I HATE HOMEWORK!!!!

There, I've said it. I'm a bad parent, I don't want to put forth the effort necessary to see that my children are well-educated. I'm lazy. I'd rather do so many things in the evening other than supervise homework and studying. However, it seems that some experts don't see me as so bad--they too see a point of diminishing returns on homework.

I'll be the first to admit that if I had given school more effort, I could have done better. I was the classic underachiever--the National Merit finalist who did not graduate with honors from high school, and who every year of high school had a class that kept me from the honor roll. Now, they weren't blow-off classes, but they were certainly classes I could have mastered with more effort. It is difficult to get A's and B's in Latin, Chemistry and Trig without studying or homework, especially if, as was the case with chemistry and trig, I had a lousy teacher. All that being said, I think that had I spent an hour a nite regularly on homework and studying, I would have done fine. My kids however, who leave for school earlier than I did, and get home later, often have much more than an hour of homework, especially my son, who has problems that make homework even more time-consuming than it is for normal kids. While my daughter usually manages to finish hers without a problem, last week she had to finish it on the bus, since religion class cut into homework time. I'd like to find some sort of activity in which to involve my son, but he just doesn't have time after homework most nites. Why so much homwork so often?