Parents at a well-known primary school were outraged after it asked first-grade students to write a 12-page science report on fallen leaves.

一所知名小学要求一年级学生写一份12页的落叶科学报告，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, color, size and texture.

在刚刚过去的黄金周假期，这所小学要求学生收集当地“不同生长阶段”的树叶，测量树叶的周长，观察其颜色、大小和软硬等等。

“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?”

一位愤怒的爸爸说：“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，这是不可逆的，到哪里去找新鲜的叶子呢？”报道中没有提及这所小学的校名。

The children were also asked for two hand-written reports based on their findings, totaling 12 pages.

学校还要求孩子将观察结果写成两份共计12页的手写报告。

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说，他花了两天时间才把作业完成。“每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 coloring in diagrams and collecting leaves.

他说，整项作业，儿子只参与了捡树叶和给图表上色，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，这对孩子的价值观都是一个冲击。以后，他们可能不会努力做事了。”

“They have only been in first grade for one month and a half 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：“一年级才学了一个半月，字都写不了几个，要完成科学老师完全没有带过的12页手写项目学习报告。”

The private school’s principal 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.

这所私立小学的校长对记者说，这项作业不是要求十一假期后上交的，孩子不会写的字可以用拼音，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，需要的是孩子们多参与。”