At the end of last year, all the students in my daughter’s middle school received a summer math project to do. Now we had summer work before but that was reading, which can be done anywhere at almost anytime (i.e., on the beach, at the pool, on a train into the City, etc). But a math project? No, you’re stuck in the house, researching items on the Internet, scratching out dozens of calculations and making pie charts.
I figure the school administration thought this would be a good idea, a way to keep math fresh in the kids’ minds over the summer. I guess they don’t realize how much my kids spend at the snack shack at our pool on a daily basis? Or that they have to calculate the change? Or that they’re constantly figuring out how many days they have left of summer vacation. Or the human age of our dog forcing me to recognize her “birthdays” every few weeks. Nope lets give them a math project that will take a few hours to complete that they can cram into the last couple of remaining days of freedom they have.
At the end of this project, they courteously left a space for parental comments. Well, I told them what I thought. I said I found it hypocritical that a school district that spent the last two days of the school year showing my daughter movies, and the week prior to that, taking her to a ball game, bowling and to a park, should send home math work to do over the summer. I promised to take take her to ball games, movies, bowling and parks if they promised to teach my daughter while she’s in school.
She’s afraid they’re going to fail her now.
