This may be particularly true of successful, competitive professionals. Second, when we don’t understand, we’re embarrassed. For one thing, most of us aren’t teachers knowing a subject is not the same as being able to impart that knowledge to others, as anyone who’s ever found herself screaming, “Just take my word for it!” to a mystified 7-year-old knows. (And by “we,” I mean me.) Well, it’s not as simple as, “The helped kid doesn’t learn the material” (though there’s that) or even “Kids who are being helped are the ones who are struggling to begin with” - because according to Keith Robinson and Angel Harris, the authors of the study, even the kids who started off as high achievers ended up doing worse relative to high achievers who weren’t helped.īut there are other reasons homework help is helping our kids bomb. Yet why shouldn’t we lend a hand? I mean, we are so patient, so well-meaning. One of the biggest culprits? Homework help. Read it and weep, helicopter parents: Across age, race, gender and socioeconomic status, most help had neither a positive or negative effect, and many kinds drove down a kid’s test scores and grades. Sociologists at the University of Texas at Austin and Duke University assessed the effect of more than 60 kinds of parental involvement on academic achievement. Seeing a cherished extracurricular activity passed over, another family dinner ruined, is it any wonder many of us help out a little? Or a lot? But in many American schools there is anywhere from one to four hours of it a night. Almost all studies on the subject say it doesn’t, and in countries with some of the highest levels of academic achievement (hello, Denmark and Finland), there is little or no homework. Let’s ignore, for the moment, the question of whether homework makes kids smarter and more successful. Because, as I calmly explained, I knew just what this essay needed. But this time, after much pressure, he did. He usually won’t let me near his homework.
I am always nervous you might be too, if your son’s highest intellectual aspiration involved beating his friends at their daily lunchtime poker game. How I found myself justifying my career to a 12-year-old was this: I wanted him to ace his “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay, and I was nervous. I write for The New York Times, for God’s sake.” Oddly enough, this doesn’t mollify him. I have a master’s in literature from an Ivy League school.” I continue, pathetically. “You didn’t follow the format! I told you you’re allowed to edit - not write! You can’t write!” He is holding his essay between his fingertips as if it’s a dead cockroach. MY son and I are shouting at each other, and crying.
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