Rose is in first grade. She has been getting 40 minutes of homework a night.

Rainbow spelling, math flashcards, reading, drawing pictures for the math word problems, 100 problem math worksheets. . .Rose loves doing her homework, but she was starting to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. I told her to stop. She said the teacher said she wouldn't get to go to recess if she didn't finish her homework. I made an appointment to speak to the teacher.

As I think I've mentioned, I'm pretty stridently anti-homework. I don't think elementary school children should have any.

I read Alfie Kohn's book, The Homework Myth, which uses research to debunk many of the canards about homework:

homework creates good learning habits
children need drill in order to learn at an acceptable rate
homework teaches responsibility

Instead, he shows how homework creates bad learning habits because it exchanges learning for its own pleasure for learning for a reward or punishment. If Rose is doing her math problems only because she won't get to go to recess otherwise, I don't think she's really digging math. Most of the time reading is organic to our lives. Rose read the last chapter of the weather fairy book to herself because she was dying to know what happened. The next morning she read it aloud to me because she wanted to share it. Compare this to the times we set the timer and sit on the couch to do her reading homework.

Homework creates conflict in the family. Even I, who told Rose I didn't care if she did her homework and would not nag her about it, nag her about it. I have so many other things—not hitting her brother, saying please, answering when I ask her a question—that I chose to nag, threaten, and cajole about, I don't need to add homework.

Homework takes away from playing and playing is the most important thing my child can be doing right now for her emotional, spiritual, social, and intellectual development. After school today Rose did a flip over the high bar for the very first time. She went to Nolan's house with the clan and decorated Halloween cookies. She mixed colors, made design decisions, took turns with the sprinkles, and ate a bat (gluten-free, of course.) Then she went to Aunt Julia's house and decorated the sukkah with rosemary branches. She measured and cut twine, hung apples, analyzed where to put more branches, and ran around outside. A math fact sheet just can't compare.

My daughter goes to public school, public Montessori, but public nonetheless. The administration pressures the teachers to assign homework. I believe in changing the system from within, or at least trying before I run away to private school. I didn't expect the teacher to agree with my philosophy (last year's didn't). I just wanted her to agree that I, knowing my child best, would decide how much homework to do and there would be no consequences for not finishing it.

I got so much more.

The teacher and I quickly realized we shared the exact same philosophy. She was a Kohn devotee too. She thought math facts sheets were a waste of time. She hated giving homework but thought she had to because the parents expected it. She wastes so much of her time putting together and passing out the homework sheets, time she could be spending planning class. I could see a weight lifting from her shoulders as she thought about getting rid of homework. She's going to write a letter to the other first grade parents suggesting it. And she's going to talk to the other teachers in the school.

Standing up for what I believe made a difference in my daughter's life and possibly created system wide change.