Neverending Top Ten #5.7: Homework

This is one of those stories that takes a bit of explaining, but it has the perfect punchline. Or it proves my point. Always nice when that happens.

Sam’s homework has become a bone of contention over the last year or so. Not with Sam, but with school. The homework they provide is all online – either playing a times tables game called TT Rockstars… or an equivalent spelling game called Spelling Shed. As parents, we’re really conscious of restricting the amount of screen time Sam has as there’s plenty of evidence that too much can affect attention span, mood and academic achievement (among about a thousand other things). Call us old fashioned, but we’d prefer Sam to be given paper-based homework as the online programmes prove ultra-addictive, and encourage an unpleasant competitiveness among classmates and classes… something Sam’s school seem to encourage by offering prizes to the students who have been online the most. One of these prizes last year was to gorge yourself on a chocolate fountain… you couldn’t make this up.

Last year, Sam would often come away from playing these games red-faced and furious; it just wasn’t good for his health. We reached the point where he was getting so wound up that I rang the head teacher and told her we were banning the games. There was much more to the conversation than that, but I’ll spare you the details.

When the new school year kicked off in September, so did the pressure to play these bloody homework games again. We decided to give Sam another chance, but we told school we were monitoring it and if it looked like the homework was becoming too competitive again, that’d be the end of it. Sam’s actually been dealing with it much better this year, doing short bursts of activity on the games and not getting too stressed out… until last week, when suddenly we found him clamouring to go back on the Spelling Shed game more and more. We asked him what had changed and he explained that every week in assembly, they congratulated the class that had got the top score, and every week for the whole term, one class had won it. (Never mind that this was a class in the year above.) Sam and his friends were determined to beat that class, just once, so they’d committed to increasing their game play until they won. “Just one time,” he said, “that’s all.”

By the time we realised what was going on, Sam and his class were actually ahead, so it looked like they’d succeed in their quest and hopefully everything would go back to normal.

And then, at the last minute, the other class won again.

And that was when all hell broke loose. Let’s call it Shed-Gate. Because it seemed that a boy in the year above, let’s call him Edgar Teabag (because that’s his name… well, it' s not, but it could be) had been caught cheating. He’d not been playing the game at all… but he’d worked out how to hack it and give himself (and therefore his whole class) the highest score every week.

M’lud… the prosecution rests.

 

Completely unrelated: this is a track Sam’s been singing along to since I added it to our latest in-car CD.

Bram Tchaikovsky, aka Peter Bramall, was the lead singer of 70's Airport-botherers The Motors. When that band flew off in separate directions, Bram formed his own group of power-poppers, releasing three albums before going off to find an honest job. (He also played guitar on Into The Valley by The Skids, if you’re keeping score.) Sarah Smiles reached #32 in The Netherlands Top 40 in 1979. Listening to it now, I can’t believe it wasn’t Top Ten everywhere…