It Starts In Kindergarten??

When I was in junior high and high school I always knew of at least one kid in the class whose parents essentially did their homework for them. I remember how unfair it seemed for little Susie to always get A's on her reports and projects because her mom always did her work.

A few years ago I worked for someone who had an only child that attended a private (and very snobby) school here. The daughter would come to work after school and sit and copy book reports that her mother wrote for her. We would all make a joke of it and the mom would say how unfair she thinks it is that the teachers expect a 3rd grader to be able to write a good book report on their own. At that time I remember feeling sad for the little girl because I knew her mom was just making things harder for her. If the mom ever decided the girl was old enough to do it herself, the girl was going to struggle because her mom always did the reports for her.

So I have always been aware that this kind of thing happens. What I didn't know was that it starts as young as kindergarten. Cameron received a homework project last week to make a family tree. She was to draw a tree on a 1/2 sheet of poster board and use various materials to create each member of her family. The emphasis of the project was to be creative. There were step by step instruction that all started out with "have your child........" . It was due today so the kids were gradually bringing their trees in the past couple of days (other kindy classes are doing this too). Wow! I never knew how many 5 & 6 year old artists there are out there. I saw trees with trunks that had roots coming out from the bottom, and amazing shadowing. Trees with perfectly placed leaves, and even simple trees that were just a circle on top, but boy were they painted really good with water colors. Not a smudge of green paint on the outside of the circle. I wont even get into the portraits of the family members I saw.

Seriously people, do you think the teacher grew a brain yesterday??? These pictures will be up in the classroom for parents to see on Tuesday at open house. Don't you realize that your child's tree is going to look ridiculous next to the trees with the lopsided tops and faces that have one really large eye and one small eye?? How sad that some parents just don't get it.