Slashdot Mirror
Too Much Homework Can Be Counterproductive
Spy der Mann writes "An interesting study made by to two Penn State researchers shows that increases in homework may actually hinder educational achievement (Coral Cache) instead of improving it. The researchers analyzed a large amount of data collected by the Third International Study of Mathematics and Sciences (TIMSS) in 1994 from schools in 41 nations across the fourth, eighth and 12th grades. For some analyses, they used data from an identical study carried out in '99." From the article: "An unintended consequence may be that those children who need extra work and drill the most are the ones least likely to get it. Increasing homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within the family, thereby generating more inequality and eroding the quality of overall education."
Any kid who's gone to school lately could have told you that. And they had to go and do a study. Dumb.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
all the 12 year olds who do no homework (and read /. all night) to reply and say they agree
You mean grad students, don't you?
That's like the fox guarding the henhouse.
There is a great amount of discipline that can be learned from doing homework. There is almost a direct one-to-one correlation between doing homework and excelling in classes. Having the ability to trudge through what sometimes seems to be busywork leads to stronger self-control and greater self-confidence when the grade reports come out and all that work has paid off.
If you believe that school is not in the business of molding the characters of students into strong, self-confident, law-abiding citizens, then I could see how you'd rather they did nothing but play.
I know that if I had more HW I wouldn't be up at 1:50 AM looking at /. is that productive or not?
They were just doing their homework.
:D sorry)
(and no, there isn't a '-1, Corny' moderation option
You've got to be kidding me... doing parts a-r of problem 3 which is for all intensive purposes exactly like problems 1 and 2 can have deleterious effects?
I think whoever wrote this needs to do problem 4, parts a - f.
Where's the website where you post your homework and somebody on the other side of the World does it for you for a couple of dollars....?
But it sure is easier.
/. fortune:
It results in things like the current
Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle? -- Alan Shepherd, the first man into space, Gemini program
If this doesn't make you cry you probably had too much homework and too little teaching.
KFG
This article is very vague. I personally don't think this is anything new and ground breaking, other than now there is scientific evidence to back up the claims.
-BZ
Nice try, but that excuse never worked for me when I was in school.
...you mean a study figured out that: An unintended consequence may be that those children who need extra work and drill the most are the ones least likely to get it?
I only wish I were on the research team that published such an insightful conclusion as: Children that need extra help are likely those who are having problems in a subject.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: </sarcasm>
Not a bad study, and having gone through the system I tend to agree with it, but for other reasons.
Kids who are assigned a heavy homework load will more often than not procrastinate and put it off until late at night, at which point they will have to stay awake to finish it and won't get enough sleep. This makes the kid tired in class the next day, so (s)he won't learn as well. Studies DO show that getting a good night's sleep has a large effect on what you learn- sleep helps you lock in what you learned during the day. Think of it like flushing a RAM buffer to disk. Not a step to be skipped.
Lastly- most of the teachers I had (granted this was a while ago) who assigned heavy homework also were not particularly good at their jobs. They did not encourage or develop interesting class discussions, the lesson was a series of objectives on a paper which must be completed. BORING. Better teachers can engage students and make them want to learn, sadly the system as we have it does not attract or keep such teachers...
If you want kids to do better- get better teachers, not more work.
--IronHelix
Too much of anything can be counterproductive
Scholarly researchers? ... Third International Study of Mathematics and Sciences
And it's flawed on another level too: this alleged study of Mathematics and Sciences is being done by non-mathematicians and non-scientists, neither of which would be seen dead doing such a crappy handwaving survey and drawing totally unsupported conclusions.
It was bad enough that I had to be in school most of the day, then they wanted me to bring some work home!
I found out early that if you just refused to do it, most teachers would give up!
I remember one Nun in 1st class who got very "agatated' and started to foam around the mouth 'cause I woun't do my homework for her.
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided
I feel they're just stating the obvious here - I'm currently a high school student, and I do NOT do homework, unless I feel I need to. If there's subject concepts or theories that I'm already aware of and understand, why do the homework? It just adds more to the pile that I have every night. It doesn't take a grad student to work out doing the work that applies to yourself is more relevant and useful than just doing everything in the book. My teachers also share this view and only collect work that goes towards the report card - if you don't do the work to at least understand it, you'll fuck up the exam, end of story.
However, I'm currently in year 11 and I can work out my own study regime - what needs to be done in years 7-10, is students need to receive a constant inflow work, getting a routine at home happening. It doesn't need to be a truck load, but sufficient enough to keep the student busy for an hour at the least.
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
Homework isn't pretty - but it teaches you how to sit down and do stuff. The real problem is that most homework is the hard stuff - makes some children think and most of them give up. I used to postpone it and do an all nighter , my sister used to finish her homework the day she got it... it sort of carries over into how you handle problems in real life too (unfortunately).
My parents just gave up on trying to make me do homework when I was around 11 or 10 years old. I think it helped me think my way around problems - by the time I was 17 I was ranked in the top 50 students in the state. Unorthodox methods (I remember being kicked out of class for asking the proof of Pythagoras Theorem) and a couple of good teachers pushed me through the indifference barrier that these kids are stuck at (translated as "why should I always be studying ?").
I spent most of my life learning stuff - but I studied around 4 or 5 years. Too bad the world doesn't realize they need problem solvers of a practical nature - not guys who know calculus by heart.Let me quote Calvin here - They only teach stuff any fool can look up in a book .
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I've known about this for years... which is why I rarely do homework... and I'm geting soemthing like $6000 a year from the college im attending, for my good grades, so I must be doing soemthing right... right?
My hand touched her hand. Her hand touched her boob. By the transitive property, I got some boob! Algebra is awesome!
The there's also the issue of student motivation to actually study in the first place. Unless you have an active and ongoing interest in a particular topic, you are usually not particularly motivated to study it.
Nobody at home forced me to take an interest in computers and electronics. Nobody gave me homework
You can only thrust so much work at kids, but the REAL learning starts happening when the kids start LEARNING FOR THEMSELVES and feel comfortable coming to the teacher with all sorts of difficult questions. Rather than the current top->down method of throwing facts around, hoping they stick, and asking the students questions they have no motivation to answer for themselves.
The main problem is, at a young age kids aren't motivated to want to slug away at homework... little do they realise that sooner or later their formative years are going to be gone and the workforce will be waiting for them. In a way I guess they have to be forced, but it is not the best way to learn IMHO.
All in all, teaching is not an easy job. Teaching kids to think, rather than giving them all the answers is tricky.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I hate to point this out, but over the past decade there have been many studies done by many researchers from many countries that have all found the same basic result. I do not know if this is news in USA or not, but for most of the world, we have been debating the benifits/non benefits of homework pretty heavily for the past five or six years.
Although you're arguing for the apple pie of better teaching, with which nobody would disagree, most of the lack of learning in school is because the kids don't want to learn, not because of bad teaching, but you're using this to cast a slant on homework instead.
The fact of the matter is, you learn almost nothing from just listening, but a huge amount from doing. Any argument that reduces the amount of work that is done will inevitably lead to less being learned.
The only way in which you could reduce the amount of homework without reducing the amount being learned is by increasing the number of hours spent in class. The vast majority of kids would not prefer that --- at least with homework they have the freedom to ignore it and choose to be dumbasses the rest of their lives.
It's hilarious, but sad, to read the comments here.
The fact of the matter is, you're losers, and you don't want to do a few years of evening work to give yourselves a great leg up for the rest of your lives.
Sheesh. Shortsighted.
I personally do not feel particularly comfortable if I go to bed at night knowing I've done nothing worthwhile during the day!
Homework and private study is a necessary discipline, I think that gives you independence and ultimately prepares you for the real world. Of course everybody is different, but I learn best where I am finding things out for myself, trying new things and methods and figuring out what works and what doesn't by myself. It's all very well sitting in a classroom all day but when it comes to exams and/or the real world and you are unable to live up to expectations placed upon you, you'll be kicking yourself for not bothering to do the homework.
The "amount" of homework means little when its content is trivial, and does not do anything but repeat something that should be obvious based on what is learned in class. Application of knowledge to a trivial task just doesn't do anything other than insult the student, however the application of the same to something even slightly challenging, is both useful for remembering the material, and good thinking practice in general.
Of course, making homework less of a mindless chore and more an exercise in thinking means that there will be always some students, who will be unable to complete it because of their insufficient abilities and poor motivation. My response for that will be, SCREW THEM! They won't get much good from a shitty homework, either, and if they are going to drag everyone down into the horrors of rote memorization, there is always a short bus for them, and decent education for the rest. Treating everyone like a retard, accomplishes nothing positive.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I agree totally with the findings. I've got three brothers, and three sisters. Teachers never understood -- and still don't understand -- the dangers of imposing that their students put more priority towards homework than towards family, relaxation, and social obligations.
A good first step would be for teachers who were "only childs" to take classes about the dynamics of life with siblings. That can lead to better curriculums with workloads that each student can adapt within the balance of their lifestyle.
"I am a fictional character."
... it hinders creativity and engagement. If you like to study, you usually do not like to be told what and when to do things. Too much homework is against those who WANT to do something by THEMSELVES and not need to be told so.
Universities in Germany seem to be very bad at that -- including one's own and specific interests.
The idea of homework is right, since it tries to give students an excuse to learn and be productive, without which they sit around and watch TV all day long. The implementation of it is wrong, since it's too specific and more often than not, forces them into doing things they'd much rather not. All students are interested in at least some subjects. There are students who would prefer to write computer programs that solve differencial equations instead of solving them with pen and paper, or students who'd have more fun writing a formal letter to Mr. Vader asking for permission to use the airspace on Planet X than to the principal of their school to ask for leave (which was typical for the institution I went to). Students need to be forced into motion, but into doing what they want and enjoy, as opposed to what conventions want them to do.
Well, when I was at school...
From age 7-10, we had one subject's homework per night, estimated time 45 minutes.
From age 11-18, we had 3 subjects per night, except Thursdays, when we had 4. Estimated time 45 minutes each.
Luckily, I could usually do the maths in about 15 minutes, which left more time for the tedious history and English lit.
Kids today - don't know they're born, etc. etc. back to Russia.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
You're missing the point here.
Paying 2.5$ or more for an answer is not the way to egaletarian society. We need a truely affordable service if we want to make such a service accessible for the poor as well, and bridge the gap.
We are in the 21th centuty. We live in a globalized world.
What we need to to harness the power of the global economy. What we need is "Homework sweetshops", where kids in other parts of the world, earning 0.5$ a day, would solve your homework for 0.05$!
Isn't it a fine, nobel vision?
Our exams rely on 'coursework' for grades, so a parent who wants to 'help' their child can practically pass the exam for them, which the teachers love because they have their work done for them.
The teaching profession has never grasped the mind-numbingly simple concept that if a pupil knows a topic, they don't need to keep on 'learning' it by doing homework about it.
If teachers were to reward comprehension with exemption from homework, then they would give pupils the perfect incentive to learn. The way our system works does not test learning or comprehension, it tests merely attendance and dilligence - or at worst, the ability of a child's parent to write convincingly childish essays.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I went through secondary school trying to do as little home work as possible. For the most part I could finish the work that was set during the lesson. Sometimes I would be a little more creative and finish the work that had to be handed up and the beginning of one class during the previous unrelated class. In my last 2 years of secondary school this became easier as I then had free periods during the day. But I basically didn't do any work at home for the entire 5 years including exam revision. Only a couple of students achieved higher grades than I did, and that is mostly because I didn't care about getting high marks, I only cared about getting the work finished.
Did I get in trouble for not doing work? yes.
Could everyone get away with it? probably not.
My opinion, everyone is different. The school system should not be a one size, one workload, fits all approach. Some people may require more repetition to help them remember things. Others may require more interesting problems to keep interested.
Is there a point to this rambling? probably not.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I know if I had less homework I wouldn't be up at 3:00 AM wasting time on /.
I would be sleeping now and doing actual research during the day instead of working all night and sleeping never and posting to /. so I have have a break.
My bad
I honestly hope you never get your wish of removing homework from the curriculum.
I went through high school in the US, hating homework like everyone else. Then I moved to Europe for college and discovered what a blessing homework really is. Thing is, my university here has no homework, no papers, and maybe one or two projects in the semester (total, not per class), so your ENTIRE grade is based on a 4-hour usually-verbal exam.
I get 10 weeks of classes and recitations, during which I do jack sh*t in my free time. I then get 3 weeks off to study, which I desperately need, and then 3 weeks to take 6 exams. Let me tell you, those 6 weeks are the most stressful I've ever experienced - by the 4th week I'm usually mildly depressed due to stress.
That's the blessing of homework - it spreads the work out over the year. I'm not sure how you'd feel about this system, but I'd kill for some homework right about now... (I'm in the 3rd week - serious crunch time)
Jw
Anakin falls to the dark side, because Obi wan gives him all the right answers and never challenges Anakin to think about what the right answers were. ...until he finally figures it out in Episode VI, but by then, it's a bit late.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
NO SHIT!! ;)
Most of the people posting that homework is necessary and despite everyone hating it it is actually very useful and desireable are actually adults.
Most of the rest are college and high school kids like yourself.
The difference here is life experience and perspective. Kids can't see past their next grade reports, but adults are able to see the whole picture.
You show a lot of maturity for a 16-17 year old kid. What you need now is experience.
Would you like it if your boss sent you home every day with another two hours' worth of paperwork to do?
You'd be surprised what the real world is actually like.
become a cop.
Can't get a job, have a degree, teach.
It's not the students, it's the crappy environment we put them in. Everything is taught out of context.
It's not that difficult to tie all subject matter through history. Kids are biologically driven to socialize, yet the social context of human development, a most interesting and the most influential aspect, is totally ignored by educators.
Why? Because so few of the friggin educators have any interest themselves.
I have never seen someone promote so much pseudo science horse shit garbage in my entire time here at Slashdot.
Please end yourself now,
-AC
Too much Slashdot can be counterproductive for homework.
Sci. Am. had the definitive article on learning back in 1953. There, it was argued that drill and repetition have their role in conceptual learning until insight is achieved. But, there is no quality to be gained afterward from repetition, but only the durability of memory. This was said to be in contrast to the value of simple repetition in improving the quality of athletic and manual skills.
And, contrast the plight of the gifted to normal classroom practice, where they often require no drill at all to acquire concepts, but only an adequate statement of the relevant principles.
Projects should be used for the sake of memory, not drill.
Michael J. Burns
The general attitude towards school these days is pathetic. They think the teachers just assign shit so they can sit around and do nothing, or busy work. Like it or not you can memorize formulas, rules, and standards but that isn't the point. You're not supposed to just learn the material, you're supposed to learn how to APPLY the material. I can only speak from personal experience, but repitition is the only way I learn and my grades show it. I remember a trig class in high school I took. The teacher assigned 20 points worth of homework every night, the A problems being worth 1pt a piece, the B worth 2pts, and the C worth 3pts. I did every single problem you could do every single night (out of boredom really). My exams were perfect and I got a 120% in the class. Let's skip foward to college real quick. My calculus 1 class I did probably 90% of the homework and I got an A in the class, uncurved. My chemistry 1 class I did probably 75% of the homework and got an A- in the clas, though to be fair the grades were curved so that should be taken into account. In my physics 1 class I did virtually no homework and got a B in the class, this class was also heavily curved and by all rights I should have failed (anything less than a C- being a failing grade).
If kids don't want to take their education seriously then that's their problem, or will be in the future. It isn't the homework that's the problem, it's the mentality of the students.
In respect to parental attitude, i guess mine were similar, though it wasnt so much that they gave up on trying to get me to do homework, they never tried. I always liked getting into school a bit early so that id have time in the common room to do any work i had in for anytime before lunch, the rest quickly done in lunch break. Sometimes i ran out of time, but didnt learn much from it, i havent changed.
Im sitting here, reading, posting, even though ive got an exam tomorrow morning for which i havent been to a single lecture and havent even seen the material. I know that there are 5 past papers, with solutions out there and i know that having taken the exam the knowlege used to pass it will be useless to me. I realised that unless you have a real desire to learn, as you appear to have (i had a great teacher in college (UK, college = 16-18 year olds) who drove us to do university mathematics in lessons, i was studying further mathematics (yet again, the UK system, A-levels in mathematics and further mathematics, had about 3 hours a day of it, mechanics, statistics, pure, logic, bit of everthing)).
It really is amazing how much of an impact a good teacher can have. You mentioned the indifference barrier, a very important concept. He is probably the reason im finding university mathematics as easy as i am, and unfortunately the reason that i feel most other teachers/lecturers are incompetent retards (im sorry for the phrasing but...). Im sure that they are good at what they do (well, the lecturers) but most of them have no bond with any of their students. They dont care and shouldnt be teaching.
Ive lost the point i wanted to make, but ill post this anyway. I agree that learning is so much more important than studying, hopefully the world will realise that soon enough. I suggest you try going for work where they give you a 2 day assessment day as part of the interview process. In trading for example you get rewarded more for the practical side of problem solving, an innate mathematical ability being more important than the grades.
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
My younger brother is in 7th grade about to go into 8th grade he isn't the smartest fish in the sea but he isn't stupid either but his teachers assings 3 or 4 hours of homework every day (with some help) and then he gets even more homework every monday do at the start of the next week. My mom is about to go crazy with all the homework they give... Then they have projects... This week my brother has to build a fing kite that work 30% of his final grade... WTF... The teachergave detail instruciton and a list of point deduction for everything that isn'texactly as they have shown. It took my dad 12hours to make the thing and he's really good with building project and tools. I'd like to know how the hell teacher expect kids to build this crap... Homework is supposed to help the student study for tests not make the parents spend there time building worthless crap. My parents hate just about every single teacher my brother has because they love to assing complex projects that are way about his grade level with extremely detailed requirments with insanely show amount of time to do it in and don't bother checking if other teachers are gving project in the same time period...
Well of course too much homework is bad for you. Why? Because that's what "Too Much" means. It's not a synonym for "a lot", it means "that level at which it's become counterproductive."
Too much of anything is bad for you. That's what makes it "too much."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Some countries banned it, and I entirely agree, there should be no homework, just schoolwork. There's absolutely no rational reason why schoolwork must be done at home; children can learn just as well in school. In such countries the kids would do all their schoolwork before leaving school, or, if you must use the word "homework", they do their "homework" at school(!), and once they're out for the day, that's it, they can be kids, as they should be, free for the day, and free to enjoy their afternoons and evenings.
I still remember from my childhood the frustration of getting "homework" from 5 different teachers, each oblivious to the demands of others, and even when made aware, just simply doesn't care!
Homework belongs back to the days when corporal punishment was okay in school. Corporal punishment, and often collective punishment of an entire class, was easily abused, with no real evidence that it actually was of any benefit or necessity overall, and so is homework, a relic of a bygone era that still persists.
I'm sorry.
1.I upgraded the Bios on my Aibo and it went berzerk and ate my homework.
2.The engine management chip on my mom's SUV malfunctioned and the car would not start this morning.
3.My PC got a virus and erased my homework.
4.I have been diagnosed with a braiin fungus that affects my short-term memory. Why didn't I do what again?
5.I had too much homework and I also work in a sweatshop after school to support my alcoholic waitress mother and her druggie boyfriend.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
After I graduated from college I decided to take a year off and went to Taiwan to teach young kids. Most of them were about 8 years old and went to school from 7AM until 6 PM and then went home and did 3-4 hours of homework. Weekends were made up of bushibans of math, science and english.
Does repetition work? Yes mostly. Learning to write Chinese is best taught by repetition. Any sport is best learned by repetition.
Being a brilliant scientist is that learned by repetition? No. The important thing seems to me is to leave some time for creativity and that is one thing Asian schools (assuming Korea/Singapore/Japan are similar) don't seem to get.
Understanding patterns, applying information from another part of your brain and another field to the task at hand etc. This is where creativity comes from. I don't think it can 100% be taught - but I think it can be inspired by good teachers.
Where are the Asian Nobel prize winners? How come Taiwan can take 60% of the US Electrical Engineering Phds (90s stat) but not produce top line physics research? That is probabably a question for another day.
but no, I spent close to $250k sending my kids to non-traditional schools. Had I no kids I'd still have worked my ass off and driven a thrift store car, but the $ would have gone into more real estate and instead of being 'just comfortable' I'd be swimming in bux.
Was it the right decision? Kids are happy, well adjusted, and well on their way to becoming wealthy on their own, while pursuing their interests. Yes, I think it was the right decision.
The one thing that irked the hell out of me is that school tuition was post tax money. Being self employed the $14k for my youngest kids senior year in high school meant I had to bring in almost twice that amount in business profits. On top of this I paid close to $3800 in direct to public schools taxes that year!
But that is a very useful skill in later life.
And weaselling out of work is the think that separates man from animals. Except for the weasels.
Understand that there are different learning styles (i.e. auditory, manipulative, visual) and the student population varies widely in its aptitude, focus, motivation, and attention, and that the level of support at home varies widely due to any number of causes.
Now take a teacher in a class with 30 to 40 (or more) students who often have no choice but to spend too much time and resources on the very few individuals who are verbally and physically disruptive. Time that would otherwise be invested in everyone's learning. The teacher who has to balance all the demands placed on the system, the faculty and the students.
Insert the effect of parents, those who are involved, those who aren't and those who actively sabotage their children's learning. Parents who no longer have the time (due to ever worsening employment opportunities, how many part-time jobs can you have) to volunteer in their children's' classroom.
Add to this mix the politicians who like nothing more than to use education as a political football and micromanage particular issues and aspects of education with little understanding or regard for the overall effectiveness of the system.
Oh and don't forget the private agenda's of religious groups.
Finally, include the needs of big business. They no longer want educated competent employees. Now they want mindless sheep to mold into the perfect consumers... "shop 'til you drop".
Here we have a summary of the major players in education. If you are left with the impression that the student may actually be a minor player in education you may be right. Ask your parents how big the primary school was they attended and compare it to the one you attended and look at what your children will see. Likely the school has gone from a community member and an active resource helping the children of the community to grow and learn to be intelligent, thinking, active members of their community, to what we see more of today, the school as an ever growing (economies of scale don't you know) factory turning out product.
So how is this relevant to homework? Homework is not only the way for students who want to excel to do so by reinforcing the material for themselves, but it is also (increasingly) the way for parents to participate in the education of their children. Homework is a slice of curriculum that the student and parent have control over. They can ensure they know it.
By the way I was never fond of homework, sometimes I didn't get it done, and sometimes it really helped me to understand.
this study definatly makes sense for my high school if a person is taking some moderatly challenging classes. my high school happens to be in the top 2.5% of high schools in the nation, so that's probably a bad example, but we get hit hard with homework and it really does become counterproductive as they described.
but again, my high school is hard as balls so I don't know if the same reasoning applies to average or below average districts.
I can see exactly where homework goes wrong. A motivated kid (all you slashdot geeks in science, math, etc...) can tackle any subject and will work just as hard as they need to to do it, unless seriously discouraged by a nasty or ultra-dull instructor. Any beat-down, dispirited or otherwise struggling kid (slashdot geeks in english or phys-ed class, perhaps?) needs to be agressively lobbied by a teacher to get them to try. America is an individuallistic culture, and our kids reflect it's values. "Heroic" style teachers are the guys and gals who get the job done.
In terms of homework, this means that drills are the least useful, because they have no propagandistic power. (Drills work much better in class, where a teacher can stand around to encourage and brow-beat kids) A good assignment will draw a student into it, and get them to self-motivate. This means that sometimes, you've got to pitch softballs; an easy, interesting assignment is the best way to get a flagging student involved. This also means that homework has to be at least a little individualized. A good teacher will guage the level of achievement of a student, and pitch homework at or just above that level.
Any teacher out there will tell you that getting all this right in the context of five classes a day with twenty students per class is impossible. Teaching interesting (or even accurate!) assignments from the bowlderized science and history textbooks most are forced to use is also impossible (and try teaching without materials!). Teaching kids who've got a chaotic homelife with no parental support is impossible. Our American educational system is severely underfunded.
We live in a country where everyone has the absolute right to an education. In such a huge and diverse nation, this is an incredible, inspiring democratic goal. It would be nice to try and achive it some day. Homework ain't gonna help us.
You have studies saying "but assigning more homework made no difference", then just looking through this thread you just see two dozen answers saying basically "hah! I didn't do any homework back when it was less of it. They can't make me do it. The teacher was soo funny getting all upset and foaming at the mouth about it."
/. article), having the genes to be a slightly asocial genius instead of an air-head chatterbox, is proposed as a reason for abortion. (Now I have nothing against abortion, but just saying that it's put on the same undesirability level as carrying the genese for some fatal diseases.)
Well, gee, maybe it's not homework that's causing the bad results, but _lack_ of actually _doing_ that homework. Yeah, I can see how the Japanese can do better on less homework... if they actually _do_ that homework and _study_ for it. Yeah, big surprise there, than someone on 1 hour a week of maths homework does better than someone who basically did _zero_ hours a week of maths homework.
Or what's the article's thrust? Basically "but some parents are too busy to help the kid with that homework." Well, gee, maybe it's the _kid_ that should learn how to do some work and study? Yeah, I can see how 2 hours of maths homework done by the _parent_ still leaves the kid behind someone who did only 1 hour of it, but did it personally.
Or in the article itself, "homework may not be cordially received, especially by parents of small children" or "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and memorization as intrusions into family time." So basically, forget even peer pressure from other kids. The message that the child gets even from the _parent_ is basically "oh, screw the homework, it's just getting in the way of other stuff you could do in that time."
Well, gee, maybe it's not the homework that's the problem. Maybe what they describe there is a massive cultural failure. It's a culture which basically discourages any attempt at personal responsibility, study, or academic results. A culture where being called "Einstein" in high school is actually an _insult_. A culture where (as reflected in another recent
Maybe _that_ is the real failure.
And blaming homework for the lack of results of people who _didn't_ do that homework... well, seems to me just bloody stupid.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Looking back at my school days, I can say with certainty that I lagged behind in studies due to excessive homework - just could not concentrate on the things I wanted to study. And worse, being too small, I just did not have the sense to protest. Nor could I if I wanted to. The bloody teachers would shout you down if you raised even a whimper. I HAD to take the homework home. Oh, what an oppressive burden it was. The English teachers were especially notorious for heaping loads and loads of homework on the hapless students. I have long despised myself for poor scores in mathematics, but in hindsight, I can certainly put it down to this initial hindrance. And who can understand the countless humiliations I have been subjected to because of my poor math? To hell with all those naysayers. I know myself now, so all those of you who were foremost in your condemnation could have just shut up.
From my reading, the whole point of the article is that children who bring assignments home to an environment supportive of education will over time outpace their peers whose home lives undermine learning. I think it is this focus on "equity" (meaning, trying to develop across-the-board mediocrity) that is what is wrong with the education establishment, especially in the U.S.
Compare two types of homes. The first -- be it rich or poor, or somewhere in between -- has parents that stress the importance of education. The children have a quiet place to do homework, and the parents, at the very least, help the kids with homework, and encourage reading (if only the newspaper) and, from time to time, watching a science, history, or nature show on television. They also take the time to direct conversation with their children towards discussing what they have read or seen.
Now take the second home -- again, rich or poor. Here, the parents lie around lazy after work, scream at their kids, take no interest in learning or their childrens' homework, and such. There is no quiet place to work, reading is something unheard of, and the kids either run the streets or sit in front of their Nintendo.
The problem the article has is with the first set of parents. If you send kids home with homework, this first set of parents may actually foster greater achievement in their children, which, by the standards of egalitarians, is anti-social.
It would be far better if these eggheads in education schools applauded the first set of parents and were interested in seeing the best achieve their potential. Instead, they would like to see children "develop" only under their direct supervision and influence, rather than be "influenced" by their homes -- even if their homes would do these students a great good.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
When I was in middle-school (5th-8th grade in NJ ~1983) the teachers seriously expected us to do 1-2 hours of homework for each subject per night. Needless to say, I did ~30 minutes total a week. We were graded on both achievement and effort. So, a 1A means you did really well and tried hard. I got a whole mess of 1Cs and 2Cs throughout - scored well on the tests, did no homework.
What did I do with all of my time if I wasn't doing homework? I played outside; I played piano; and I watched TV.
We did a survey in 7th or 8th grade on how much TV each kid in the class watched each week. I believe the data points were going to be used for simple statistical analysis or something. Anyhow, the average was something like 3 hours a week (which I think is BS. The kids were just lying to please the teacher.) I was honest and logged something like 20 hours. Who was kicking their asses all over the place in math? I was.
Now the problem in MA (as I see it, I have no kids) is that children are being taught in school to pass the MCAS exam -- that's it. What they learn via homework is what they were really supposed to learn in school. I really hate standardized tests.
I think I only took one a year through 4th grade -- the California Achievement Test. Does that still exist?
Looks like you managed to weasle out of spelling, too.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
that there must be a lot of kids (like me right now) surfing the net instead of doing their homework. I tip my hat to you for legitimising my lazyness
The fact is that the TESTS at the basic schooling system and SOME of the homework is exacly opposite of the things that helps you to remember and understand things, instead they test the superficial memorized information. I spend my schooling by doing 1/10th of the assigments I've been given but understanding the issues instead. I was interested in understanding things not playing around with some stupid questions. At university level, I've tried to do it the HARD way, instead of the way I was used to and I FAILED, still on university, since it costs me almost nothing to stay there. [I live in country with goverment paid high level education.]
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Sounds a lot more like a school or set of schools who just decided to take the opposite extreme. You need a balance. Homework is about giving students a check that they know the material. It shouldn't be mind numbing repetition and fourty of the same exercise.
When I was in high school, I hated homework; it was the same drivel over and over. So I just stopped doing it. If I thought I didn't know the topic, then I would try a few and see. Lucky, my teachers weren't idiots and didn't try to cause me trouble for some stupid thing like homework. I knew the topics, I tested excellent, so I suppose I "got away" with it. I got to college and was screwed, because I adopted a policy of not needing to study or do homework.
My idea of using homework is to assign it, provide answers, review it in class. However, you never let it have anything to do with your grade. Build that with projects, papers, tests, etc. This lets kids that don't like needless repetition do something more productive with their time.
What university are you at? What subject is this test on?
Just sounds interesting that you can walk through it.
At times one wonders if homework is really a way of keeping kids off the streets. Everybody knows what happens when there's tons of kids running around on the streets all day with nothing to do.
Two grad students
University of Warwick, Studying for a MMORSE degree (Masters in Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics and Economics). The exam is on Stochastic Processes.
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
My former high school had a guideline that you should spend twice as long on homework as you do in the classroom, and virtually every teacher followed that guideline.
Let's do the math.
Every day, you had 348 minutes (5 hours, 48 minutes) of instruction. Lunch, passing time, announcements, etc. push the total time up to 7.5 hours. Using the 2:1 homework:class time ratio, you were expected to spend 11.6 hours a DAY on homework. We're now up to over 19 hours.
Now, factor in transportation time, eating, getting ready in the morning, and of course, the extracurricular activites that they said were needed for colleges to seriously consider you.
Now, when do you sleep?
Yes, schools hand out too much homework now. My first grader needs his backpack because he comes home every night with 5-10 pages of worksheets to complete, plus some books to read, plus projects to build. I didn't ever have a lick of homework until I was in 6th grade, and didn't "need" a bag to carry all my school crap until college. However, he is better at math and reading in first grade than I was in 4th grade (I got A's throughout school). He is certainly much further along. The teacher spends a LOT MORE TIME teaching in the classroom and less time allowing her students to practice what they learn in the class. However, I can see where that tactic is failing. Sure, my son (and many of his peers) are moving right along at a great pace because as parents we make certain our kids do that homeowrk, review it with them, practice some more at home (try to make games of learning so its not constant "work"). It fails though for those students in families who don't support the student at home like that. So far, that's almost all the minorities in my son's class. The black and latino students in my son's class are far behind the whites and asians (I volunteer time in his class to read with the kids, and see it every time - the white and asian kids can read circles around the black and latino kids, and I know it's not a result of poor teaching because the teacher spent all the time when volunteers were present working with those kids who struggled the most). I'd also like to comment on an earlier response - some clueless @$$ stating that what our schools needs is better teachers. Um, no. That's wrong. What we need is MORE teachers who are at least as wonderful as those still willing to do the job today. And while we are at it, let's pay them a living salary for the incredibly difficult job they do, allow them to discipline children the way they need to, provide them the materials to teach in the class (one textbook per 3 kids and requiring the teacher to pay for paper/worksheets, crayons, pencils, erasers, chalk, markers, etc... is completely stupid), and cut out the huge bulk of beaurucratic BS that clogs their time.
Oh right, interesting. I'm thinking of applying to Warwick for Mathematics (not MORSE). Is it a nice place to be?
The US public school system itself is counterproductive to education and has been for over 100 years. Read John Gatto's account of the downward spiral of the American educational system. It's quite eye-opening, especially if you, like myself, are a product of the US public school system: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm/
From TFA: Most teachers worldwide are not making efficient use of homework, said David P. Baker, professor of education and sociology. They assign homework mostly as drill, to improve memorization of material either in math, science or the humanities. While drills and repetitive exercises have their place in schooling, homework may not be that place.
So if you asign homework where they do not do the drill, but instead have to think, more homework may be productive.
What most schools do not understand is that even students are all individuals and what will be good for one will not work for another.
Unfortunatly the goal of schools is not to get the best out of each one. The goal is to have everybody get the same level of education. This means you need to follow the slowest. This is because we look at age, not at performance.
You are that age, so you must be able to do such and such and we have the statistics to prove it.
So while for one kid hoemwork is almost fun, others will not do it just because. I know when they told me to make a bookreport for English (Not my native language) I read a French book in German (Also none of those are my native language) and did my bookreport in English. During my time at school I never read a book in English. Afterwards I almost only read in English.
Others liked to follw the rules and nicely did their bookreports as asked.
Would that have been my only English teacher, I would not have spoken English. For others: they learned it thanks to him (and his homework asignments)
So yes, it can (or may as the article says) be counterproductive, depending on the individual student.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
However, you never let it have anything to do with your grade.
The question then is, what's the motivation to do it? In theory I could do homework here - plenty of problems in the text book or from outside sources. The problem is that I simply have no motivation to do so, especially not after a long day of classes.
I believe now that grades should form a limited part of your grade. You should be able to pass without it, but you need to learn to be able to do repetitive and boring work just as much as skilled.
Besides, I doubt you can get good grades on tests without either studying or doing homework, at least not for practical math and sciences - you simply don't get enough practice in solving problems. Sure you might understand what an intergral is after seeing it in class, but are you gonna be able to actually work them out with decent accuracy and speed without having done it at least a few dozen times?
Personally, I never studied for a test or exam but always did my homework.
Jw
This article made me laugh. Yes, Japanese kids aren't given a lot of 'homework', because they are expected to study outside of school on their own - and they do. Most Japanese students have a two hour club of some sort after school, followed by a trip to 'Juku', or cram school, where they prepare for upcoming placement tests for a few hours. Many college-bound seniors drop their club activities so they can spend even more hours in Juku. They also spending about 60 days more per year in school than American kids (240 to 180). My Japanese coworkers about blew a fuse when I told them that I did homework exactly twice in my four years of high school, and did no serious studying outside of the limited time I spent in class. (Yes, my teachers assigned trivial homework, which I could always finish in class, between classes, or before school).
Yeah, I can believe that, what with ""agatated'" and "thing". First of all it's "agitated". Secondly, you generally balance a double-quote with a double-quote, and a single-quote (or apostrophe) with a single-quote. Finally, when you cogitate, you "think", not "thing". There're some other things wrong with your two posts (punctuation, capitalization, etc.), but I've wasted more time than I should've as it is.
" There is almost a direct one-to-one correlation between doing homework and excelling in classes."
Which disagrees with the premise of the article.
Do you have any fact to back this up? Or is this an impression you've gained. I mean, you might be right, but sometimes it doesn't work that way.
but I've wasted more time than I should've as it is.
That was what the Nun said in the end!
__
Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
...thereby generating more inequality??? What whining drivel!
Why does it always have to be about the lowest common denominator? How is it fair to the smarter students to have their work dumbed down so that the lower half of the class can have good self-esteem? How is limiting one student's education in favor of another student's slower pace not an inequality?
If the United States is going to compete with India and China in academics it is time to encourage the advanced student. There is no inequality in providing extra opportunities for achievers. Some kids are smarter than others. Get over it and help them succeed.
<side rant>Parents - It is not the school's job to make sure your child is educated. It is yours. The school can help but in the end it is your child and your responsibility. Step up to the plate and stop blaming others for you child's deficiencies. </side rant>
~CrnbrdEater
I do believe that the montessori education system is quite good
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
I am a Jr. in High School and it seems i never end up doing my homework. I get distracted with all this. I end up reading slashdot or digg or playing conter strike source. And here I am at 5:20am thinking I was going to get all my homwrk done. LOL god damn i hate all this bullshit.
I read this story to say that smart kids with support at home can do their homework, but struggling children without support at home can't, and giving them more won't help them catch up.
I'm trying to decide if they are implying that everyone should receive the lesser amount of homework.
The world does realize it needs practical problem solvers. I think it's just the education system that doesn't seem to get it.
Know anybody that works in education? It seems like that for many it's a locked system where credits/degrees/age directly relate to compensation. I suppose it makes sense they'd place such a huge emphasis on their own production values. Fundamentally I think that by living with that philosophy, it poisons their ability to teach people who won't be going into sectors with such rigid systems.
... scientists also say that the Earth is actually round, and not flat, as was believed for many many years.
Wtf? It took them this long to realize that? Hey here's another one for you - boring and useless classes, unqualified teachers (especially for computer science in high school), and testing that makes no sense and doesn't actually test anything ALSO can be counterproductive. Oh man, say it isn't so!
To counter your quote - if you always have to look up things in a book, you look like a fool. There are some things that you should just know. For one, you should know how to look up things. Also, you should also know where to look.
Fortunately and unfortunately, Google has made it simple to look up things now, so it is easy to look up most things, but if we are not taught how to really do research then all the things that cannot be looked up by Google (there is still plenty of knowledge outside of Google's expanding realm)
Weaseling out of work is one of the most valuable skills in the workplace today. As are successfully estimating and putting forth the minimum effort required of you.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I went an elementary school in the midwest (mid 80s) that never gave out homework, unless you were sick and missing school. Nearly every kid I knew at that school was into some creative or productive thing on their own time.
When I moved to California, where mass homework was king, virtually -no- kids had creative pastimes. The few that did generally did poorly in school as a result and were being led to think they were failures.
I guess that depends on your personality more than anything, most of the people here love it, i have yet to meet anyone who isnt happy here. It is a little quiet, but there are a couple of decent clubs in leamington and the union hosts incredible events. Maths lecturers are good, though i havent had as many modules in that as last year. The new building is brilliant, really good lecture halls and computer labs, slashdot might be pleased to hear that theres a room with about 20-30 linux machines (this is the maths/stats building, not compsci).
Is it a nice place to be? Definitely. Its so diverse you wont have trouble finding many people with similar interests, the societies are brilliant and the union is without equal (what other university has a 2700 capacity club on campus?) The department has an excellent reputation with employers and if you decide to switch itll be easy enough to move onto joint honour degrees after your first year, so if youre unsure as to degree no need to worry. If you have any moree specific questions, feel free to ask
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
(First I'd like to say, I'm posting as anonymous coward because my school firewall won't let me create an account)
Being a student in sec IV (grade 10), I have to disagree with this survey. Sure, just getting a lot of homework can be counter productive, but it's not just that.
Let's say I get 5 hours of homework in one night, but from 6 different subjects. That would be fine, because it would 6 different assignements from 6 different classes, so it wouldn't feel like alot of work, because it was varied types of work.
Or, for another example, let's say I get 10 math problems in one night. Long workout problems, that take 5 to 10 minutes each, where I have to figure out what's being asked, then apply the formulas and rules I know to solve it. That would be fine, because, yes, it would take over an hour, but it's only 10 problems, and they're challenging enough to keep me interested.
But if my math teacher were to give me a sheet with 100 short problems (where they give me the formula and all the data I need to know to solve it for each problem), where the problems are practically all the same except in question 1 it says 4x and question 2 says 6.297x, that would cause me to be more counterproductive because I would feel too bored, because the work in this case would be very tedious and boring. In both cases of math homework, it's over an hour, but one case would be easyer on me than the other.
So yeah, in short, it's not the amount of homework that matters, it's the type of work being given.
Well, at least one of his charater portrayals - from Parenthood:
"Ya know, you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish, but they'll let any butt-reaming asshole have a kid"
It's amazing how many parents are completely unprepared for the responsibility of raising a child. I thought that maybe I just had a good kid, and the other parents had "normal" kids that wouldn't listen. Until I went to a family reunion a few weeks ago. Most of my cousins have kids ranging from 2 to 13 years old. I happen to know that (with one exception) they are very active in their kids lives, and don't put up with slacking/rudeness. I don't think I've ever seen such a well behaved group. Oh, sure, there were moments, but on the whole they were careful to include the little kids in their games, played nicely with one another, had a good time, and actually _listened_ when their parents - or any parent - asked them to do something. I went from thinking that we just had a "good" kid, to realizing that there are just a lot of lousy parents out there.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
...told you so
I honestly hope you never get your wish of removing homework from the curriculum.
My son has had problems with 6th grade math. The teacher allows retakes on tests. Last chapter I lined up 4-5 hours worth of exercises from the chapter for him on a weekend. His retake came up 3 whole letter grades, two points shy of an A.
I think "homework" has its place as the brain sometimes needs exposure and re-exposure to content to make sense of it all - to internalize it.
lyk OMG DUHHH it took everyone THAT long to figure out homework is bad for u ??? isnt that wut counter productive means tho ? hehaheha i think its bad :-/ but NEWAY omg i hope my teachers read this and they will stop giving us so much homework!!
~Angelic Carrie~
I found some of that when I came to college at a US co-op school. Our semesters are 11 weeks (10 for classes, and the last week for exam prep and exams). I did absolutely nothing the first 9 weeks and then spent the final 12 days reading every book, working on a semester's worth of problems, and in general stressing out leading up to 3 days of exams (6 exams in 3 days really sucks, even moreso for me because it was actually 2 days for me).
/btw, wtf is up with this confirm you are not a script shit? Incidentally, this is my second try, since I "failed to confirm that I am a human".
Since homework is largely optional, I didn't do anything, but the upcoming semester in July I plan on changing. I did pull a 93 average though.
It's not the amount of homework, it's the setting of priorities that is the issue here.
I remember being in "honors" courses, especially math. In 7th grade, they skipped a year and we had the 8th grade math book. Following the entire program to 12th grade, the goal was to take college freshman calculus as a high school senior. The problem is this: From grades 7-12, the rate of progress is pretty much the same as for the "non-honors" students. They skip a year, and yet six years later the kids are STILL just one year ahead.
The entire "honors" curriculum was really just extra homework, assigned to students who consistently proved they did not need the extra reinforcement. The school system had no problem identifying who the smart kids were, they just had no idea of what to do with them. If the kids had been pushed anywhere near their mental capacity, they could have finished high school by 10th grade. Our system is not designed to handle this, and of course there is the problem of social development. So instead, we keep everybody busy for the right number of hours.
Even worse, there are plenty of kids who can do a better job of keeping themselves busy without meaningless homework. Those who want to develop physical or musical skills are constantly battling with a homework system that designed to waste the time they need to pursue interests that may be more meaningful.
My best friend in high school was a great student. He took all of the requirements very seriously. He was a perfectionist; he always did 100% of the homework. By the end of high school, he was totally burned out. He refused to go to college, even though his family had the money. I was ahead of him (if you can call it that) because I was burned out by 11th grade. I routinely blew off the homework, and purposely underperformed so as to get kicked out of the "honors" program. I was really burned out as well. The difference between us is that I decided I would go for ONE DAY and see if college was worth it. I liked it. The campus was over 60% female, so that helped. I have had a very nice career in IT for 20 years now, while my friend has gone from job to job -- never living up to his potential.
Too much of ANYTHING is bad for you. Too much water and you drown. Too much food and you get fat. Too much sleep and you get lethargic.
Heck, forget the examples, we can figure this out a priori. Simply by saying "too much" we can infer that the amount is in excess and is necessarily a problem. Because if the amount did not cause a problem, why would you ever call it "too much"?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is I.B.? Is that like the AP classes that I took when I was in high school?
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
lol i have NO idea wut u just said !!! im SOOO confused!!! but too much h/w is bad cuz it makes my brain hurt :( :( just like reading your post :(
~ Angelic Carrie ~
I've been saying that since elementary school. Kids today have too much homework. It's too repetitive and uninsightful to be of any use.
I gave up on doing homework around the beginning of high school, except for the minimum needed to pass, and everything turned out fine. I got into college on test scores, and made strategic use of the grading options so that the classes with the most homework would have the least effect on my GPA.
The article was so nice to point out what we already know, American students are simply dumber than their international counterparts. However, it wasn't quite ready to hand over the fact that European students receive little to no homework until reaching 9th grade. At which point, they may have to write the occasional paper. Being an American student living in Germany, I notice these things.
I actually enjoyed my MSc. I.T. homework as I got to choose the topics (in consultation with the lecturers). As a teacher, it seems that my students are most motivated when they have choices of what homework to do, and when they can share their experiences, problems and suggested solutions in class.
In school I found it most important that I had little enough homework that I could spend time reading. Do kids these days have time to read LOTR 3 times? Life would suck if they didn't!
But weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals!
Except the weasel.
Sounds good.
Is it very serious with mathematics? I mean, I really love mathematics and want to learn all I can . Is it good for people who want to go into research, and not just make money?
My experience in Japan directly contradicts this study. The high school students there got far more than 1 hour of math homework per week (which is what the study lists as the average.) Like Taiwan, they did spend a great deal of time in bushibans and their homework load was often what I considered excessive. My students (I taught mostly at a junior college) seemed to have their brains completely drained of creativity; when I told them to 'make something up' they'd look at me as if I had square eyeballs. I was able to coax creative ideas out of them, but free expression never happened. As far as turning in a 'rough draft' they were clueless. They'd write something once and be done.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I've been an exchange student (from Italy) in the US about ten years ago, and I attended the senior year in high school.
I remember I was shocked by the amount of homework and schoolwork, which was next to none compared to what I was used to. I've actually been given stuff like 'extraordinary academic achievements', and people looked at me as I was some kind of freak because of my grades.
And all that came just from staying awake in class.
Honestly, what can 'too much homework' be if your standards are that low? Maybe stay awake and listen?
Some edu-weenies decide that parental involvement is the key to a child's success, so the parents are forced to be involved according to the edu-weenie assessment of what constitutes involvement.
OK, this is a made-up example, but suppose the homework assignment is "plot price vs size for floral arrangements from five different stores." The parents end up having to drive around to those five stores to collect the data for the "experiment." Yeah, this example is horribly contrived, but what I am talking about is HW beyond the resources of the student which require the parent to spend lots of time doing the heavy lifting and grunt work.
If I had children, I would help with HW of course, but I would be mighty resentful of what appeared to be HW for the parents to satisfy some cooked-up school requirement.
... I remember being kicked out of class for asking the proof of Pythagoras Theorem
Why did this get you kicked out of class?
When I was in school, I hated homework and didn't do it. I was able to get straight A's on my tests from the lessons in class, so I felt that I didn't need to do hours of brainless, repetitive work at home.
The teachers' flawed reasoning was that it wasn't fair to the other students that I was able to get A's on tests without doing homework, while some of the other students had to work very hard to get C's.
Honestly, though, is that my fault? Should I be held accountable for the poor performance of the other students? My responsibility was to make sure that *I* learn and prove that I learned by passing the tests, which I did. And the other students' responsibility was to make sure that they learned the material and passed the tests. If they need to do more studying to get the grades, that's what they have to do... but it's not what I had to do.
What it really means is that politics is happy and carefree.
There are plenty of things in this world that you could find offensive if you were that weak minded.
You can either act like a wilted flower and take offense at things as trivial as people's sigs, or you can be a (real) man and laugh at it.
I'm in high school right now and I would gladly attend year-round school if it meant no more homework (we would presumably use the extra days to incorporate the homework into the school day).
And blaming homework for the lack of results of people who _didn't_ do that homework... well, seems to me just bloody stupid.
What about my case? I didn't do homework and I produced the results ( I had the highest test average in my class). Yet the teachers punished me for not doing it because other students were failing even while trying, and I was passing without much effort. They said it wasn't fair to the other students, so they punished me.
I attribute it to the sickening "PC" trend, where everything has to be made equal. If you have a talent where you can easily excel at something without much effort, you must be punished, since that demonstrates inequality and other students find your performance hurtful. Instead of giving you the freedom to excel, they need to hold you back to allow everyone else to catch up and be equal.
I'll probably be modded down because I'm responding angrily to a BS post, but...
As a 16-year-old student at California's top high school (API statistics and quite literally the best AP Physics class in the world), who gets mostly A's and sometimes a B, I can verify that too much homework is really screwing things up. It's no lack of responsibility that I can't do SEVEN concurrent projects equally well. It's no lack of personal responsibility or lack of study that causes my grade to lower. It's the fact that I DON"T HAVE THE TIME TO STUDY EVERYTHING! When was the last time I came home with very litte homework, enjoying extra time to do what I love (programming)? Virtually NEVER! Two hours of math a week (from the article)? Ha! How does an hour a day sound?
Can you really say that just because I spend anywhere from five to seven hours on homework that I'm "just going through the motions" when I really try to think and put effort into my projects so they aren't just another piece of uninspired crap the teachers see all the time? Are you saying that I don't try to learn from my work? That I deserve SEVEN concurrent projects, four of which are blatantly busywork, and two of which are genuinely useful? That I can't be learning more about my subject of interest, programming, by spending more time learning about it? AND that my effort in school is wasted (I "go through the motions" and don't learn), as you so dismissively label so many students?
"Einstein" is no insult -- it's the people who irresponsibly blame their social situation on a characteristic they can't change. Blaming culture is nice, and sometimes useful, but honestly -- if the you think that the Anti-Intellectualism in American Life is exactly the problem, then I think you're misguided or unfamiliar with the amount of work today's best students have to do. The problem with attitude is at most HALF the problem. The problem with culture is usually a non-issue (unless you live in a really, really, really bad area and can't cope).
The problem with having too much to do and too little time to do it is you don't get the chance to find what you love to do and actually do it.
How much of my free time, how much of my waning childhood, how much of the free time I can enjoy are you going to metaphorically take away by justifying all of my homework?
I've seen a trend to use an altered spelling "ghey" to distance the slang "not cool" definition of that word from the sexual-preference meaning of the "usual" spelling.
I don't think it's necessarily bigotry if a person didn't mean it as such, but I definitely think there is a need for more communication if someone says something unknowingly offending another person(s).
Disclaimer: I was a Psych major (geek cred supported by CS minor) and constantly argue to my narrow-minded conservative friends the validity of homosexuality (in many animal species, not just ours), although I am not myself of that inclination.
I can't be bothered enough to login...
The argument is BS - Association does not imply causation. The fact a student allows their schoolwork to interfere an excessive amount with their "life" is their own damn problem. I went through my K-12 and college experience without ever having this drastically effect my life.
Another point I want to make is that "practice makes perfect" -- this saying has been around for 200+ years (All I found is that it was an American idiom). I believe it and seen it proved valid many times in my relatively short stint on the world.
I'm not aware of a problem with widespread "over-assignment" of homework, and if there is one, perhaps something must be done. That doubtful stipulation aside, don't even think about preaching to our society that "kids need less homework!"
Seems to me more and more that parents are looking toward schools to raise and watch over their children. And schools are looking to send home the schoolwork for parents to teach their children.
Too bad neither experiment is working
*DrugCheese rants*
Everyone is different with how their minds work. The reason I object to the grading of homework just because there is a good chance that the student will not do it correctly. I have less of a problem with grading whether you attempted the work, and then correcting and tutoring the student as needed. I feel that homework is practice, and that practice shouldn't be held against a student.
In grade school/secondary school you're probably right about needing to supply the motivation for a student to do the homework. Then again, those schools are as much about instilling work ethic and problem solving ability as they are about math , history, etc.
However, in college/university the idea is distasteful to me. The student is voluntarily in class now, and the motivation should be to learn. The professor shouldn't be forcing the student to do homework, but evaluating the student's ability on the subject matter. If the student doesn't feel the need for the homework, either because they're comfortable with the material, or just foolish, they are the one paying to do poorly and not learn.
Myself, I rarely did homework or studied. This worked fine in high school, getting me top grades on tests and excellent scores in class. I don't know why teachers didn't drop my grade for not doing homework, but they didn't. Everyone else was certainly penalized. This included Calculus, physics, history, etc. The classes were just too slow paced for me to have any problems with the material. In college, my classes were much shorter, being seven weeks long with three or four class meetings a week. I had a horrid time adjusting to this and did rather poorly the first two terms. Once I started studying and doing excercises at home, I did much better.
homework is a stupid convention. well it doesnt have to be but in practice it is, at least when its a requirement.
school needs to be more personalized and individualized so that each student may learn by the methods that are most effective for that student.
personally i found homework to only be useful in some classes, classes where i needed repetition and slightly different versions of the same problem. i also found that teachers assign WAY too much homework, and i'd end up wasting time doing more problems or questinos when i already understood the subject.
like many other things in american culture education caters to the lowest common denominator.....if some kids need 10 hrs of homework well then EVERYONE gets 10 hrs of homework. if some half brain dead ignorant people like american idol, well then everyone should watch american idol. etc.
people are different, and so things such as school and jobs need to be different so as to accomodate all people. is this really such a hard concept?
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
As a father of three kids, I absolutely agree that many schools don't use homework correctly. My 11-year-old daughter spends far more time on homework than I ever did (and I wasn't a slacker---I did finish whatever homework I had.)
Part of the problem is that some parents think their kids "need" homework to learn, to build character or to be competitive. That's utter hogwash. The purpose of homework is to reinforce what was learned at school. Nothing more and nothing less.
My kids often get homework asking them to do things that they haven't even covered properly in class! The teachers expect them to learn new things from their homework, rather than just reinforcing things they've learned in class.
Too much homework is a symptom of lazy teachers and misguided parents. It's extremely frustrating, because it really hurts our family time and leads to lots of conflict.
And you are upset because you were punished?
I don't care if you're acing every test, the homework is part of your grade too.
One of my teachers had a great solution for this. Homework never counted towards a grade and was not checked. All the answers were in the book anyway, but not the steps to reach the answer (other than the general steps in the lessons). Homework solutions were discussed in class after it was turned in.
The catch was that if you did your homework and turned it in on time and did poorly on a test, then you could request that the teacher check your homework and he would give some extra credit if the homework was done correctly.
This gave everyone who needed to do the homework the incentive to do it, and did not penalize the people who did not need to do it.
The funny thing is this was my calculus class and was the first math/science class where I actually felt a need to do the homework to be able to do well on the tests (not for the extra credit but for the practice).
I knew the topics, I tested excellent, so I suppose I "got away" with it. I got to college and was screwed, because I adopted a policy of not needing to study or do homework.
Likewise for me, except my first year of college was basically a repeat of my senior year of high school, so it was my second year of college when I suddenly discovered a need for study and homework outside of class, and I did not have the skills or habits for doing that.
Just giving homework does not teach good study habits, especially for people who learn the subject easily and have no need to do the homework.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
My problem with homework was that it was almost completely a waste of time. Part of the problem was that my curriculum was only occasionally matched to my needs.
I was lucky enough to have parents that read to me on a daily basis, so I entered kindergarten reading at a fourth-grade level. I maintained roughly the same lead throughout my time in school. Some teachers gave me more advanced work, some gave me the standard work, and I'm convinced that I was in a remedial class on more than one occasion. I would see the same reading textbook in third grade, fourth grade, seventh grade and ninth grade. Each time I had the same homework, I cared less and less about it.
In math, however, I never really found the success I had in english and reading classes. Despite this, my classes continued to move forward, each year bringing new challenges, even though I never really mastered the old material. I was usually faced with a lecture I didn't understand, followed by some classwork I couldn't do. Later, I'd have homework that used a textbook that had one example of a problem, and thirty problems that didn't at all resemble the example. I skipped eighth grade and missed the intro to algebra, and that was about the last straw for my math homework. Up to then, I was guessing at answers, so it didn't really matter much when I just dropped the homework completely. Math homework was useless because there wasn't any learning there. All I did was stare at a problem, guess at the answer, and move on. I might have gotten more out of it if I knew how the problems were to be solved.
I suppose some homework is good. I've never liked the idea of reading chapters in class. I've always been a fairly fast reader, so I'd rather get out of class much faster, go home and read the chapter and get on with my life than listen to some high school freshman sound out "subtle."
The problem with homework is that teachers - at least my teachers - don't spend enough effort making sure their assignments are worthwhile and effective. Homework isn't the place to learn a new concept; exercising a concept learned in class is more appropriate when the teacher isn't present.
And you know what... people don't do homework because the tests in the US are so fucking easy.
For my senior HS year, I went from an East European country, a pretty good high school, to a public HS in Wheeling, WV.
The tests were so formulaic, they were all multiple choice... the teachers practically gave you the questions before hand.
The problem with the US is that kids don't fear the tests... Tests should never be multiple choice. You should never tell kids precisely what'll be on it, down to each problem. Tell em one sentence: "it's what we covered in class, kids." Have essay questions for just about everything (not for math, but social sciences/history cannot be tested with punching holes in the paper). Have oral exams, for kids to understand that you cannot just barely know the material and give a convincing on-the-fly answer. You must *gasp* study for it! You have to own the material to do that!
Back to my point - it's not that kids don't fear failure, they do. But if they know they can't fail the class as long as they take the test, the motivation for studying will be minimal.
Tough love, you know.
Now, I know it's not like this in the entire country. There are tough, good high schools. But what I went through is what the "heartland" is learning. No wonder this country isn't leading shit anymore. Except in dropping bombs on people's heads, and being violent pricks overall.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
I'd rather see the school day extended to match real-life work hours (0800-1700) with a minimum of homework outside of that.
1) it gets kids conditioned to what they should expect in real life.
2) the school day is only about 30% (or less) actual work right now, most of it is mindless and useless repetition. it's not like this extension of the day would be grueling
3) IMO the time between the end of school and the end of (parents') workday is when you have the most 'issues' with school-age children
4) teachers could work a full day. I hear a lot of teachers complain that they need 'prep' time - well, most of the schools around here are DESERTED by 4 pm, and if you did year-round school teachers could use the 1 wk/mo or 2 wk/quarter to do their 'prep' instead of painting houses all summer.
-Styopa
I agree - for below-college it should definitely be the effort that counts. Of course then you have to make the homework something where you can evaluate effort rather than checking off the answer (something they should do anyway, I think).
In college, it doesn't have to be homework in the 'nightly problems' sense but I do believe that there should be some form of evaluation besides end-of-semester exams. I've managed to survive the system here, despite being lazy and not knowing how to study effectively, but I don't think it's the most effective way to learn this stuff. With a single exam system the tendency is to waste most of the year and then try to jam everything in there at the end - stressful, and in my opinion mentally unhealthy. I've talked to people in their late 40s who still have nightmares about exams.
Of course, the best answer to my situation would be 'do work on your own initiative!' True, but to do that here (Belgium, if anyone's familiar with the system) you have to be especially self-motivated. There is not only a lack of intitutional motivation, but of social motivation - grades are simply not important (as long as you pass, which is hard enough) and not many people work during the year. When you get back from class it's too tiring to open the textbook, and everyone goes home for the weekends, where you're definitely not gonna work.
I'm lazy by my own admission, but it's made worse by the total lack of attempt to instil a work ethic. If I'm supposed to get that out of high school, then HS failed miserably, probably for the same reasons as with you - I didn't have to work much to do well.
Jw
28 US school shooting incidents in last 10 years vs. ~1000 cases of people being killed by lightning...
So I think calling this a "trend" is a bit of a stretch. Don't let media hysteria throw off your empirical, data-based decision making processes.
First off, yes, too much of anything is bad. The question is how much is too much, or when does the extra effort stop paying off enough to be worth it?
Second off - Aside from basic literacy and math, and enough social studies and critical thinking skills to qualify someone to actually vote (in democracies, anyway) I don't think it makes sense to drill kids on anything they don't enjoy learning.
By the time kids in school today hit the workforce, any job that can be described as repetitive will be outsourced or automated. Creative smarts look to be the last area where humans can outdo machines, best to get ahead there while we can.
"hard stuff - makes some children think and most of them give up."
This is especially true for math. Once students get behind, they are lost for good. They never catch up again no matter how much homework you give them. The conclusion is that they are 'bad at math'. John Mighton points out the strange coincidence that most people realize they are bad at math the same year they have a bad math teacher.
If you keep giving everybody the same homework and accepting bad results, then what do you expect to happen. Most students will achieve poor results and, if they don't have a clueful teacher, things will stay that way no matter how much homework you give them.
Most students are not lazy. Most students will work quite hard as long as they have a reasonable expectation that their hard work will result in authentic achievement. Most students will not beat their heads against a brick wall for no good reason. If they don't see the homework as a tool to achieve a reasonable, achievable goal then the homework will indeed be counterproductive.
Test: When did the Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock?
Calvin: 1620. As you can see, I've memorized this utterly useless fact long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You've taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.
----------
Why in the world am I waiting in the pouring rain for the school bus to take me somewhere I don't even want to go?
...
I go to schoool, but I never learn what I want to know.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
soooo much memories;)
Actually, you may even consider yourself lucky if you've got 4 hours exam, sometimes, you can be thrown out if you say something not correct after 5'. OTOH, those 6 weeks (2 times) are the only period when you really need to work, so just relax during the year and enjoy student's live (these are really your best years), and it's not like you can't get a 2nd (or a 3rd, even a 4th) chance.
It's also quite a good deal for stupid courses you don't give a sh*t about (like fluid mechanics when you're studying EE).
by curiosity where are you studying ?
#include "coucou.h"
Before you dismiss the idea, consider these points:
1) A good student should do about six hours of school, two hours of extracurricular activities, and two hours of homework - that adds up to ten hours anyway.
2) A ten hour school day would keep kids off the streets, and out of trouble, in those two hours (roughly: 3:30 to 5:30) between the time that school is out, and the time parents get home.
3) A ten hour school day would be a god-send for lower income families with very young children. It would free them from very expensive day-care.
4) The present six hour school day is based on an agrarian economy that is out of date by centuries. Way back when, the kids had to slop the hogs in the morning, and pick peas in the afternoon. Even rural kids don't do that anymore.
5) What do school age kids have to do that is more important than their school work? Video games? Web surfing? TV?
6) It would cost more, but not that much. For example, a two hour study hall, would not need a licensed teacher to oversee it.
7) Students would not have to carry books, or anything else, between home and school. All school work would be done at school.
8) Students would not need computers, or internet connections, at their homes. That would be provided by the schools.
Any thoughts?
I agree completely. I graduated in 1995. Teachers were assigning whatever they didn't get to cover that day as well as whatever they wanted you to cover before the next class period. Five years before I graduated, our school board released a memo that said high school students should recieve 45 minutes of homework per subject. At seven classes a day (minus Gym), that's four and a half hours of homework per night. My mother was all for homework, but was often distraught at the amount of work that was assigned. It left little or no time for family activities.
I rarely did homework, and in some classes where the teacher would do a "homework check" I suffered because of it. But I always did study and review as I needed to. My niche were sciences and histories. I never had to even take those books home. When review time came around for a test, I activily participated and knew most of the answers. The only notes I would take would be the ones I didn't know and studied only those the night before. Even with this "poor" study routine, I still managed to anger a lot of students by throwing off the curve.
Homework can be burdensome...but I do not believe you can eliminate it completely. I also feel that it is wrong for teachers to grade you on nightly homework. Isn't that why you take tests? Is the grade in the class based on how much work you do or how much you know?
Teachers are overworked and underpaid. Class sizes have balloned and students are already spending more time in many districts being bussed passed the closest schools for social reasons. Homework should not be three or four hours of work when you get home.
Schools have no clue. After a day of school after readjusting my mind 6 times a aday I then had several hours of homework. I was already exhausted now I needed to work the rest of the day on homework. I am very itelligent as proved by my big paycheck with no college education and 1.x GPA in highschool. School was just evil to me and I laugh when my kids come home and tell me the school wants something or then have this new rule. I tell them the school is full of shit and the sooner you are out the better off you will be.
Some people just learn in different ways. I learn by examination and tearing apart. That is why I am good in computers and problem solving but bad in everything else. Schools try to teach everyone the same but no one learns the same. So people like me get F and Ds and hated every second of it. Yet my Bosses love me. I know people when have amsster degree and make half what I make.
Political Correctness is GAY
I mean this from the standpoint of being weak, sort of a pansy approach to life.
There, I said it. The real problem is that the PC approach to things is that words should only have one meaning. If you use the word gay in a sentence you have to consider if it is offensive to homosexuals. Well this word has at least 3 meanings. Get over that fact.
It can mean jovial and happy.
It can mean homosexual.
It can have its slang meaning of being childish, stupid, girlie (in the non-masculine sense.
A 15 year old male playing with dolls (even if not a homosexual) is still pretty gay.
Perhaps a new word should be made to replace this word in its meaning, but that concept of creating a new word because someone might be offended is also pretty gay.
I've had teachers on both sides of the fence: Ones who give PILES AND PILES of work and those who give little to no work at all.
In a math class in HS where I had to do dozens of problems a night, I found I would frequently just skip nights of homework because it took so long and it didn't make much sense to just do a part of it because you generally don't receive the credit.
In the classes with little to no work at all, I would actually do the work when it was given out because it took little time and counted for a lot. As a result, I did at least one HW problem of every type, so when the test came around I wasn't completely surprised by a question I had never seen before.
The absolute best teachers understand this, but also understand not everyone figures out how to a do a class of problem on their first attempt. I had a physics teacher like this. He would give very little homework, generally a problem or two each night. The next day he would collect the homework (essential to ensuring students do it) and return it the following day. You received one of 4 grades: F - you just didn't hand it in. Incomplete - basically an F, Incorrect, Correct. If you got it wrong, he gave you a new problem of the same type to be added to the next nights homework. When the exam came, you would loose 1 point for every outstanding (unsubmitted or incorrect) homework you had. The result was, most students did every single homework AND performed quite well on exams (including the state exam).
http://brandonbloom.name
As an example, in the US people eat TOO MUCH, but they don't know. They just think it's NORMAL (pfft... XL-sized pants anyone?).
And I think this is the point of the article. The point is to make students learn, not get bored to death. Also, take into account the times when the teachers give extra homework to kids who misbehave. Homework should be thought as an exercise, not torture.
So, how much homework is too much? We have enough with stress at work, why stress kids too?
Yeah I would have had first post, but noooo damn homework assignments kept me from my precious slashdot...
Unless you attende all honors / AP courses in high school, a public high school does a pretty piss-poor job in preparing younglings for college just because of this reason, namely , the emphasis on memorization and busywork. Even some honors classes fall prey to the same problem. Once kids get into college, they are confronted with real challenges, where you really have to understand material and not just memorize hashtables of information. That is when kids start to dropout and so forth. I completely agree with the author: we need less mindless memorization and churning and more conceptual inderstanding of the sciences and the arts inside the highschools so that the kids don't end up dropping out or jumping off bridges once in college.
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
7) Students would not have to carry books, or anything else, between home and school. All school work would be done at school.
While I disagree with a 10-hour schedule (poor kids, they need to forget about school for a while!), you make a good point here. Society is changing, and so should schools. Maybe the era of "long homeworks with parents who help us with them" is over... (i mean, if your dad works at MacDonald's, do you think he'd help you with the calculus homework?)
Maybe it's time to rethink the whole structure and educational model. Like going back to the ancient greek philosophers, who actually made their students THINK, and not memorize. And what's with memorizing math formulas for the exams? Please! At work we don't memorize them, we look them up in the REFERENCES.
that those children who need extra work and drill the most are the ones least likely to get it.
If you're stupid, don't fight it.
Studying engineering, specifically EE. Will probably opt to specialize in Telecom.
:)
:)
sometimes, you can be thrown out if you say something not correct after 5'
I can only imagine how bad that would be, but sometimes that's a blessing. My first verbal calc exam my professor did everything but laugh at me when he looked over my answers. I hadn't studied enough and couldn't answer the questions properly and he took the chance to rub my nose in it. I failed the class and only passed on to the next year because my other grades were pretty decent (you don't have to pass everything here to advance, and if you advance you don't repeat any courses).
Of course, he was an exception. Most of the professors try to help you a bit if you're struggling. If you know your stuff and can demonstrate it, there's a good chance you'll pass.
those 6 weeks (2 times) are the only period when you really need to work, so just relax during the year and enjoy student's live
You better believe I do
My view's skewed as I'm in the middle of those 6 weeks right now, but I personally think it's mentally unhealthy - you become far too stressed out. You're also only learning for the short term and if you happen to get a bad exam...
Last year that happened: 'Strength of Materials', two questions, and one of them required at least two hours of pencil and paper calculations just to work out the numerical result. I made a mistake early on and it all went to hell (BTW, 2 out of the 20 who had that exam passed, with 50%).
Same year, opposite situation with calculus. One of the two exam questions was analysis of an electrical circuit with a few condensers & spools. The professor had said he might do that, everyone had forgotten, and the only reason I managed it was because it's my hobby too. I failed the exam, though (didn't know my theoretical proofs well enough - same calc prof as the first time).
This system makes for a great year, but a painful exam period. If you actually had to pass all your courses to continue on (and passing here is 50%), it would be unworkable. I actually *expect* to fail at least one of the six exams I'm gonna be taking in the next few weeks... (probably business - has a reputation for asking troublesome detail questions)
In retrospect I'm probably being too negative about it - chalk it down to stress
Jw
If that is what you want, its definitely the right place. Very good place to do your post grad as well. Most of the people on my course are people who are working their arses off for the grades, they want to finish well and get the good jobs through incredile results and nothing more, they dont enjoy the courses, they study purely for the grades. I would say that would account for just under 2/3 of the undergrads.
:).
About 5-10% of the people are more like me, or so I like to think. They do some work, go to some lectures, have good examination technique and know where they want to go afterwards. They have no massive desire to study mathematics yet have an innate ability allowing for them to do well without killing themselves with long hours.
The last lot, a fairly substantial group, are studying for the purpose of actually learning mathematics, have a genuine interest in the subject. Some of my friends fall into that category, and of everyone, they are the ones I have most respect for. The first group are leeches, they abuse professors office hours as private tuition time, the latter group see the professors to discuss things outside the syllabus.
The scope for flexibility within the degree is incredible. The first year is fairly rigid, but once you get past that you can do anything within the field and outside options are offered openly. All of the professors are in some way or other involved in research, everyone (at lease those that teach me) are regularly published. From what I can see most of the work is done in biochem. Warwick is very heavy on the applied side, it has a very different view of mathematics to other universities and has built its reputation for that. As an undergrad im not sure whether youd be better off here or in cambdrige, but id definitely choose these two over oxford and bristol. Have some mates from school thrown around everywhere, the ones here and in cambridge get the most fulfillment out of their degrees.
If you want a place where you can in your first year take any topic in mathematics and do a research task on it, come to Warwick. I know this is sounding like an advert, but thats the way things feel. The only 2 reasons I could see someone not wanting to come here is the fact that you might want to be in a big city. Or that the university is on the border of coventry, which is not really where you ever want to find yourself
Good luck with the choices
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
Thank you for your help. Your advice has been very useful to me. Thank you very much.
And I must say, I've always agreed with it. The teachers I've had in my life that I learned the most from gave no or very little homework. Most only gave reading assignments, which is appropriate because there's no time to "Read Chapters 1 and 2 " during class. Homework on the whole is repetitious busywork, and has very little to do with learning. I've found that generally the students who diligently do homework are the ones who don't retain any of that knowledge once the class is over. Teachers need to understand that "working" is not the same as "learning".
I can remember having to do ridiculous amounts of inane busywork in elementary school especially.
I can remember having to look up definitions of like 50 fucking words and then write them down. I wasn't learning I was being a damn copyist.
1) I hate writing by hand.
2) My handwriting is terrible.
3) Hand written definitions were the requirement.
It was insane. Not much later in life I developed a passion for reading (almost entirely Sci-fi/fantasy) and as a result:
1) I can easily read in excess of 1200wpm (peak speed, short sentences, common words) around 600wpm at worst.
2) My reading comprehension ability is off the charts when compared to the rest of the nation taking the ACTs.
3) I finished the spelling section of the ACT in 2 minutes flat and the only ones I missed were ones with no mistake.
4) I write fairly well.
Stupid busywork taught me absolutely nothing. All the time I spent reading entertaining books in class taught me much, much more.
Thinking back I can't even remember why I was taught to write in cursive. My 6th grade teach said my handwriting "looks like a nazi code". The only time I write in cursive now is when I sign my name.
If the teacher/professor can't teach you what you need to know in class rather than in homework then one or more of the following must be true:
1) The teacher isn't doing their job.
2) There is too much material to cover in the time allotted.
3) You aren't trying.
4) You are stupid.
I got sick and tired of learning and working the easy stuff in class and then the homework is all the hard shit. And you have to do it when you can't ask the fucking teacher that assigned it questions.
I worked for a year at a full time CAD job after I graduated high school and before I started college. While in college I missed working full time because A) I wasn't making any money and more importantly B) I had no fucking time because of all the homework.
The whole concept of education needs rethought. Homework is for the birds. "Test" has developed a new meaning. When you test something, and if doesn't work you fix it or throw it out. In education, you test a student slap a grade on them and move on to new material. What should happen is you test, if they fail you go back and learn it.
A bit rambly but I think I made some good points, no?
Question everything
I teach 9th and 10th grade social studies courses. Here in Florida we are discouraged from giving students homework as it will "make them feel negative about school." Funny thing is, when I gave homework on a particular topic, students did better than just doing in-class work. I do believe there is such a thing as too much homework, but that's not happening in American public schools. Public schools are going down the toilet as the people who control the system focus more on students' feelings than their behavior (which for the most part is out of control) and poor academic skills (which get worse every year). Teachers who attempt to improve the situation through behavior modification, and failing students who didn't learn anything are punished with smaller classrooms and worse students. That's my rant for the day.
Kids learn the following. .
1. To stand at attention during a dumb national anthem, thus learning the meta-lessons of fear and hatred for other nations, as well as a false sense of history and superiority. Mind-programming to keep the massively profitable fires of war burning.
2. To sit in rows for hours at a time doing repetitive, menial tasks despite the natural impulse to run around and play and learn directly how young bodies and brains can interact with each other and the physical world.
3. To thoughtlessly obey authority figures who give endless streams of ridiculous instructions as well as to learn to react automatically to all the fnord words and terms, like "Fire Drill" "Stand in Line" and "Detention" thus preparing people for a smooth transition and series of ready-made emotional responses to the adult fnords such as, "Terrorist", "Insurgent" and "Bomb". --As well as to connect self-esteme and ego to an often arbitrary system of marks and grades attainable only from authority figures.
4. To separate parents from their children and thus break down familial bonds which might prove a hindrance to the state. (Love for the State must come before love of Family if total obedience is to be achieved.)
5. To Teach Lies. --Lies about history, lies about science and technology, lies designed to limit human potential and growth. When kids believe in false limits, then those limits are as good as real. Cages with no bars.
6. To Program Social Competition. School structures are set up in such a way as to reward stupidity and beauty through the promise of sex, and to punish the pursuit of individuality and creative passion.
Luckily the system does not always succeed. A small handful of individuals always manages to squeeze through the system and manifest, dropping all the programming. Though, adding another four hours to the school day is probably not a great way to improve the odds, I'd say.
On the up-side, I know of some teachers who recognize all these qualities of the school and quietly rebel against them. "What goes on behind closed doors is up to the teacher." The good teachers are the ones who only pay lip service to the state-installed curriculum and teach passion and individuality and the courage to find and follow one's true path in life.
There were only two good things school taught me; 1. Rebellion. 2. True friendship.
-FL
...because only some students benefit from it ? WTF ?!?
Do we want a whole world full of idiots ? Oh wait...
I actually attempted a homework assignement in my computer language theory class. We were doing some grammar constructs that were quite tricky. I did 8 out of 10 problems, two I could not figure out.
The teacher gave people who had anything written down for the problems 10 out of 10 points. I only received 8 out of 10 points.
Shortly thereafter I had to hide under the table to avoid my angry professor after I said I could have written "Jack and Jill went up the hill..." and gotten full credit.
We then wrote a few of our "answers" on the board. "Jack and Jill" would have been an improvement over most of the answers written on the board.
I did receive an 'A' in the class eventually, but more from programming/test scores than homework grades.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
i personally like the way my math teacher does with homework. he gives the assignment and you do however much of it you want to. i usually do about a 1/4 of the assignment. he never marks the stuff and i just do one of each kind of question (exponents using frations, using decimals, using variables, etc.) to make sure i get all of it. i don't need to be going 150 questions for someone to figure out that i know what the heck i'm doing. it's just that some of the questions have a lot of steps to them. more time is spent writing that actually doing the math for it. many days, i don't even do the homework, as i did the exact same type of questions yesterday. i'm usually one of the best in the class.
giving more homework when it is clear that someone gets the work is pointless, and giving more work when it is clear that the person doesn't have a clue is even more so.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
One: family attitude is more important than the amount of homework assigned. Parents act like it's more important to get one's kids off to two different sports every day (and, yes, in my sports-obsessed county this happens all the time) than to do homework/studying. Bad. So why blame the teachers if the parents denigrate education?
Two: As others have written, it's absurd for teachers to grade based on effort, or even on worksheet-type homework. If a kid aces the tests and/or writes subperb essays, as far as I'm concerned he can dump the practicework and sleep through class. But when even decent high school math teachrs can't comprehend the rules of statstical analysis (they apply a rigid average to determine a final class grade with no adjustment for 3-sigma events), I don't expect sensible rules about homework.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Space is big.
Advertisers have only their own interests at heart.
There are no dragons.
Captain Obvious says: No one likes being flooded with busy work!
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
No one like being stuck on a problem, but to be honest that is the time that real learning occurs- trying to puzzle it out, and then hopefully succeeding. Even though students don't like being stuck and often just want to know how to do a problem, simply being told how to do problems generally ruins their value as a learning tool.
As a research mathematician, I spend almost every productive waking moment "stuck" on something and I am very happy with this arrangement! (There is also the sometimes tedious process of writing down stuff formally for publication once I've worked it out, but that part is less gratifying than doing the actual research and I'm always happy when one of my co-authors is willing to do that part...)
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
...for me once, in middle school. I was in the highest level math class with about 30 of the same level kids. Every night we would get around 2 hours of math problems. What sticks in my mind are the long division problems where we had to, by hand, keep dividing out until we could identify the repeating digits.
Now, I could see doing maybe 5 or 10 problems but after that you are only turning kids off to math, and that's the issue we struggle with in the states already. My parents felt it was excessive and my mother was a teacher as well!
Bottom line is that without shear willpower and support from my parents I probably wouldn't have stayed in the high-level math. Would that have kept me out of the computer field later in life? Probably not, but why frustrate with extra homework that serves little purpose. It also was quite egotistical of my teacher to think that her class was the only one with homework.
I dropped calculus my senior year in high school to take woodshop and to be honest, that was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. Designing furniture and then building it forced me to creatively apply the math I had learned and I discovered something I'm great at and enjoy doing as a hobby.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I have to believe that children are not as smart as adults. ... none at all.
If you give a child too much to do, they will not determine what is an appropriate amount for them to "learn".
They will in fact, simply, do nothing at all.
Perhaps, too much just means
I'm not sure what's worse, that a four-word sig spawned such a massive tangent thread or that I just spent 15 minutes reading it.
"I paid my money, I refuse to be inconvenienced." -Karl Cocknozzle
Your answer and response only indicates that you have no experience with the issue which is far more complicated than you make it out to be.
My 10 year old son had 3 projects this year, major elements of his mark. Each project consisted of a speech, whiteboard presentation and about 10 pages of text. Most kids get assistance and get this done in class. My son has attention deficit and memory recall issues. All the time that is spent in class the teacher has him trying to complete his other tasks. Generally these other tasks are not complete and come home as homework. (This has become much worse recently as I believe the teacher has started blowing him off and not working to keep him on task as he can just 'send the work home to get it done')
So, as a result (This is grade 5) he brings home between 1 and 3 hours of homework every night. That I do sit with him and do. However, at night, he has been up for 10+ hours so he is exhausted, his medication has worn off meaning that I have to work with him to keep him on task and I am exhausted having worked all day.
The project work costs me about 20-25 hours per project in addition to the regular homework.
I do not get to any of the housekeeping, maintenance, shopping, out of work hours work, personal finance, or anything else I have to do until the homework is finished. Plus, he then is to bed late, get's no 'play time' and is tired the next day resulting in more of the same cycle.
YES, I RESENT THIS. Most of the homework that comes home is "title page colouring" (my son hates art so it takes him twice as long) or write a bunch of sentences about this story. This crap teaches him nothing and just eats our time.
My son is very bright and can answer this stuff verbally with very little problem. At 10, he can describe electronic circuitry, design LED blinker circuits, explain components (he had an interest and read some books), write hello world in java and comprehend fairly complicated technical and non-technical writing. I don't feel that him not doing this work is going to hurt his education. In fact, the amount of crud that he does is more likely to cause him to lose interest than not doing it.
So, yes, I have started blowing off homework and telling the teacher that what he has requested isn't worth doing. Other times I have my son try and do it without my direct attention but generally I don't bother because when he is tired he is even less able to get anything done and if he spends the time playing it is more valuable to his personal well-being.
Now, yes, I am an extreme example, but the homework load in grade 5 is greater than the homework load that I had in grades 10 and 11 in highschool. (not that I did a whole lot of my homework, but they have more assigned than I did.)
It isn't anywhere near as simplistic as personal responsibility for the parent or child.
My calculus teacher in highschool had an intersting philosophy when it came to homework. He would assign homework and would check to see if you'd done it (just to see if you had done it, he didn't collect and grade it). He would record how many homeworks you hadn't done, and then applied a peanalty to your average for the quarter. If you had above a 90% average for the quarter, there was no homework peanalty since you were obviously studying and knew your stuff. If it was between 80 and 89.9, then you lost half a point off your average for each homework you didn't do, 1 point per homework if your average was between 70 and 79.9, etc. Thus, the more you understood, the less homework you had to do. My teacher was fair about it too, the exams were quite fair (All the questions came from old AP exams). For those people who were having trouble understanding the material, they did the homework because they needed the repetition to learn the material, but those who got it weren't burdened with hours of partial fraction expansions and integration by parts.
I work best under pressure, because it makes things interesting. When something's not interesting, I'm a daydreamer and procrastinator.
If you can find a solution, I'd like to know too.
As for learning how to sit down and do stuff, and see the results, the best I've seen is piano. You can hear if you're doing it right or wrong, you can tell if you're making progress, you can learn something demonstrable in a day, and (I don't really know how this works) the next day you're even better at it than the day you learned it! It's a good little laboratory for learning how to learn.
Furthermore, what you believe is true of yourself is not necessarily true at all. For instance, an assertion such as "I never did homework, and I turned out just fine" ignores the possibility that you might have turned out even better if you had. It's a hasty conclusion.
Along the same lines, people are making all sorts of pronouncements as to "what kids really need," which is rarely supported by anything better than personal, anecdotal experience. But even more to the point, this attitude assumes that all kids are the same, have the same needs, and respond identically to different teaching styles.
In my own experience, I avoided homework as much as possible, usually half-assing it between (or even during) classes while still at school. This strategy did not prevent me from graduating in the top 5% of my class. However, I would not presume to profess certain knowledge that this was the best possible strategy that I could have chosen, let alone that it would be the best strategy for anyone else, LET ALONE that it is a one-size-fits-all solution for all students, everywhere. Yet many of the comments here are doing exactly that.
Different students have different needs. But since teachers and administrators are neither omniscient nor infinitely funded, they generally try to adopt a few simple strategies that will do the most good for the most people. How often they succeed isn't the point -- the point is, on what basis do you place so much certainty in the belief that YOUR strategy would be any better?
The article makes some good points, and -- unlike most of you -- actually has data to back them up. Agree or disagree, but if you don't have data of your own, I'm frankly not interested in hearing your opinion.
- Independent study, with the student working through problems on their own.
- Work done after school hours
While there may not be a need for "Homework" i.e. 1 and 2. There is definitely a need for 1). This is one of the most effective ways of learning, and often where the learning takes place. It does suit some students better than others, and does have some problems, e.g. motivation. But when you can make it work its great.Whether independent study should be done after school, is a different question. There are advantages (chance of actually getting it done are probably better than if its done at school), it involves parents in the learning process and it extends the school day. There are other options, say cut down the number of straight class room hours and devote time in the school day for it.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
like what?
A good teacher can explain a concept in several different ways ... a bad teacher only knows the "One True Way".
Too Much Homework Can Be Counterproductive
And in other news..
Too much red meat can cause cancer
Too much stress can cause heart attacks
Too many eggs can cause high cholesterol
Too much of ANYTHING IS BAD. Get over it!
I doubt this will bubble up to be seen, but for what it is worth:
/. folks tout they did not do homework is not to disclaim they would not accept responsility, but rather that the system was rigged. There was no other option. I could not change that fact when I was a child, but I can now. As an aside, I think "Einstein" being used as an insult in school is simply due to perceptions of inferiority. People aren;t mad that the person is smart, but that he/she is smarter than the rest of the group. Such happens with all kinds of excellent chilren, be it physical or mental prowess.
/. folks may agree with), is many of the same qualities that got me into trouble in school are appreciated in my workplace:
As another poster notes, too much of anything is bad. However, I read more into the article.
What comprises homework? The article touches on this. Many times, homework is repetitive and does not add much value, especially if the child easily grasps the concept. As a parent, that can present an awkward situation. Your child immediately grasps the concept and can handle the hardest problems in the problem set. The teacher has requested they complete them all. What do you do? You do not want to undermine the instructor, but you also have a responsibility to your child as well. At times, you can use this opportunity to teach commitment or work completion. But, then what?
I disagree with "Moraelin's" post about the loss of personal responsibility. To a point, a parent should foster that in his/her offpsring. However, I also wish to show my child how to better his/her lot in life. I've made quite a good life for myself by accepting responsibility for required repititious work, but also working to change my environment so said repition was no longer needed. I am a bad parent if I do not pass that desire onto my children. In my mind, the reason many
---------------
As a parent, I refuse to kill the natural desire for learning in my children. I want my chidren to attack books and desire to learn at all times.
As a parent, I refuse to worry so much about getting through the book in the required time.
As a parent, I refuse to worry so much about the grades. Grades do not always reflect the skills. They are but one measure.
There are days when my son needs to learn committment. On Those days, we will complete the assignment, even if it is tedious. Then, we will celebrate and talk about how to change the circumstances to better our lot next time.
There are days when my son needs to learn, period. On those days, he will guide us where he needs to go. A field trip, the library, to work, or to the park. We will not let educational boundaries stand in our way. If such means I take a day off work, it will be a day well spent. Little may be written of the day, but much will be remembered.
There are days when my son needs to think. On those days, we will discuss the options and we will weigh the options. In the end, we will make a decision. It may be good or bad, but in both lessons will be learned.
There are days when my son will teach. On those days, I will learn. I will not stand towering over my son and assume I know it all.
There are days when my son will need to rest. On those days, we will play, we will sit in the yard and eat ice cream. And we will find that you can learn while you rest and that it will present the next unkwnown for dscovery.
There are days when my son will need to play. On those days, we will play, but we will go over rules and we will follow them. And we will learn while we play.
----------------------
What I find strange (and many
I tried my best to get out of homework (along with others here). In school, the teachers scolded me for such lack of attention to completion. Now, though, people greatly appreciate my ability to grasp concepts quickly without weeks of training, and they also appreciate my ability to see unnecessa
Teachers often assign large amounts of homework instead of carefully selecting smaller amounts of homework that will reinforce learning. If every teacher in a typical secnodary school assigns an hour of homework a night, that runs the student's day up to 10-12 hours of academics.
The large anount of homework is usually assigned because the teacher CAN ... because they have the power to assign it. Few of them can justify the assignments, and few of them bother to do more than glance at it. I seldom saw homework that had been thoughtfully graded by a teacher ... it was just checked off as done or not done.
I would say that the perceived problem with homework in primary/middle/high schools in the USA stems not from the homework itself, but from the absurd amount of time students spend in classes. Homework allows students to work on subject by themselves, and to show that they understand the material, which is something that usually cannot be effectively done in lectures. But when students are compelled to spend around thirty to fourty hours a week in classes/lectures, they are often too exhausted to then go home and do hours of homework. Since homework is usually assigned every day in many classes, teachers are usually too busy to create useful homework assignments.
By contrast, most universities I know of have students take far fewer hours of classes, and professors usually give homework which, as it is not usually given out every day, can be better thought out. In this situation students spend more time studying and doing homework than in class, and are thus, in my opinion, able to understand the material better, since they are spending significant amounts of time working by themselves, which allows them to find out which concepts they do or do not understand. These things are much more difficult to do in class.
Most universities, at least in the USA, do not allow students to take 30 or 40 hours of classes a week without special permission. Most forms of employment do not entail the employee working full time and then going home and working for 2-4 more hours. The only explanation for the difference that I can think of would be that primary/secondary/high schools in the United States are not designed to teach, but instead to provide childcare for parents working full time, and to teach only as a secondary objective.
One secondary purpose of homework is getting parents involved in their children's education. Homework serves to blur the lines between home and school, making parents (hopefully) more aware of what their children are learning, more involved in teaching their kids and more interested in their child's educational success.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
Just out of curiousity, how do you know your state ranking? Where can I find mine?
The real problem is that the PC approach to things is that words should only have one meaning.
It's hard to be more wrong than you currently are. The whole point is that the word has several meanings; that's what slang terms are. The reason some people get tied up in knots over offending others is because they know words can have different meanings. And, for the record, you say that "gay" can mean "homosexual" or "effeminate even if not necessarily homosexual" -- that's a distinction without a difference, since in both cases you're showing contempt for the same quality.
Another example of words with different meanings, and one quite applicable here: "idiot" literally means "layman," though we use it differently most of the time.
But he did beat Truman.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
and in America, we dont need to know much; all we have to do nowadays is point and click and nod our heads to the Propaganda spewing from the maw of our good ol' obease 'Big Brother'.
I am stupid, for I am an American
or we can do it like Japan, with their low crime rates and stuff like that (compared to America), we can adopt a 6-day school week. Sure the scheds will be different from day to day, and--hey-- the extra 6th day can be a sort of homework/review day @ the school, therefore school/home work (cept projects)can stay out of the household.
Less homework -> less learning -> less competence
Of course, that isn't likely to raise any alarms, who cares, right? So let me add another consequence:
Less homework -> less learning -> less competence -> more outsourcing
Now I hear you starting to grumble. But that's not the end of it.
Less homework -> less learning -> less competence -> more outsourcing -> US becomes a 3rd world country in technology.
It's your choice. Technology is a HARD subject, and you have to work HARD to become more than a script kiddie. And that includes homework, a hell of a lot of it, because homework makes you learn by doing.
It's your choice.
Thanks... wouldn't want to insult me dear small mother.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
A lot of any work == stress
Does it really take studies to figure that out?
My own peeve is that the majority of society believes that a factory approach to education is what works best.
No, society knows that the factory approach is the cheapest way of doing it. Any idea how much individualised attention would cost at market prices? Ten or twenty times what sticking 30 kids in a room with one teacher does. Thats in theory 2 minutes per student every hour. Given even that isn't funded properly in most countries, well I don't see how it could become possible. Even merely doubling resources would be a drop in the ocean. Unfortunately society has decided the education for other people's kids isn't as important to them as subsidising the production of cheap consumer goods or foreign invasions or what have you, and theres not a lot we can do to change that.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Probably because he was being a disrespectful dickhead. He should have just shutup and proved it himself while the class continued in the background.
The parents are just as stupid as the kids... the level of intelligence can be traced to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Before the CPSC stopped stupid kids from swallowing GI Joe's head and choking... we have trampled all over Natural Selection. Now we protect the stupid people through life, and they BREED!!
Sniper's Motto: One shot, One kill- If you run, you'll only die tired.
I doubt you can get good grades on tests without either studying or doing homework, at least not for practical math and sciences - you simply don't get enough practice in solving problems.
I couldn't disagree with this statement more. In fact, I'm a counter example to this theory. Some people learn well through repetition and homework serves that purpose and is useful. I was never that way.
Math homework never helped me much and took up way too much of my time. Then came the year my school required us to get TI-81 graphing calculators for math class. I discovered the way that worked best for me to learn how to do problems was to write a program for my calculator that would solve the problems. Generalizing the problem and realizing all the border cases was far more useful than the repetition of homework for me. It also gave me a ton of confidence going into tests since I knew that any problem I got stuck on, I could do with the programs I had written. Of course, since I had learned how to do the problems in the course of writing those programs, I never had to use them on the tests.
Remember, homework is just one method of study that doesn't necessarily work best for everyone. I found one that worked better for me, and it got me into programming which is what I do professionally now. I guess I partially owe that to my math teachers' grading policies for homework.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
yes, but notice you made the exercises when your son needed help. Most homework is about forcing the people who have thier eureka moment on the first problem to do another 50 to make sure that its fair to the people who need those 50 problems.
The teacher kicked you out for asking him to draw 3 little squares on the sides of a triangle?
Personally, I don't think the poor showing of US students in maths and sciences is due to too much or too little homework.
The problem, and I have seen this first hand, is this: At the same age when most countries are teaching calculus, American students are learning very elementary algebra.
It doesn't matter how much or little homework you do, if the material is years behind everyone else.
Besides, I doubt you can get good grades on tests without either studying or doing homework, at least not for practical math and sciences - you simply don't get enough practice in solving problems
It's possible. I've done it.
One marking period in chemistry, I did no homework. None. Homework was worth 10% of our grade; I got a B+ for the semester.
Senior year of high school, I had AP physics C. (I didn't take B first, despite it theoretically being a prerequsite.) That teacher had a nice policy where if you got a 90% or better on exams, there was an alternate grading scheme that didn't count homework. (The tests, participation, and labs were increased in weight. And there was still the option of counting homework if it would give you a higher grade; he went with the better score.) I did very few problems outside of class after the first or second test. I'd usually have to go quickly back over a couple things before the tests to review things we hadn't done for a while, but I just did what we did in class. Wound up with a very solid A.
I have three.
a) Average student mostly does homework, wont be a star performer. Average.
b) Underperformer. MUst be forced to do any homework, proably counter productive because it reinforces hatred of school which is not cyclic.
c) Overperformer. Gets homework does it in two seconds flat. Explain why he really needs to do this homework, he knows it already.
With my second child (control environment same basic genetics, same income group and same parents) it is sheer hell getting the homework done. This is definitely 90% of the stress in our marriage. It really is personality driven.
So is there a solution, I really think that homework for the second child is a waste. If as poinjted out the teacher engages significantly (he loves Japanese) then it is not an issue. All other lessons don't get done.
This child has had a poor start because of some really awful teachers and some really poor attempts to correct for those awful early teachers (who all gave copious homework). When they 'required' us to drug our child with ritalin then we pulled him out and changed schools. With the change in schools we found out about the macquarie university intensive reading program pause prompt praise and a lot of the problems disolved.
Homework. I could kill my children at times, homework = stress for the parent is TRUE.
Homework that engages. Sometime this is up to the parent. I was good at school and my wife was not. If we were both in the same boat how could we deal with the physics and maths questions and effectively help our children? Social economic status = homework effective is TRUE.
I teach university. Drill that teaches students is useless in real life except if you work in a controlled factory. If this is your life goal then fine but in order to excel then you need to understand parameters and apply them to any project. It was not unusual to get students that would fail theory and pass the practical and vice versa. THere were those that would pass both. If I had a choice of passing theory (rote learning) and practical (application) guess which person I would pick anyday. Drills are good up to a point, when you are pasted drills how do you engage your students. Homeowkr you loose this, you had better be a good teacher.
Based on my own studies with my family. I can definitely say that the study is correct.
Did you study or review at all in chemistry?
Your physics results agrees with my theory - either homework or studying. Except for Latin, I never studied or reviewed...
How about the teacher? Was he/she any good? If you find someone who can teach a good class, it might be easier to get by with little work.
You could also just be an exception - I'm willing to admit my theory isn't applicable to everyone. If you can get by with solely class-time, I admire your retention.
Jw
They still exist.
There is one in Fremont, Nebraska, for one. There was a bit of a furer about it a while back.
There was a big protest over it that led to it actually gaining more support. It seems that the parents and other locals noticed that all the cars of the protesters were out of the cities of Omaha and Lincoln(If you know how Nebraska does license plates, it's really easy to tell what county the car is registered in). They of course, got pissed off at the 'big city' folks sticking their noses into their affairs.
Nevada passed legislation authorizing firearm education, including live fire, not too long ago.
I agree with the idea-Gunproof the kids. Just like 'child-proof' caps that kids find easier to open than their parents do, child-proofing guns doesn't work, and what happens when your kid comes across one that's not locked up? I read somewhere that accidental poisonings from prescription and OTC drugs actually went up after they started putting 'child-proof' caps on them because people stopped locking them up, and the caps really weren't 'proof'.
We teach safe driving, safe sex, why not safe shooting?
I don't read AC A human right
You have been warned.
Go Badgers!
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
They assigned too much reading, with the idea that you learn how to pick out the most important points. They assigned too many math problems, with the intent that you only do the ones you don't already know how to do.
The point being you are going to need to learn to prioritize better. If you read Blum cover-to-cover, you totally screwed up AP American History. If you never read the Cliff Notes for any novel, congratulations! you screwed up AP American Lit, too. I'm not saying you should shortcut every novel, but you need to learn to half-ass some stuff! More importantly, you need to learn which stuff is a good candidate for half-assing.
Personally, I did zero homework in high school. Never needed to. I banged out research papers the night before. I slept through class. I have never once found myself wishing that I had actually read "A Scarlet Letter". I personally give you permission not to read it. It's probably the worst book ever written.
At 16, you shouldn't be so stressed over your schoolwork. You should be stressed over "will she reject me when I ask her out?" or "what will I say to her when we're sitting at dinner so she doesn't think I'm an ass?" or "should I kiss her on the first date or second date?" That is what a 16 year old should stress over.
Seriously, dude. You're going to have a heart attack before your 20th birthday if you keep this up. Go get some pussy. Smoke a few (but not too many!) bowls. You'll thank yourself later in life, trust me.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
....because its fucking obvious. It's not that I object to homework existing, though I do hate doing it. But too much homework is EXTREMELY detrimental to the learning process. My 8th grade year I had hours of homework constantly to "prepare me for high school". 9th grade, I have so much less homework, and I'm learning a hell of a lot more. Homework should be thought of as a learning tool more than part of the curriculum. There's no point in 3 long homework assignments on a particular concept when everybody in the class already "gets it". Teachers should use homework only as much is needed to reinforce what they teach - eventually it's just work without a purpose....
well it's certainly true that this was work that I decided that he needed and not daily work assigned to the whole class.
though perhaps if he'd had all the exercises repeated during the normal course of his classwork? like I did?!
Your comment made me think back to my school days around London - I went to a private school for 8 to 12 and then local state school for 12-6th form, and both had a uniform requirement.
I really enjoyed having a school uniform - as a kid, I had the nerdiest clothes in the world, and having no pocket money meant that my clothes were definitely uncool. I used to really, really dread the odd casual clothes day we would have at the school. Everyone else loved it, as the bullies would have the coolest clothes, whilst I had to go as a bad eighties clothing joke - I'd get teased for the whole bloody day.
Having a uniform meant not having to sweat what new cool clothes I would have to wear, and it definitely made my schooling experience a lot smoother.
Also, I disagree with you on the whole 'conformity' thing - it certainly didn't crimp my thinking, nor that of any other people I knew. In fact, I'd argue that not having to sweat over what clothes coordination would be in vogue that week actually frees you up to think about other, non-conforming things. But then I would say that, as I am a "conformist" *grin*
Ech, just realised that your comment is 11 days old. Damn. I would appreciate your comments if you do read this!
Dr Fish