The last day of summer should be a day for sleeping in, shopping for supplies, or perhaps seeing friends who have been away. If the households I know (including my own) are any indication, thousands of students are instead scrambling to finish long-ago assigned book lists and assignments. Some of those assignments were given out with report cards in June. And this year, with a late Labor Day and contractual issues, the start of school has come later than ever.
So what gives? I brought the subject up for discussion among friends and families and got a variety of reactions. One came from a parent whose friend handled the last minute mania this way: She offered to pay her children $100 to get the summer assignments done the first week, so she would not have to nag or argue with them. With the homework underway early (the incentive worked perfectly) the entire family relaxed and enjoyed summer.
This same sort of incentive or bribe (because that's what it is, isn't it?) could be extended throughout the year, if parents in the midst of this recession really want to be in the business of paying for performance. That brings up other issues entirely.
What I'm wondering is, should students be assigned homework at all during the summer? My children would vehemently argue against it, yet I must say I welcome summer reading lists and suggestions. (Insideschools' readers were somewhat divided on this issue in our July 31 poll.) Summers can be so packed with camps and physical activity and family events that having an actual book assignment can be a great way of reminding your child to get back in the habit. My mother, raised in the Bronx, and a graduate of New York City public schools, reminds me often of how she spent her own middle school summers: reading "Gone With the Wind,'' and anything else she could get her hands on while sitting on her apartment's fire escape.
Looking ahead, the real question is how to help our children develop discipline and study habits in the year to come, and to find a way for it not to happen at the last possible minute. Suggestions, anyone?
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