Sally, an 11 year old girl in 6th grade has math and English homework due tomorrow, but she has a community service project to attend for K-Kids tonight, and a soccer game afterwards. By the time she is done with all of her extracurricular activities, showering, and eating dinner, it is already 9:00pm. She now has time to do her homework. She finishes her English homework by 9:25 with no problem, but has some difficulty with her math homework. She asks her parents for help, but neither of them remember how to do the kind of math problems she has. By this point, it is already 10:15, so Sally decides to go to bed and turn in her unfinished math homework the next day. Scenarios similar to this one are in no way rare in today’s society, and are …show more content…
In sixth grade, average students are being taught algebra which, 5 years earlier, would have been reserved for students enter 9th grade. The parents of today’s students, unless they have a career in which they use math regularly, are not able to assist their children with their math homework. Ignoring the fact that some parents may not have finished high school or even elementary school, most parents that did receive a high school education have probably forgotten, by this point, all of the math they learned when they were, say, Sally’s age. This inability to do what you feel you need to be able to do as a parent(assist your child) would cause unnecessary stress on the parents. Many people would argue, perhaps, that the children need to do less extracurricular activities if they know they don’t have enough time to do them and finish their homework. But many studies have shown that extracurricular activities are more important for a child’s development than homework is. “Extracurricular activities [also] teach kids the importance of perseverance, hard work (training/practice), and build up their competitive spirit, something they will undoubtedly need upon entrance to the extremely competitive business world.” (www.behk.org,