While chatting with the dental hygienist yesterday, I learned about a science project that had been assigned to her fifth-grade son: Each student was assigned a "body system"—perhaps circulatory, digestive, respiratory, etc.; I didn't get the details—and told to make up a game using questions about that system. At first glance that seems reasonable, perhaps even interesting. Games are not a particularly efficient way to learn facts, but they can be an enjoyable way of masking the repetition that is required to commit them to memory. Certainly making up the questions is a good exercise.
However, the amount of time and effort required for this project was 'way out of proportion to the science knowledge gained, most being devoted to extraneous matters: the game must have a well-made game board, with a detailed, typed instruction sheet, and a sturdy, well-decorated box. Such a project might be a joy for some students but torture for their less-crafty classmates—and to what purpose? Whatever one might think of the merits of training fifth graders in manual dexterity and design, it seems unfair to base a science grade on such work, and in any case one ought not to pretend that it is science that is being taught.
This assignment is yet one more example of how those who claim they don't have enough time to teach properly waste the students' time with busywork. Craft projects instead of science, PowerPoint presentations instead of written reports, browsing the Internet for images instead of writing paragraphs, and tweaking fonts and backgrounds instead of improving sentence structure! It's bad enough when a teacher allows a student to get away with such nonsense; to require it is ludicrous.
My theory is that the teacher in question is using her students as slave labor to create classroom materials for future years, so I encouraged the hygienist to make sure the project comes home after it has been graded.
