"才过去的国庆黄金周里，一所小学要求一年级学生写一份关于落叶的12页科学报告，这样的家庭作业让家长感到愤怒。 "
The assignment, set over the recent Golden Week holidays, asked children to collect fallen leaves from their local area “at different stages of growth” and measure their perimeter, colour, size and texture, Thepaper.cn reported on Tuesday.
据澎湃新闻星期二报道，在刚刚过去的黄金周假期，一所小学布置的作业是，要求学生收集“不同生长阶段”的树叶，测量树叶的周长，观察其颜色、大小、纹理等。
“How would a first-grader understand the concept of a perimeter? this is clearly parents’ homework,” a furious father of a child at the unnamed school was quoted as saying. “The fallen leaves are all yellow; where will one go to find fresh leaves?”
一位爸爸气愤地说：“周长这个概念，一年级的孩子哪里知道，这明摆着就是家长作业嘛。树叶都发黄落掉了，到哪里去找新鲜的叶子呢？”
The children were also asked for two hand-written reports based on their findings, totalling 12 pages. Primary education normally begins at age six in China.
学校还要求孩子将观察结果写成12页的手写报告。中国孩子一般6岁开始上小学。
The father, an engineer by profession who was not named, said that he completed the assignment and that it took him two days to do it. “I wrote 600 to 700 words for each report and I still had to make sure the text corresponded with the leaves, it was much more tiring than my usual job!”
这位工科出身的爸爸（不愿透露姓名）说，他花了两天时间才把作业完成。他说：“两份报告写了六七百字，还要图文结合，比我平时的工作累多了。”
He said his son’s only contribution was colouring in diagrams and collecting leaves.
他说，整项作业，儿子只参与了捡树叶和涂颜色，其他全是爸爸做的。
“It’s basically parents who are doing the 12-page homework, the children are not learning anything,” he said. “Also, if children are learning from this exercise that their parents will do their homework for them, it is not great for their values. In future, they might never work hard again.”
他说：“12页的作业，基本都是家长在做，孩子根本没学到什么东西，而且，如果孩子从此知道，家长可以帮忙做作业作假，这对孩子的价值观都是一个冲击。以后，他们可能不再努力了。”
“They have only been in first grade for half a month and can barely write any words, but still have to complete a 12-page written assignment that the science teacher never explained to them,” he reportedly posted on his WeChat account.
这位家长在微信朋友圈里说：“一年级才上了一个半月，字都写不了几个，要完成科学老师完全讲过的12页手写项目学习报告。”
The private school’s principal, also unnamed to protect the identity of the school, told reporters that the project did not have to be completed within the week-long holiday and that students were allowed to use Pinyin or ask their parents to write the report if they did not know the exact Chinese characters for some words.
该私立学校校长（也要求匿名）对记者说，这项作业不是要求在7天假期内完成的，孩子可以自己写，不会写的字用拼音，也可以请家长代笔。
“The homework does not have exact answers, but it was designed to make the children participate more,” he was quoted as saying.
他说：“作业没有标准答案，设计初衷是要孩子们多参与。”
Teachers had also explained the lifespan of a leaf to the first-graders in class, one educator said, and wanted them to understand the concept through the homework.
一位老师说，树叶从生到死的过程，这个知识点和孩子们上课时讲过，希望通过作业让孩子们理解这个概念。
