Our daughter C2 posted this on her blog (something she must have picked out from the internet):
A Prayer for Homework
Now I lay me down to study,
I pray the Lord I won’t go nutty.
If I should fail to learn this junk,
I pray the Lord I will not flunk.
But if I do, don’t pity me at all,
Just lay my bones in the school hall.
Tell mr blackwell I did my best,
Then pile my books upon my chest.
Now I lay me down to rest,
And pray I’ll pass tomorrow’s test.
If I should die before I wake,
That’s one less test I’ll have to take!
It’s reflective of just how burned out young teens are today.
I don’t recall that I had to study as hard as they seem to study these days.
I don’t recall working on papers till the sun came up — at least not till graduate school.
I did not become dependent on coffee to keep me going the whole day.
I wonder why they seem to study all the time when I had less tools to help me with back when I was a student like them….
There was nothing to distract me from homework other than TV and maybe, the phone.
Now, they surf the net, YM their friends, Ipod headphones in their ears, and study (all at the same time!!!!
I did research with index cards, typed on a manual typewriter with several layers of carbon paper. One mistake and it meant re-typing the whole thing all over. The library was my haunt. Encyclopedias were a MUST!
All they have to avoid these days is plagiarism. The encyclopedia collection I scrimped and saved to buy? HARDLY OPENED!!!! They cannot imagine a life without word processing. Almost everything else can now be researched from home or on the road via wi-fi on their laptops. (info at their fingertips!)
I had REVIEW WEEK.
They call it now HELL WEEK (and from the looks of C1’s 7-days-a-week-in-school lately, you can change that to HELL MONTH!).
They should be having it easier with all these technology available to them…..and yet it doesn’t look like it’s any easier now than it was for me back then.
Sometimes, I wish I could take on some of their burden and study for them. But I just have to be around, listen to them rant about the list of projects they have to do, and just be a listening ear.
One good thing about all these is that they have strong, friendship bonds in school. And when they cram, they cram together. Hindi sila nag-iisa! And the beauty of technology nowadays is that they never feel alone even when they’re the only ones at home still up and studying during the wee hours of the morning since their kadas (their lingo for ‘barkada’) are similarly still awake and…. just a YM away.
What’s your experience with your kids?
you don’t recall studying that hard? i don’t recall studying at all. har har. seriously, there’s a lot of stress in school for young people these days. one of my husband’s cousins even studies CAD in highschool, i was surprised to hear that. your daughter is very lucky to have such a supportive mom. 🙂
Jane: Oo nga Pao. Some of what they are taking in high school I encountered only in college. Does that mean that years from now, theses will be done in the elementary grades? Heaven forbid!
My secret, I leave the studying to them and the research to me.
One time, I was called by my kid’s teacher to school. Buking kami, her teacher asked what grade should she give me? I answered politely that maybe they should let the kids enjoy school than turn it into hell.
I suppose she got my point and lessened the children’s load. Sometimes teachers forget that making slaves of students never leads to higher grades and a brighter student.
Jane: Bro, that is funny. But yes, I have helped out in research in the past. I mean, there’s just so much a kid can do once he/she comes home at night!!! But yes, they have to write up the reports themselves.