Hey, kids, it's a cruel and competitive world out there

Somehow I can’t imagine my parents having complained about me being burdened with an excess of homework. It wouldn’t have made much difference, anyway, since my general attitude about homework throughout my schooldays was to avoid it by various means. My feeling was: If teachers can’t get their job done during the day, why should I be penalized?Generally my approach worked – except at report card time. But, even then it worked to a degree since, even with an utter disregard for anything I was called upon to do after hours, I still graduated. Went through university and, get this, even became a teacher. Somehow there was a vindication in all of that, or else it shows that God has a great sense of irony.

Anyway, I have been reading accounts lately of how parents throughout North America are griping about the amount of homework being dumped on Jason and Tabitha. Seems like the kids have no free time whatsoever, and that family life is suffering as a result. Looking at the kids who are hanging out at the park at 10 p.m. on a school night, I find such assertions amazing. I also find amazing, considering those aforementioned kids in the park, that there are still families that have such a thing as a “family life.”

But, I do know that my stepdaughter (an A average student) was perpetually griping about the amount of homework she was forced to do (between phone calls, and accompanied by music at full volume) and how unfair the teachers were in assigning so much. I thought, my God, if she feels that way, how must the dumb kids feel? In all honesty, she did bring a lot of stuff home in a pack larger than the average marine carries at bivouac time. And it was all school-related stuff. And indeed she did work hard enough to maintain a superlative grade point average.

Her argument was always that a history teacher (who had assigned 90 pages of reading as well as an essay) didn’t seem to appreciate that the math teacher had assigned 38 complex calculus problems, and the English teacher had assigned the complete reading of Pride and Prejudice and had called for an essay on social rituals among the upper classes in the early 19th century, never seemed to get together with one another to sort out just how they expected any given kid to get the work done.

Well, maybe she had a point. But, at the same time, she made it through, suffered from no nervous breakdowns and generally seemed to be a pretty well-adjusted kid, her ‘onerous tasks’ notwithstanding. She laughed, she went to parties, to movies, hung out with her friends, and was reasonably civil to her mother and me. At least, as civil as a 15-year-old girl will deign to be with an elder. So, frankly, I didn’t see her homework burden as that great a problem.

And maybe she secretly followed my slacker mantra from schooldays, which was to do ‘just enough’ to be able to sound a bit authoritative in class the next day; do written assignments; and pretend you know how to speed read. I will confess that it wasn’t until my university years that I added one more item to my slacker mantra – which by that time was almost a manifesto – and that was to learn to bullshit really well. It always works, especially if you drop the name of an instructor or professor as a person of authority on the subject in question.

As for the parents who gripe about the kids having too much homework, they might take some solace in that at least they know where their kids are on any given evening.

On the other hand, I suspect the complaints emanate from the fact that parents are being called upon to help with that homework. That tends to violate their personal slacker manifesto, which calls for drink a beer, eat dinner, and nod in front of the TV until bed. That’s the sort of quality time many of us are unprepared to forego.