2023

All homework and no play?

It gives me a little pleasure every morning to read the four-frame comic strip Nono-chan in the Asahi Shinbun newspaper.

I found a typical one on the morning of August 31st.

Nono-chan, a schoolgirl, says with a smile," My homework is now done!"

Her mother says, "You are prepared to go to school without your homework?"

Nono-chan's answer, "No, all the forty sheets are finished" surprises her mother and grandmother, who ask the father if he is okay.

Exhausted, he says, "Give me water".

It was not the lazy girl but he who did all the homework for the summer vacation.

How to finish homework which has been neglected for seven weeks is a traditional topic for comic strips or anime.

On the evening of the 27th, I watched a national TV anime, "Sazae-san".

One of the stories was about how Katsuo, a schoolboy, finishes his homework.

As a boy, I read "Sazae-san" in Asahi every morning and the anime continues to be aired every Sunday evening as it has been for more than half a century.

Actually "Sazae-san" is more timely than "Nono-chan" because most of the schools begin on the 28th, so summer vacation is shortened by four days.

The more lessons, the better?

I, who taught at public high schools for 35 years, think that neither students nor teachers in their hearts want shorter vacations, which parents seem to prefer.

As an elementary school student, I liked the workbook we were given at the end of the first term.

By filling a few pages every morning, I was able to finish it by the end of July.

More troublesome was an illustrated diary.

Who remembers how the weather was ten days back?

I vaguely remember a news report about children who were asking the Meteorological Agency about the weather of bygone summer days.

However, the most troublesome was the so-called "Free Study," which we were not free to decline at all.

I remember that in the first year, having failed to turn in my Free Study on the 1st of September, I was cutting paper and pasting it on a kind of diorama very slowly and reluctantly, watching "Ken-chan, Chako-chan," a TV drama for children that evening.

I don't know how I was never scolded.

A few days later, our school held an exhibition of "Free Study" in the auditorium.

I admired beautiful specimens of insects made by schoolmates, but I realized that my diorama representing my neighborhood was not so bad.

                                                                                                       *This essay was corrected by Ms. Tama of Idiy

                                                                                                                                                                    2023, September