, Tangerine, and King Arthur), and has finished at least three of his own choosing as well, and there’s still a month of summer left. He’s supposed to write a short comment about each required book on his English teacher’s blog, plus he’s been keeping a blog of his own that chronicles his summer exploits in includes full-length book reviews of everything he’s read. That’s his summer writing “assignment,” concocted by task-master dad, though he’s proud of the blog and (mostly) a willing author.

My wish for him is that he finishes his math and science work by this weekend—the book will be no problem. Then he can live every kid’s summer dream of no schoolwork.

Apparently that dream is a hot topic, at least as laid out in yesterday’s Washington Post. The article goes into great detail on educators’ opinions pro and con about piling on the schoolwork to keep young minds sharp and minimize backsliding over the summer. I have mixed feelings about this. On one side, I too fear that, left to their own devices (i.e., total slack-off), kids risk losing much of what they gained during the previous school year. This hinders the learning process at a time when our schools already are falling short of the mark, and adds stress for kids when they have to re-immerse themselves in intellectual activity after two months of goofing off. That doesn’t mean resorting to 6 hours a day of lessons while their friends head off to the beach, but it does require some small amount of effort in each of the primary subject areas. On the flip side, however, I believe kids need time to rejuvenate. And that means run around, get fresh air, veg out in front of the TV or PS2, laugh, play, etc. I know from my own experience that, after intense practice at something, I often make the biggest leap in learning by then NOT doing that thing for a while. Somehow it seeps in deeper than banging my head against the wall again and again.

And that is why I hope Nick finishes his summer schoolwork soon, so he has a couple weeks to not think about it. School time will come soon enough, and summer is supposed to be time off. He earned the break; he should get to enjoy it.