School Project Purgatory

My cell phone rings. It’s my college Freshperson, who rarely, if ever, calls home. “I need your advice,” he says. Wow. I am flattered. A question about choosing a major, maybe? Picking a course? The meaning of life? Nope. “What do you think about using blue-colored oak tag for my marine biology project – you know, blue like the ocean?”

Whoa. Hang on a minute, I’m thinking. Did he actually just say project? Weren’t we all done with arts and craftsy homework assignments (the bane of many a mom’s existence) by college?

Personally, I think to-be-done-at-home (read: with mom’s “help”) projects should be illegal. But surely by high school, wouldn’t you think that these kinds of artsy assignments would have gone the way of “circle time” and “show and tell?” If so, you would be wrong. One of my kids actually had to create a storyboard with drawings for 11th grade English. But college?

Anyway, the good news was: 1) he had already bought the blue oak tag, and 2) almost finished the poster, and thus 3) there was no need for me to be involved whatsoever. The bad news? I thought the days of annoying school projects – the dinosaur diorama, the sugar cube igloo, the solar system-on-a-wire-hanger mobile – were far, far behind us. Apparently not. My son’s talking about going to grad school eventually (and not for anything remotely related to art, either). Just please tell me he won’t have to pack the colored pencils.

PS: What was your child’s most annoying school project? (Mine was the three-dimensional human cell for 9th grade biology (!) for which we had to cut a rubber ball in half with a meat cleaver – don’t even ask.)

Comments

thank you!!!! i am a high school senior, and sick to DEATH of doing arts and crafts in school and for homework. i am all for learning and trying new things, but creating puppets and posters in spanish class is not going to help me in any way if i visit spain and would like to know the language. not to mention how time consuming all these "artsy" projects are, and how little you actually learn from them. i had hoped that this nonsense would be over in college, but evidently this is not the case . . .

Katie, If it's any consolation, I've never been "assigned" an art project as an adult in the working world...Until then, hang on! Thanks for posting. Ciao, Laurie

The Storyboard for English actually does have pedagogical merit. And many kids who are not primarily linguistic in their intelligence profile enjoy the chance to use other media to demonstrate their understanding of concepts.

That said, although I don't agree that the project should fall by the wayside by high school, I certain think that the parental "help" should.

As to most irritating project: Grade 1: build a playground out of recycled materials. Have you ever made a swingset out of straws, chopsticks, string and elastic? I still have flashbacks.

Ahh! I know what you mean! I have nightmares of hot glue guns now.

In my vast experience as a parent of 2 boys who detested those art projects, I learned an important lesson early on. The more money you spend on supplies for the project, the higher the grade. Sad, but true.

Oh boy, I spent the better part of my school days justifying to my parents the whole "money spent" to "grade earned" ratio.