Kid Gets 'Catastrophe Award': Mean or Meaningful?

You speak as if the teacher has no experience in what she does for a living. This is nothing more than good old fashioned accountability check for the student.

Given some of the teachers I've had, before, you can't be 100% sure that all of them do know what they're doing. In fact, some may just be malicious to students because they're cruel.

tru dis tru dat! we are all humans. I just think this particular teacher did, in fact, have the student's best interest at heart.

Won't ever know unless she makes a statement.

Exactly.

you obviously either don't have children or simply don't mind not spending the most QUALITY time with yours if you do. Since I have the tedious task of explaining the logically obvious to you, at least take a moment to process this before you reply with insults: most children in school are out of session at around 3-4pm. Therefore, they get home after 4pm, wind down after changing clothes and having a snack around 5:30pmish, pull out and start homework which is a minimum of 1hr but most likely 2hours worth of work. That makes it about 7pm when they finish. I didn't even mention dinnertime, bathtime, and perhaps some personal reading. If the child doesn't want to be a wreck the next day (since he or she usually has to get up by at least 6:30am the latest) he should actually try to hit the sack before 9pm like maybe, 8ish. This starts all over again the next day! Then we cram all our fam time into the weekends because we clearly don't get enough QUALITY time throughout the week. Sure, children should become accustomed to some type of routine of responsibility, but we are overloading not only the teachers with responsibility but the children as well...Sparky.

.....and if you are somewhat religious you even have church once, twice or dare I even say it three times a week. I was sooo abused (forgive the slight sarcasm)! I don't even know what studyhalls were or even if the teacher ended a certain class early, I presume! Oh and I'm guessing the child never had any holidays or any time to get massive amounts of homework that are accustomed to a what-third grader? Life is tough but somehow I and many other people before me have perservered and led the way to finishing Homework!!!!!!! (mucho apologies for bigger sarcasm) :)

Um, school is typically 9am-3pm, give or take half an hour. That's six hours, less if you remember they get recess and lunch (so that's like a free hour in the middle). And she's 8, so what, grade 3 or 4? They would get maybe 1 hour of homework max. If I remember, usually in lower school levels the homework is maybe a page of maths, or a project to work on. Primary school teachers love projects. Also there is usually a presumption that the parent will help the kid if the kid can't do it, because you know, good parents like to see their kids do well in school. So if the family "can't spend time" with the kid because the kid is doing homework, maybe they should be helping them...particularly if it's a kid who never does their homework.

O_o My girls' school days are 7 hrs., and when they brought homework home, it was two-to-five pages of math, a page or two of Science or Social Studies, two pages of English, possibly, and oh, GOD, the book reports. Honestly, six in a year? For a fourth-grader!? Seriously?

Some days they'd get no homework, such as Fridays, but most days they'd have at least 3-4 sheets to work through, and some nights? Eight or nine. And I can assure you that it took a lot more than "one hour" for them to do them all, even with my help, short of my giving them the answers, which I don't believe in.

Watch out School Board! Here comes Public Enemy No. 1 with a class action lawsuit! Plus, six book reports in nine months, in all honesty, not that much. Do the math or ask your kids, maybe they can do it after ALL THAT homework.

I repeat, I don't believe in giving them the answers, and I'll be dipped before I do their homework for them. Otherwise, how the heck will they learn? If the teachers are assigning too much, then I guess they just get to fail.

I will help, but I won't do the work for them. Six book reports in 180 days of school, that's a book report every 30 days, which may not be much to you, but it's a pain in the ass to me, pardon my elocution.

I'm hardly going to bring a class-action lawsuit against them, but they really should focus on assigning an amount of work appropriate to the age. "One hour" of homework is not three-to-nine sheets a night, adding in at least 15-20 minutes of reading afterward. They have responsibilities, including bathing themselves, and taking care of their animals, which takes approximately an hour each, then, of course, I have to make sure they're fed, which is another 45 min. to an hour, not that I really care if their homework is covered in stains and blotches.

These morons who are attaking what you say obviously suck as parents or aren't. Move on while laughing and shaking your head.

While you have a fair point, it's only going to prepare them for the real world. Life is hell, the sooner you accept that, the happier you will be.

Also, (this is just a joke) 'pardon my elocution?

Life is what you make it.

But, that doesn't mean that teachers should set them up to potentially fail, particularly in Elementary school where they're only dealing with one, or two, teachers in a given day. It's not like high school where you have a different teacher giving you a different assignment with no care for what the others are giving you.

No offense, but it is clear that you either don't know wth you are talking about or your children are going to a school in a fairytale. One hour, one page of homework? Teachers who anticipate the parents will do the work for the child?! lmao. ooooooookkkaaaaay.

You didn't do very well in school, did you? I mean, if you hate homework that much, I take it you werent exactly an A student.

I loved and still do love school. Btw, 3.9 GPA in college and always honor roll in middle and high school. My child is also straight A student and always has been. Took second in National spelling bee one year and uuuh,, loves school. Thanks for that moment to boast.

Then why you be complaining about two hours of homework? If you do teh maths, you shalt see that on a normal school day, homework would end at, at latest, 6:30 and unless you put your kids to bed at 7:00, you still have an hour and a half to two hours.

I have deserved many of these in my lifetime, why have I never got one????

This is about as mild a punishment as the child could possibly have received. When I was at school, if I'd repeatedly not handed in homework, I'd have been hit in front of the whole class, and I'd have deserved it. The mere fact that this is an issue shows just how much kids are worshipped nowadays, instead of just being treated like the trainee adults that they are.

Yeah, I remember that being on T.V.! Even in school (and I was a badly behaved little bastard!) I still believed in corporal punishment. I'm not saying it's a first resort, but some children simply cannot be controlled by any other means.

Given that it was intended to be a joke, it seemed a little malicious, or, at least, thoughtless.

Do you mean Pink Floyd's video? Or my opinion? Or yours? I'm pretty confused!

The teacher's action. Even the principal said it was "only a joke."

Hitting, IF DONE AT ALL, should be done only for serious moral offenses, such as bullying or actions which are crimes when done by adults. Failure to do homework deserves discipline, but not a hittable offense IMO.

I'm not so sure. A kid who repeatedly doesn't do homework is being openly disobedient. If kids deliberately don't do what they're told, they're basically giving the middle finger to the adults. If the punishment you're using doesn't make them do the homework, the punishment has to keep increasing.

Seems to me that she earned every bit of that "award." Furthermore, the mother should look to herself for not taking a more involved role in her child's education.

Parent's: It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to see that your children are educated! The schools are there to make it easier for you, BUT IT IS STILL YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!!!

Obviously, she should get her homework done (what in the world is she going to do when she's a teenager? Fail out of high school?), but this is *so* far from the correct way to approach it.

I don't have time for this idiotic conversation!

Um, okay...then why are you here? You make no sense....

lol!I know, I was tired at the time and I just wanted to write something quick. Yes it absolutely made no sense whatsoever

....okay, then.

The girl in a way deserved it the teacher is only punishing her to get her to work in the future. She shouldn't be humiliated she should take it as a gift because if you slack off you aren't going anywhere in the future.

That's not nice to embarrass the girl in front of the class! Although, maybe she should actually do her homework instead of coming up with excuses...
Do you notice the smiley face after "most excuses for not having homework"? What has our world come to, when people like this are allowed to teach?!

Well, smiley faces usually indicate that it's a joke. I'm sure the teacher did it in a joking way, not in a harsh, sarcastic way. How exactly would /you/ deal with a kid who never did their homework? Remember you don't know what the teacher has done up until this point, but obviously it hasn't worked.

Well, if it's causing all this drama and making the kid embarrassed and upset then it shouldn't be taken as a light joke...

Thats really mean.

You can teach a child not to behave that way without humiliation.

I am also sure this is the first time the mother took note of her daughter's problems.