Society

12-year-old's poetic bid ends homework toil

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-01-28 14:18

A fifth-grader has penned a poem to her mother requesting a break from the burden of homework assignments.

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The poem entitled "Mom, I'm under such pressure" created a lot of interest on the Internet, sparking a debate on child education. Yueyue, a girl in fifth grade in Nanjing, wrote the poem after a fight with her mother who insisted that she finish a math worksheet.

"I asked my daughter to do the math worksheet the day before the final exam. She wrote for a while, and refused to do anymore," Yueyue's mother said. The mother urged her daughter to practice more math, but the daughter protested with a rhymed poem written in three minutes.

The poem goes: "Mom, I'm under such pressure... I want to explore each blade of grass and every flower... Mom, I promise I will not fail you when I grow up. Please don't cut me from nature. Please give me a break."

The author said the fight with her mom was "a fight for the right". She said she likes practicing Chinese, but her mother forced her to finish many math worksheets. The mother said she was touched by the poem, "I thus knew my child was not happy, because she was restrained from what she likes and forced into what she hates."