He assigns a lot of reports, which I'm cool with. Research and writing is an important skill. HOWEVER, this weekend my step-daughter came over with an assignment to write a report on a topic about Canada. Her paper was supposed to include answers to the following questions: 1. What if your topic was from the U.S.? and 2. What is his/her influence on Canada? The paper has to be two pages, double spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman font. The topic that Lily drew out of the hat was Carly Rae Jepsen.
First, even she realized that this would teach her nothing about Canada's history or culture.
Second, to get to the assigned two pages of material, you eventually come across Google hits about Ms. Jepsen's unfortunate hacking incident--complete with entries about naked pictures and blowjobs. Not something I want my 12-year-old looking through.
Third, her influence on Canada? I was composing sentences in my head like, "Carly Rae Jepsen is as important to the Canadian pop music scene as Avril Lavigne and Nicklebak." "Carly Rae Jepsen has shown Canadians that hard work gets you no where without a tweet from Justin Bieber." "Jepsen is a twenty-eight-year-old woman who dresses and acts like a tween to appeal to her fan base, proving that nothing is more important than conforming to your record label's creation of your personal brand."
And yes, I recommended a paragraph of nothing but a list of Jepsen's music awards just to get to the desired two pages. Yay for teaching my kid how to fill space on the page.
I'm just glad Lily didn't draw Justin Bieber's name. Can you imagine what his Google search would return? Nothin' like having to sort through reports of drugs and hookers for your parochial school sixth grade social studies report.
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