This is National Education Week and the NEA sent us some great quotes from great people concerning teaching and education. I thought we might enjoy these.
…A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
____Henry Brooks Adams
…Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
_____Japanese Proverb
…One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
_____Carl Jung
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
thedailylily.com 
Maybe parents and teacher should mediate on the above quotes and think of using them in the great homework debate. These might give wind to wings of parents and teachers that believe that a child is being given too much homework.
I have often thought in listening and thinking that a child that goes to school all day should not also have to be home schooled as well. Maybe tutored in areas if and where needed and helped with a special project. But, should a parent on a daily basis have to help with homework because of the magnitude and scope of the homework? Seems very stressful to a family to me.
I am very much aware this is an on going debate. Open minds and communications hopefully will lead us to better education for the child and a more tranquil family.
I’m very aware of the “Homework Debate”. I feel a steady diet of projects everyday AFTER school is not good for the family and especially the students. Many schools have a lot of projects going on within them daily which should be sufficient enough. In order to have a creative mind open to learning students need to be well rested. Too much stress stifles creativeness and the desire to be in a learning environment once again after a night of push, push, push. There is a lot of stress to get scores up these days and compete in world wide markets. Homework was thought to be one of the answers. Many students also have a heavy schedule after the school day, whether it is sports, piano, tutoring, etc. I have been thinking a lot about this as I have a friend who is a teacher and who has to grade many of the projects that are done in class on her own time. She also has to go home and sit down and work with her son for three to four or five hours. She sometimes does not get to bed before 1 or 2 a.m. This can not be healthy to a teacher/parent who has to face children the next day or her child who should be alert but who will have to go through the same routine the next night when he/she gets home. As teachers perhaps we have to rethink our knowing of homework and see if it really is working towards the goal we wish to meet.