When I was a second-grader, I remember being assigned by my art teacher to draw an image of HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. What's an eight-year-old to do? I told my mother to help me out.
The next day, I came to school and nervously asked to see my friends' drawings. They all looked so beautiful that I was relieved I had asked my mother to help — my own kiddie drawing would have extremely paled in comparison.
We were all sent back a big red mark in our drawing books and a sentence that I still remember today: "Please let your child do her own homework." My friends later confessed that it was their mothers who'd drawn those pictures. We learned our lesson. After that, I never asked my mother to help again.
Recently, I talked to a 13-year-old who lives close by. The conversation started out about what he did during the New Year holidays. "I had a lot of homework, so I couldn't really do much else," he replied.
He added that he'd always had so much homework that usually his parents had to help him out. When he was eight years old, he was assigned a project to make a solar system model. Of course, it was completed by his father.
The boy wasn't reprimanded for handing in something he clearly couldn't have done by himself. He was also praised by his teacher. I asked him whether that seemed a bit unfair to other students, and he just said that all his friends' creations had been completed by their parents, too.
I also know a couple whose child attends this very same school — a prestigious boys' school famously known for the expensive "tea money". They told me that their son and his classmates had had a stage performance in which they played birds, and the parents had to make the wings for their kids.
The couple tried to do it themselves, whereas other parents hired someone to do the work. The result was that their kid came home embarrassed and disappointed. All his friends' wings were so amazing, whereas his were cartoonish.
Many months ago, there was news about an Instagram account offering homework services for students. The public was disappointed in "children today" for being so lazy and irresponsible. The truth is that such services have been around for decades. Even before the internet, there were kids who bullied, bribed or begged their friends to do their homework. There was one incident when a family friend called me and asked me to help sum up an article for her son, who was studying in the US. The mother said, "He has too much to do. He can't possibly finish on his own. Name your price — just get it done by tonight."
Children not doing their homework is not as disturbing as their parents helping them cheat. The purpose of doing homework is for the children to learn, and the only thing they learn from getting someone else to do it is that money can buy them anything. Who can blame them if they grow up to be greedy and corrupt?
Still, I agree that students today are assigned way too much homework, and they would probably have to stay up really late if they were to finish it all by themselves. Kids today usually get home around 8pm, what with the horrendous traffic and extracurricular classes they are forced to take. And that's after already spending around eight hours in normal classes.
There is still a myth that a high pile of homework will make children smart. When there was a suggestion that homework should be reduced, many were quick to say that the kids would become stupid. As a mother, if I had to choose between stupid but honest or smart but deceitful, I think the former is preferable. We obviously have too many of the latter in our society.
Napamon Roongwitoo is a writer for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.