My ideal backyard

"I have a creative writing homework", - my 5th-grader announced on the way home, - "I need to write an essay." "What's the topic?" - I asked. "My ideal backyard." What? First, I didn't understand. Then, I was angry.

Why was I angry? Maybe, because describing what their ideal backyard would look like was the topic for a Kindergarten, not a 5th-grade essay? Really, how creative can you get writing about a backyard? And how much such an essay would help develop a 5th-grader's thinking?

In my middle school time, we wrote a lot. And I mean a lot. We analyzed works of Pushkin, Gogol', Dostoevsky, Chekhov. Occasionally, we analyzed works of communist writers like Chernyshevsky and Gor'ky, but that's another topic. The keyword here is we analyzed. We had to read and then think, and then write. The essay had to be 4 written pages long. That's hand-written, not typed. Sure, most kids hated it. It was hard work. I personally liked it, because I like writing. But that's besides the point. We didn't just write, we developed our minds, our thinking.

Why cannot american 5th-graders be asked to analyze The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, or Huckleberry Finn, or Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example? Sorry to say I am not very knowledgeable in american literature, but I am sure that there are many great writers and great works that almost middle-schoolers can read and write about. But they are not just not writing about those works, they are not even required to read them. They don't have a list of required reading. Why? Is there not a list of books that every literate child should read by high school? Shouldn't The Adventures of Tom Sawyer be on that list? Shouldn't some of Shakespeare's sonnets? What, a 5th-grader's mind cannot understand some of Shakespeare's sonnets? What a mistake. American education system, can we please come up with the list of required reading? And once we do, can we please test, by means of writing an essay, that a student understood what he read, learned something from the book and made some useful conclusions?

But enough about literature. You want more "creative" writing? Let them write about their family. Let them write about their country. The places they've traveled. What they want to be when they grow up and why. There are so many creative topics that will make them think about things like history, relationships, honor, freedom. Not about how high they would make a slide in their play structure. Because it's just a waste of their time and their minds.

"My ideal backyard" - are you serious, teachers? In 5th grade? What are you thinking? I would really love to read my child's writing. It's so important. It shows his thought process, it shows what's important to him, how his mind works. But I am not even going to look at this essay. I don't care how his ideal backyard would look like. This assignment gives him nothing serious to think about. Not to him and not to me.