Schoolteacher, Ian Whitwham, is exhausted trying to alter his daughters' homework habits...
I never liked homework. I only did it because my Dad kept bellowing at me. He told me I’d grow up to be a derelict or a ne’er-do-well or a plumber if I didn’t give up my evenings to Caesar’s Wars in Gaul, Ablative Absolutes – or Lady Hester Stanhope’s sojourn in a desert.
Now I am following in his footsteps. I yell at my daughters about their homework. It is wrecking our home.
The eldest never really took to homework. She has a PhD in avoiding it. She has never let the National Curriculum interfere with her education – or her evenings. She has spent years not doing it. It exhausts her. And me. I nearly become my Dad. I have threatened her with dereliction. To no avail.
The younger does too much of it. She incarcerates herself in her Quarters for whole evenings and comes out all pale and wan and chock full of National Curriculum. She exhausts herself. And me. I come down on it like a ton of bricks.
I don’t know which is worse – Sloth or The Infant Phenomenon. I zoom from room to room begging one to start and the other to pack it in. Then I get muddled and urge Big Daughter to get a life.
It’s never been easy to identify her homework – what it is or where it is. The Â鶹ԼÅÄwork Diary has rarely surfaced over the years. And anyway, it’s already been done – on tube, bus, taxi, bike, club, heat, drugs. If it is located, it is soon abandoned. Bits of work conk out after half a page. Essays turn into Graffiti. Quadratics lay abandoned. Verbs don’t get conjugated. Her bookcase groans only with magazines – they’re all about washboard tummies, Tantric sex and Lip Gloss. I did Virgil. She favours the National Enquirer over The National Curriculum.
So I start to bark – just like my Dad. To no avail. I must chill out. She is, she says, Pacing Herself.
Set texts seem thin on the ground. For several years now the library has seemed to consist of Sleepers, The Ronnie Spector Story – and Eric the Viking. Does this cover all levels?
The Volume in Sloth Quarters is high. Tending to the Murderous. It drowns out the Trilling of Madrigals from The Phenomenon. Her random stabs of study are usually done to the sounds of Concordes crashing. This prevents intellectual overload. And protects her from my Harangues. They are lost in the racket.
Meanwhile the Phenomenon is on task. Her fierce little peepers gaze upon Enzymes, Iambic Pentameters, Dovetail joints, The Causes of all Wars, the Composition of Snowflakes – or Martian Mushrooms. Her fierce whirring eyes pop out and demand answers from her father who sits in dim oblivion on a sofa watching soccer. I may have done these things for Â鶹ԼÅÄwork - but that was long ago. You forget the lot – especially Maths. I am a moron to all her chirping questions. And anyway she mustn’t do Maths homework. She will improve and threaten us all. There’s a long tradition of innumeracy in our family.
Even the holidays aren’t safe from this dread treadmill. We couldn’t go to the beach and build sandcastles. We were all too busy examining erosion on the River Pinn or King Herod’s foreign policy or Splitting Atoms.
But what a surprise – Big Sister didn’t need to do this. She breezes through her GCSE’s!
I thought A levels would need a bit of Intellectual Gravitas. A bit more studying of an evening. Â鶹ԼÅÄwork. Apparently not. You pace yourself as before. Honey becomes Vogue. Mizz becomes Marie France. Kylie becomes P J Harvey. But the bookcase puts on a bit of weight. Any scribbler with high cheekbones, severe drug problems or a self-regarding Angst – or recommended by Johnny Depp becomes part of the Canon and it is placed beside Erik the Viking – Kerouac, Sam Shepherd, Hunter Thompson. The set texts still don’t take - again. And just in case they do – she reads them with headphones on so loud that the eyes get blurred. I tell her - primly - that you can fool some of the examiners some of the time – but you can’t fool them at A Level.
Wrong - they are a breeze.
I now know that I’ve got all this wrong. Utterly. With three and a half minutes of Â鶹ԼÅÄwork every two days - and a weekend clubbing to recover – you’ll be fine.
Sloth is resting now – she has her Academic feet up.
She’s just eighteen.
The Infant Phenomenon toils on…..now her big Sister has a bit of time she can help her….give her a piece of her mind. She has started to do her homework to The New York Dolls…..and she’s started Clubbing…..
Hopefully, she’ll be like her Big Sister.
Academic standards must be maintained. A family tradition.
