My wife offered me a compromise: “I will run out to get the pizza if you look over the math homework.” “DEAL!” I shouted. I can be a man of action. When I see an opportunity — a GOOD opportunity — I jump at it. And this seemed like one of those. I will wrestle a komodo dragon to get out of a pizza run. Math homework? That’s a no-brainer, even for a no-brainer like me. The school binder was laid out on the dining room table. The page of “math” sat atop it. Shoot, I didn’t even need to go looking. “A sucker born every minute,” I thought to myself, proud of my coup. Wondering if I had magical powers that brought good luck upon me. “I always said I was special!” Until I took a look down at the page … DIVISION! I had been hoodwinked. The little sheet of paper could hardly contain the 13,000 division equations spilling off the edges. Endless rows and columns. Unending combinations. An infinite sea of numbers tucked into long division symbols. 35 divided by 7, 64 divided by 8, etc., etc. etc. Hoodwinked! There were times in my daughter’s life when looking over math homework — shoot, any homework — required about 15 seconds. I would pretend to review it three or four times so my wife would think I had been “present in the experience.” As a parent, you can’t just run your eyes down a child’s work and then … Continue reading The math homework hoodwink