Slashdot Mirror
Schools Banning Homework?
theodp writes "Alarmed by indicators of student stress like cheating and substance abuse, some SF Bay Area schools are reducing an education staple: homework. Homework is mostly banned at Menlo Park's Oak Knoll School, but some teachers apparently have higher 'expections' [sic]."
like good grammar? FTA: . Reading Log - children should be reading a minimum of 15 every night.
Um. 15 what?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Expections?
Yeah...I want to put my kids in that school. They'll get into Stanford for sure!
Zing!
Given the order of magnitude of what is expected of my little cousins, the 15 probably refers to 15 minutes.
I'd be pulling my child out of that school with their "expections," not only due to their poor grammar, but also for their militant view on homework. Or maybe things have just changed a lot since I was in grade school.
:q!
How come the ol' "My homework is driving me to smoke pot" trick didn't work when I was in school?
Similes are like metaphors
I think a better way to reduce 'student stress' would be to give them more homework, so they 1) become intellegent enough to comprehend a slashdot article and 2) keep them off the streets and in the books where they belong. Another stress reducer: force the kids who bully these poor children to answer CowboyNeal polls until they puke.
http://wstewart.php0h.com - the sugarbuzz project blog
These helicopter parents whining about homework need to take their kids and shove them up their ass. It looks like they never wanted to release their kids anyway....
I didn't have homework for most of elementary school. In fact, I remember when we finally did start getting it in the sixth grade, and then it was less than 3 hours a week or so. Is dumping lots of homework on kids these days a new thing or did I just go to some hippie school? I think an important part of my development was to have time to do kids things, and even learn and explore on my own. If I'm spending all my thinking time on the things that they want me to learn, where am I supposed to get any creativity?
"They already do 6 hours of work in school... can't give them more work... blah blah"
How about we wipe their tushies and tell them they won't have to work hard to make something of themselves? Howabout just have them skip college (whole lotta more school work plus paying work)? Just tell them that a real work day is only about 6 hours, and you never have to take some work home with you, or stay late to finish that work so you don't have to take it home?
Why does it seem that the USA is progressively skimping on education? Is it any wonder that India and Japan (I am sure there are others) are surpassing us in general academic, and therefore work, achievement?
And yes, I graduated high school, got a BSEE, have worked in industry for 5 years, am going for a masters, and I did skim the TFA.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
This is silly. Homework is an important requirement in learning. The clear solution is 30 mg of Prozac a day. This has the added bonus of promoting abstinence. Win-Win.
Expections is a perfectly cromulent word.
...do first graders need homework? Surely the first few grades of school are for getting the basics down, rather than attempting to cram as much as possible into the kids' heads?
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
Here's a list of teachers and the email naming convention if you feel someone should contact her and/or her supervisor. Alternately you can point out that she's about to go to her 40th high school reunion and should be retiring anyway.
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Please note that TFA says they're only reducing homework to near zero for elementary school students:
So if there's really no measurable benefit to doing homework in elementary school, why give them homework just because "that's the way it's always been done?" Of course, I'm hoping that the study was conducted correctly and that its conclusions are actually valid.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Maybe teachers will start doing their jobs now. Too many ended up just not wanting to deal with kids at all, they just told their students to sit down and shut up for an hour and then assigned homework that should have been covered in class.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I wonder how they are going to explain the drop in grades? Probably blame it on the teachers or some such.
Homework exists to reinforce the learning from the schoolday. It is not punishment, and it is not surplus work to keep the devil from taking over their souls.
As much as I hated homework (even moreso because I learned very well during the class), I have to admit that it does reinforce the learning. It's the 'doing' that reinforces the 'learning'.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
wait wait this shit gets better. From the About the Teacher page:
I grew up in central Connecticut. I graduated with a B.A. from Elmira College in Education and Psychology. After several years of teaching and then working in the Rare Book Room at Syracuse University, I decided to return to graduate school, receiving a M.L.S. from Syracuse University in Library and Information Technology. In 1978 we moved to Boston and I was accepted into a Master's program ar Harvard University where I received a Ed.M. in Reading.
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Homework, sheesh, its amazing what happens when people try to be nice but stop thinking..
It used to be that there were three groups of kids in a clasroom. One was average, one was above average, and one was below average. The teacher taught to the average group. The above average kids got bored, but hopefully were given more work if they enjoyed it. The lower than average kids did work at home in order to keep up with the average. All was good.
Then we decided to be nice. So, instead of letting the lower-than-average kids deal with being such, we'll teach to their level so everything can be done in school. Well, that left most of the kids bored, and the nostalgic feeling of homework was going away. So, they started giving homework to everyone.
Parents liked homework too, because it occuppied their kids time for them. So teachers gave more, and than the kids complained or rebelled. It's just plain sad.
One of my teachers did it best. He wrote an assignment on the board every day at the beginning of class that was due the next day, and then proceeded to teach it. As soon as you understood it, you stopped listening and started on the work. The lower-than-average kids needed help, so the higher-than-average helped them when they were finished with it themselves. There was rarely homwork for anyone, unless they needed it to keep up with the class (and that was known by whether they could do the work in class.) I consider that teacher the best one. He gave work for learning it, not just to give it.
Have you read my journal today?
You guys should read the book, "Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers." At least read the summary to see if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Inside-Todays-Teenagers -Culture/dp/0801027322/sr=1-1/qid=1171911875/ref=p d_bbs_sr_1/105-6743750-7895649?ie=UTF8&s=books.
It talks a lot about this - not getting rid of homework, but if you read the book you might understand why lightening up on homework might not be such a bad idea.
Kids are under increasing stress to outdo their peers in the rush for university places. I'm feeling the pressure at A Level, and I've no doubt that kids younger than me are sick of it as well. It's not just homework, either, it's all the extra-curricular rubbish they're pushed to do in order to "stand out" from other applicants.
I'd welcome a ban on extra homework - besides what's normal for children that young, i.e. spellings and so on - until they reach Secondary School age. Give them a little bit of time to be themselves before rushing them into a world of hard work and sparse praise.
I think it's ridiculous to restrict the time they have to play when they're all so young, and we'll end up with a generation of robots if all we learn to value is grades.
Homework is not a requirement for learning - practice is. With 6 hours a day of school, minus 1.5 - 2 hours a day for lunch, fine arts, etc... my students need more time to practice long division, work on drafts of their writing assignments, and read about science and social studies. I focus on more interactive learning during my classroom time, so I send reading and practice home as homework.
A better system would give students time each day, or at least a few days a week, in supervised study hall. Staff it with student teachers or assistants capable of helping with questions (which parents often can't). A longer school day with me would work too.
The real issue is that all too often homework is given because it is expected by parents, and is just busywork. The "I had lots of homework as a kid so my kids should too" attitude of some parents is not beneficial. Homework shouldn't be a punishment or given just because teachers are supposed to. The question is, what do students need to learn what they are supposed to learn?
I was about to say this is a good thing because frankly the problem is that teachers don't freaking teach anything in class anymore. Some of you who are older might not realize how bad it is but classrooms have been dumbed down horribly by the lowest common denominator problem. Basically the instructor is lazy or has to explain things really slowly such that any halfway smart kid will just go to sleep. They then make up for it with stupid amounts of homework.
So reducing homework and maybe making teachers actually teach sounds good at first though but then I remembered all the busy work. So how about instead of making our kids waste a full 40 hours a week sitting in class snoozing we give them less school and actually make sure they do their learning at home at their own pace.
If http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml/ wasnt bad enough to push the stress limits of an already completely fucked up education system, lets throw in some wild theories about whats causing stress in todays children. Maybe it isnt "homework" but the straight from school to the factory education model we use to teach children today. I've had the unfortunate experience of working as a corrections officer and a factory worker, and I can tell you that there are frightening similiarities between the three. The problem that is well known about the education system is its inability to let children accel at their own pace, when in fact, all the current system does is keep the smartest right in line with the dumbest. At least back in the day before political correctness, the dumb ass of the class was left way behind and the rest were forced to rise to an artificial standard... today we have "No Child Left Behind".... I cant wait for the re-runs "Ow my Balls"...
20th century Marxism is not progress...
And today, when they start giving homework at k12, one really wonders what it is about...helping the children learn, or attempting to prove to the parents that they are trying to educate the children? There is no scientific proof that homework generically helps grades. Additional work, especially with a teacher, on the other *does* improve grades...I wonder if the North American school system is trying to substitute homework for time with student and class sizes?
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I'm posting as AC, so that this doesn't become a post for bragging.
I'm in a few AP classes, including Calculus and Physics, in my senior year of high school. I hold a part time job. The thing I've learned most from homework is being able to not sleep for a couple of nights in a row. School is 7:40 to 2:30, a little under 7 hours. I understand the material in class, immediately; that's why I'm in all the advanced classes that I'm in.
Most days, I immediately go to work, and get home at 8PM. Following a dinner and a shower, at about 9PM, I start homework. It all appears as busy work, since I understand it already. When I have free time, I continue doing work, except, I do more advanced work. For example, if I finish a night of homework before 1AM, I'll play with graphs of functions, interesting equations, things from the next chapter of the book, etc. I think exploring is more beneficial to me than is completing work for a subject I already understand.
Another issue, I would like to note: my religious activities are very difficult to do on top of homework. The http://crlf.ws/ (CRLF) has helped me greatly with keeping up with God, while still learning in school. As a side note, if you have too much work, and not enough time to worship God, join the CRLF.
I read somewhere that schools in Sweden (at least in the '80s) didn't give homework. How true is that?
I wonder how they are going to explain the drop in grades? Probably blame it on the teachers or some such.
Oh hell no...they'll blame it on being "underfunded."
Montessori.
I think you must have just gone to one of those hippie schools. Like me. You know, one of those schools where they had freaky programs like art and music and history class actually taught something about the constitution. Most young people I meet today not only haven't a clue how a piano works, they seem to have no familiarity with the bill of rights, either.
assanine, I do see a problem with the homework load kids have in lower grades (as many others have pointed out). My son is in 4th grade, my daughter in Kindergarten. While my daughter doesn't have much homework to speak of, my son does, and has since 1st grade (in the same school as my daughter) have at least 1 - 2 hours per night. He's a very bright kid, but I see him often times burning out due to sheer load. Sadly, most of it too seems like busy work. I think this is a very damaging trend in education today. Sure, highschool and college brings a heavy work load, but at a time in your life where you have the ability to look ahead in order to see the value in it. My son on the other hand is at the age where life is very much about the next 10 minutes. Things are broken.
I agree that balance is key to slowly moving children into the different stages of life, and getting them acclimated to the real world. Ultimately, they will be able to stand on their own as independents.
What I'm curious about, is how have things changed since I was growing up (I'm 35) for an average child, and how much the day-to-day school experience differs from what I was brought up in (I went to private, Catholic schools)?
I will say that I recall having a low work vs. play and recreation ratio in the early years...that gradually changed so that as I matured, I was given more work, more responsibility, and that of course related to homework as well. I mean, I'd get close to nothing in 1st grade...maybe 20-30 minutes of homework in 4/5th grade....then by high school I'd say on average anywhere from none, to 30 minutes to a couple hours each night, depending on the classes I was taking.
The key thing I remember throughout, however, was that from my parents, my teachers, and my peers, there was always an expectation to succeed, to try your hardest, and to do your very best. That environment gave me the support and willingness to push myself harder, and ultimately become a productive and successful person. I think this environment of expectation and support in the different areas (parents, teachers, peers) is key for a young person to develop as individuals and fulfill their potential as people. I think things fall down when there is lack of support in one of those areas, or when the areas don't mesh....particularly from the parent and teacher side.
While I'm at it, I'll also mention that all kids should not only have to do some kind of homework (and get a job when they're old enough...say 12 yrs old)....they should also not all get a trophy just for participating in something. Doing so shows kids that they don't have to work hard for anything, and that they are entitled for no good reason. I think there are way too many parents out there today who think children are somehow adults already, and that they deserve all consideration and entitlement that an adult does....that somehow children possess adult-like intellect and emotions...and that they come out of the womb as 21 year olds. I think this type of parental behavior damages children much more than any possible 'bruising of self-esteem' that everyone seems to concern themselves with these days. It teaches children to become manipulative and difficult.
You misspelled "explantions".
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
When you "get" a subject and know you understand it, you need to sit down and practice for a while. Understanding how a math problem is solved is very important, but actually sitting down and solving 4 or 5 samples of increasing complexity nails it down for good.
Otherwise you end up like some people in my class who, at the age of 18, did not "remember" how to solve 2ng grade equations while everybody else was discussing calculus.
Global warming is a cube.
All he gets is 'stuff unfinished in the class', no interesting new things. When there is homework extra to classwork it can typically be done in half an hour and is trivial.
So we have a system in place. He earns time on the computer by studying. Currently this study is classical physics, previously it's been history, mathematics, animation (via blender) anything we felt is useful to know. By this method we manage on average five to eight hours independant study for him a week, most of which relates to schoolwork, although currently his home study is up to two years ahead of school study, depending on subject.
If self directed study was left to homework alone, his education would be crap.
Everyday tasks can be assigned, and the point should be for the pupils to open their eyes to everyday applications of their skills. Reality is an intermix of skills, and that means that even though the task may be for biology it will require writing skills to actually document.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
they just shouldn't GRADE homework, well IMO anyway. One of my favorite profs in college always assigned us homework but never collected it. Why? His philosophy was that he would know if you were actually doing your homework by how you did on the test. He would assign problems then publish the solutions on the web. And when you went to his office hours you could ask him ANY question you wanted to about the homework. Other profs who grade homework would always dance around certain questions because they didn't want to "give away the answer". What BS! I learn as much, if not more, from trying problems and being able to see my mistakes then by making sure I need to do everything perfectly all the time. Profs would usually post answers to the homeworks, but unless I made copies of what I did, I wouldn't get the homework I handed in back until weeks afterwards. By then many of the lessons have already been forgotten.
Isn't grading by both testing AND homework implying that people cheat on homework? If you believe that everyone is honestly do their homework, then the homework should show whether or not they trully understand(not MEMORIZE per se) the material. Or if you have tests then don't collect homework because the students will have to prove their mettle on the test anyway. I think it would be great if classes had either only test or only homework/discussion grades. Each would work better in certain situations, but the whole idea of having to be perfect all the time without being able to consult reference materials or collaborate with others against the spirit of education. Also, it doesn't represent the "real world" at all. I know bridge makers aren't allowed to make mistakes, but all bridge designs have to be signed off by several people and they are allowed to collaborate with co-workers and several people have to inspect the design and put their own reputation and even wallets on the line when they sign off on the design. This isn't allowed on tests or even homework theoretically. So why grade it?
Monstar L
Speaking as a teacher, I agree with this move. The problem with homework (at least in the schools where I have worked) is that it is expected to be graded and counted toward the overall academic progress of the child. This is an issue because as a teacher I cannot trust that the work done at home is the child's own. Aside from the easy things to catch like copying there are a myriad of parents and tutors who will use homework to artificially boost a child's grades.
Homework should be used for practice, but not count for the final grade.
-CGP
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Learning is not a behavior. Speaking of it in behaviorist terms such as "reinforce" shows how uneducated you are on the subject./ 0738210854/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1516831-6709560?ie= UTF8&s=books&qid=1173020107&sr=8-1 Read this book. It breaks down the argument for people who have not done the research.
The research to support your claims does not exist.
http://www.amazon.com/Homework-Myth-Alfie-Kohn/dp
Children in other counries attend cram (make-up classes) schools as standard practice (not extraordinary) They do that day-in day-out six days a week. Could we have become so weak and decrepit mentally that we cannot put up with some additional studying? This is ridiculous.
People are begininng to treat kinds (and themselves) as if they were fragile. We are not damned fragile as a species. If we had been so mentally fragile we would have not survied so long --we would have curled up and died many millenia ago. What people can be is lazy, and the attitude is simply promoted futher by such thinking. We as a society will only suffer if this kind of thinking comes to prevail --the thinking that humans are tender fragile beings that need kind nurturing and the most basic incremental demands of one as a being. This attitude is not the real world one encounters after high-school. Why the kid gloves?
We've come to expect that our kids do tons of homework each and every night, and I have many colleagues who parrot that idea. When I press them as to why, they basically tell me that they need to practice doing homework. Rarely is the question answered that the lesson needs to be reinforced or whatnot.
We're in the day and age of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), the current incarnation of educational reform that has been around since the sixties. I live in an average-to-slightly-upper middle class neighborhood, and the vast difference among my students academically is astounding. 1/3 of my kids in the classroom have IEPs (Individual Educational Plans, which have goals tailored to the individual, and you must follow them, even if it was written in another district before the student moved to yours), and gathering homework on a regular basis from everybody is time consuming due to the amount of kids not doing it to the different expectations NCLB has forced.
The reality is that very few parents are willing or able to help at home. Kids are overextended with activities (kids are doing extra-curriculars at an all-time high), or they're latchkey, or they're in daycare for extended time. I usually get done in FIVE minutes one-on-one what could be done in half an hour at home, and of course I take that route when I can. I've moved on to pushing some work back to the next day instead of giving it for homework (yes, I still give homework, just not nearly as much as when I started, and now it's mostly reading), due to the fact that while they are learning skills they should have an opportunity to learn it from a person that is getting paid for teaching it, and it highly qualified to do it (yes, there are teachers who are not highly qualified, or highly motivated, but that's for another thread I think).
Kids who don't finish something in a reasonable timeframe in the classroom will have more homework than those who do. It's easy to tell, once you get to know the kids, whether they don't understand or are malingering. I do, however, like to give reading homework for many reasons. For one, it helps them become better readers, and they actually DO IT, especially if they self-select the reading. Another reason is that, in my grade, I encourage the kids to read with parents or siblings. I get a lot of feedback about how that has been good for the family as a whole over time.
I can't speak to the upper grades, but I know many teachers who see the same thing (the kids who can do it already, the kids who can't at home, and the middle ground) in middle school and high school. There's no easy answer, but looking back at the history of education, there was an extended period (covering DECADES) where there was virtually no homework for the kids. I wouldn't say a blanket "no homework at all" for the upper levels, but I'd certainly be in favor of limiting it to an hour or less. Just food for thought.
Yeah, probably switched topics too much, but I have no time to re-read this because I have essays to grade...
I'm pro-accordion and I vote
I agree -- there's little need for formal homework prior to 4th or 5th grade.
However, give the elementary school kids just enough homework to keep the parents involved. Make a parent initial a slip that the kid drilled with flash cards this week, or something like that.
If the kid seems bored or lost, the parent should note that as well.
http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice (PsychologicalReview).pdf
Most homework is probably ineffective. The mere act of doing something produces no learning unless there is a feedback mechanism and the learner is actually trying to improve. I'm guessing that 99% of the time the transfer function for the feedback path approaches an open circuit as far as homework is concerned.
If the homework does get marked, there is usually no mechanism for the student to learn and improve the mark. The bad students get beaten down and lose all confidence that they can learn. Bad, clueless teachers will achieve this result no matter whether or not they assign homework. They might as well save themselves the effort of whatever marking they do. They should quit giving homework to the early grade students. It wouldn't hurt the students.
What do I think works? http://www.reason.com/news/show/28479.html http://www.jumpmath.org/ http://www.spiritofmath.com/about3a.html There are lots of amazing teachers out there who produce amazing results. The ones I link to are math teachers because math is the one subject where excellent teaching produces uncontrovertable, measurable results. What these teachers have in common is apathy or even outright hostility from school administration. The problem starts at the top folks.
this is not a bad idea. There are many examples of where kids are trying to improve themselves and where the adults of the world push them a lot harder than they really should be pushed. You see 7 yr old actors that work 6 hrs a day on the set, or 9 yr olds that can out iceskate anyone in their city. (think jr olympics) Encouraging a kid to spend all their spare time doing any one thing is a waste of their childhood. I don't see why homework is any different than that. Sure, studying is time well-spent, but some parents and some teachers push the kids to overdo it. What good is it to have a straight-A student that has had a dismal childhood? Some would consider that a good trade, but not me. Life is not a contest, you don't "win" if you die successful. You "win" if you had a good ride, regardless of the outcome. Sacrificing the journey for sake of the end is a shame. That's the way I have lived my life and I have no regrets. I wonder just how many adults look back at their early lives and wish they had not obcessed so much over atheletics/grades/socializing.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I wonder how they are going to explain the drop in grades? Probably blame it on the teachers or some such.
"Researchers have been far from unanimous in their assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of homework as an instructional technique." - Journal of Educational Psychology
"Harris Cooper and his colleagues conducted a study in 1998 with both younger and older students (from grades 2 through 12), using both grades and standardized test scores to measure achievement. They also looked at how much homework was assigned by the teacher as well as at how much time students spent on it. Thus, there were eight separate results to be reported.
Younger Students
Effect on grades of amount of homework assigned: No significant relationship.
Effect on test scores of amount of homework assigned: No sig. relationship.
Effect on grades of amount of homework done: Negative relationship
Effect on test scores of amount of homework done: No sig. relationship.
Older Students
Effect on grades of amount of homework assigned: No significant relationship.
Effect on test scores of amount of homework assigned: No sig. relationship.
Effect on grades of amount of homework done: Positive relationship
Effect on test scores of amount of homework done: No sig. relationship."
from pp 25, 33 The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn
"Homework exists to reinforce the learning from the schoolday. It is not punishment, and it is not surplus work to keep the devil from taking over their souls."
Well, if so, how about this:
maintain an A average and you can choose to do your homework or not, turn it in late if you like, or whatever? Doing it will give you a cushion should you have a bad test result - a bit of insurance so to speak.
You have demonstrated that you do not need the reinforcement as you are getting it in class, you get a bonus.
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=834CMndtLqA
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
these are fun acitivites (activities)
as well as weekly orgnizational suggestions will be given each week (organizational, and poor sentence structure)
with instructions as to when they need to come back to class. (Don't they come back to class each weekday?)
2005 - 2007 Menlo Park City Elem SD > Christine Aronson. All Rights Reserved.
Last updated: Nov 08 2005 06:52:38 pm Pacific
(PM should be capitalized and spelling errors should be caught at least once a year, not left alone since 2005.)
See, this is what too much homework creates. People who know how to spell without a spellchecker.
I no did homework four school and me smart today
Will program for karma.
In grade school I didn't really learn anything outside of what I was taught in class. Homework was just an annoyance that I really didn't do anyway. In fact if it wasn't so important in college I probably still wouldn't be doing it. The only thing I did need for homework were spelling words. I studied. Homework takes time away from those who don't need it and frustrates those who do. Studying is something that a kid can do as they wish and at their own pace. And personally, my parents were always more involved in my studying than my homework. I bet you more parents would be more involved in their child's education if they had to sit down with their kids a half hour a night and help them with studying than if they just keep saying "look at the instructions." It also manages to keep the kids more interested in what their doing as well.
And so they decided to unschool both of their kids who were in 1st and 3rd grade. (I thought this was a bad decision.) For a few months the older kid did nothing, and then he started learning again, mostly on his own. The parents encouraged both kids and occasionally, when asked, took on the role of instructor. The older kid just graduated from oxford with a phd in mathematics. The younger kid just started his phd in math at Brown. Not too bad and no required homework until college.
otherwise you get kids that are stressed out, mis-adjusted and nerdy
Great! More Slash Dotters!
Bring it On!
As if the US educational system wasn't screwed up enough.
/sarcasm
Oh yeah, let's get rid of homework because the poor kiddies are stressed out. In fact, coming to school at 8am or whatever is also a source of stress, maybe we shouldn't insist they show up on time. Math courses are also a great stressor, let's lose those. On second thoughts, why not get rid of school altogether? Then the kids can sit at home and play video games all day, and not have any stress....
I doubt very much that eliminating homework will reduce illicit drug use. It probably won't increase it, since most drug users blow off homework anyway, but reduce it? Why? I can't remember ever citing homework as a reason to use drugs in my teenage years... we did it because it was cool, because getting stoned felt good, and because it was illegal.
Homework is a way to teach responsibility - you have a deadline to meet, you have to take time to do something you don't necessarily enjoy, and pretty much figure it out on your own. It helps train your memory as you recall what you learned in class, and it teaches problem solving skills when you have to look stuff up, call your friends because you forgot how to do something, etc. It's a way to prepare kids for a responsible adult life. Welcome to the real world.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
the grading? Have the student get 2 grades. The first would be a grade at school and the second is the grade of homework? That way, the parent can see what the real difference is. Of course, that will leave some parents to be upset, but just explain to them, that you prefer to grade their child, not the parents work. :) Sadly, some parents will still not take the hint.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
One wonders if the 2nd grade teachers at Menlo Park ES have ever actually raised a 7 year old themselves. The average 7 year old has an attention span of about 15 minutes. I've raised 2 myself, and coached hundreds of others in both basketball and baseball. The cognitive skills these teachers seem to expect simply are not there yet. The idea that you can give them a weeks worth of homework on Monday and expect them to remember to bring in Friday without mom helping is ludicrious. The only way it is going to happen is if mom and dad help them schedule out the work all week, and then personally put it in the backpack Thursday night. Even with that, a lot of the kids will walk out of the house Friday morning without it if mom isn't there to hand them the backpack on the way out the door. Punishing the kid for being a normal 7 year old is simply cruel.
It seems as though the school has outsourced reading, handwriting, math, and spelling to mom and dad. What exactly are they doing all day in school?
"Otherwise you end up like some people in my class who, at the age of 18, did not "remember" how to solve 2ng grade equations while everybody else was discussing calculus."
People in your class who, it must be pointed out, were required to do homework. What was your point again?
I have no problem with no homework. I don't bring work home, why should my kids? But I'd substitute longer class times, which is something else with which some schools are experimenting. Middle and high schools can use A/B day schedules with 1.5 hour classes and cover the same material per semester.
In deference to your point, longer class times will still allow for adequate drill. The advantage is that class time spent doing drill material is time that the teacher can spend on one-on-one instruction, grading papers, or working on lesson plans. (And don't think that reducing the after-hours work on teachers won't have an in-class benefit, either.)
-- Cerebus
That is not the attitude at all. The attitude is that we value our freedom of thought and creativity enough that we do not need to reduce ourselves down to a routine in order to succeed.
Genius is not created in an institution, it is innate.
My parents said that they went to school 6 days a week and their parents worked 6 days a week. My parents are in their 70's and grew up in Norway. I don't know how widespread this practice was.
Perhaps some GOP respresentative got worried US literacy rate may get over 95%. But with this kind of a measures put in place, it'll be sure that there will be plenty of people, who pass High School but can't read and write. God bless american public education.
is that this teacher claims she has a graduate degree (M.Ed.) from Harvard.
If it's practice it shouldn't need to be graded. In at least two classes in school I failed due wholey to lack of homework completely. In Math I scored 97% on a final, and Biology set the curve at 100%. I failed both those classes. If you can demonstrate you have gained the skills, through understanding, practice, intuition, whatever, you should not be allowed to fail the class!
I just graduated high school last May, so I understand this system of homework. I'm also in the military, so I understand what it's like putting in long hours and a good work ethic. (just establishing my credibility, folks)
Homework, I feel, is essential in some areas, especially in mathematics and science. I found myself earning higher grades on tests and quizzes when I did the homework. It's a great way to practice the material studied in class. What didn't help is my parents did not know the material. I had to go online a lot and research tips and other educational materials on my own to help me understand better.
This may be a little off topic, but I feel it needs mentioning. The school system nowadays, as I have experienced it, are focusing more on getting students to pass the yearly standardized state test. The HSPA (NJ) and TAX (TX) tests were all we were prepared for as well as the AP* exams in my advanced courses. Granted, it is in our best interest to pass, but when you're in AP English IV looking for grammatical errors in sentences for two dittos/sheets, back and front, and you spend two days on the material, all because it's on the state test, there's definitely a problem.
*AP stands for advanced placement which is the equivalent to one college semester of that course; see Advanced Placement, College Board
I was shown a study done in the '80s that compared Minneapolis, Kyoto and Taipai elementary schools. Their conclusion was that Asian kids didn't have a significantly higher homework load than the U.S. kids. The Asian kids might be taking sports and calligraphy, etc. in the evening while the American kids might be taking sports and band, etc.
One statistic that was amazing was that the American school didn't seem to know where about 14% of the kids _were_ at any given time. That percentage was trivial in Asia. As it would have been when I was a child in the U.S. and we were equally told to sit down in our assigned places, shut the &$@^ up and soak in knowledge. I see that dovetailing with the recent study that although a lot of the French still do 35 hour weeks, they get as much done as a U.S. 40 hour week. All that time spent team-building and working well with others in group projects builds adults who will be working in "The Office" in my opinion.
My take is that the inefficiency during the day is made up for in homework. And the myth of the Japanese student cramming 20 hours/day fell on eager Puritan Western ears because "idle hands are the devil's workshop".
So, are we all having fun yet?
Seriously though, both homework and class time are good for different things. They also only work in moderation, otherwise the child becomes saturated with work, and shuts down completely. In other words, I don't think longer school hours are the answer.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I agree.
I just spent 9 hours yesterday on an english project.
Two more this morning so far.
Still have more to do.
Yes, I procrastinated a bit, but she only gave us 3 weeks to do all this, I was about 3/4 of the way done coming into this weekend, and I only have about 3 hours of free time at night after school with which I have better things to do.
But my crap's done printing so I gotta get back to work.
Learn this:
A founding principle of your country was the separation of church and state.
You should read the Bill Of Rights, and your Constitution - particularly the First Amendment. You should learn about James Madison, and the Danbury Baptists.
It may help you to understand the external perception of the USA as being in recent social and political decline.
Shockingly, religious considerations affect your modern political process.
In 21st Century America church and state are inexorably intertwined, and fuck the founding fathers.
I take exception with organisations such as the CRLF that you link to.
Their mission statement: "Leading Better Lives Through True Christianity" is admirable, fair enough, although I'd be surprised if this group had a monopoly on "true" Christianity.
Their strapline: "A good person is faithful and Republican" - well, I think this is un-American - it is religious and partisan. By the same token I consider the use of the phrase "God bless America" by politicians to be hypocritical. Maybe you conversely think atheists and agnostics are un-American?
I am not an American, but I was raised a Christian - you might say that it is not my place to criticise your politics but I can certainly criticise the CRLF.
I put it to you that they are not only un-American, but un-Christian. From their About Us When you have finished reading the documents that enshrine the principles that once made your country great, you may like to start on the New Testament.
Posting AC because I know when I've been trolled
How about we just change the homework system to match the overtime systems found in the real world?
Homework in its current state teaches kids that your work outside of your normal schedule is encouraged and will be rewarded somehow. Overtime in its current state teaches adults that you'd better get everything done in your normal work day or you will have to ask for special approval, and then get paid extra (not necessarily a higher wage, but you DO get paid) for the time you put in beyond your normal work day.
You say that homework teaches strong work ethic? Maybe so, but I think most companies tear that to shreds with their policies once students hit the real world.
I expect a 500-word summary, single spaced, on my desk by tomorrow morning.... ;)
Bark less. Wag more.
These policies are meant to push knuckleheads with parents who will berate them into doing homework into the college system by making grades a function not of actual information retention, but rather their parent's ability to berate them into doing homework. I know there are different kinds of intelligence, and that test are not always the best yardstick for information retention, but 80% of the time you can substitute "bad test taker" for "of average or below-average intelligence." Then, they take a standardized test for which excellence is to correlate primarily to income, get into a top-rated college, realize that their mommy can't write their essays for them anymore, and slack off.
My fiancee went to a great school in a rich neighborhood. When she started out, they had a GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) system, which she was a part of. The PTA dismantled this system, because they (rich people) could not accept that their children were less smart than others. That's what homework is: a tool, used by average people with money and time to bitch to get their kids into college, because if it was tests alone, mostly smart people would get into top-rated schools. Most of the time, they even prevent smart children who understand the subject from doing the work in class during lecture, thereby making their grades an almost perfect measurement of their parent's willingness to destroy their childhood.
One of the points the article brought up was rising substance abuse. How does not having homework keep kids from getting stoned? When I was in high school (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), the crispies (crispy critters - because they were so baked) never did homework anyway (or they were ridiculously smart and didn't have to be spoonfed material). Wouldn't homework force some kids to do something else besides sit around, stoned, trying to work out Stairway to Heaven on their guitar?
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
Doing homework is not all about rote memorization. It's limited by the teachers' imagination. So , I don't see how homework turns students into drones. No homework, however, can condition them into a life of little exertion, mentally.
1. Read post that mentions any animal.
2. Type the word PETA and the name of any progressive city.
3. Get modded 5, Funny!
This New Economy is great, because you don't even need to make any sense. Profit!
The teachers are in a hard place. Teachers will have parents complaining about giving too much homework, while parents in the same class will complain about not enough homework.
What, me worry?
Our principal, therefore, has "mentioned" that we should not be giving homework, since there is time in class to complete it. For my very responsible and very bright students (not necessarily the same ones) this is easy enough. They typically walk into the room and either start on the homework right away, or while I'm teaching the lesson. Even after the day's lessons, there is typically time to at least start the homework. With rare exceptions, the work I assign typically doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes.
So why bother? A few reasons.
1) Practice. It's easy to get the answers right when the teacher is holding your hand through the process. For the slower students, it may not be so easy to locate the prepositional phrase in the blink of an eye.
2) Responsibility. Assigning work that is due at a later date, even a small portion at a time, is helping them learn to be responsible for themselves. In the adult world, not everything is completed the same day you start it and often we have multiple tasks with varying importance and immediacies to balance. Students need to learn to balance too. However, it is important for teachers not to feel like their class is the only one that matters. Homework should be assigned with a specific purpose. Not for busy work.
3) Communication. On a few occasions, I've asked students to specifically wait to do their homework until they arrive home. Additionally, I'll reward students with a freebie grade for obtaining their parent's signature. Why? For those who do this, it's a very brief but simple way to get the parents more aware of what we're doing in class. Sometimes I am able to let parents know what we're working on. However, where I teach, most parents don't have email (and calling 70 parents a week is not realistic). When students talk about their work with their parents, they are reactivating that information, even if but briefly. This helps reinforce what they have learned (often because they need to re-explain it to the parent) and helps the parents be involved, without being nosey. It's a win-win.
4) Avoiding procrastination. By giving students very small bits of homework (10 minutes worth) you are helping them learn that they can avoid those crunch times near the end of due dates. Instead of giving an hour of homework once a week, if you break it into small pieces, they'll understand that they can accomplish larger tasks easily. This is similar to responsibility, but has the added benefit of getting them to study a little every night, instead of all at once (which is almost always completely lost later).
My general rules of homework (for myself as a teacher) are something like this:
*Never give homework as punishment for classroom behavior.
*Assign extra homework to students that really need it, but only occasionally.
*Be conscious that you were once a student too, and had 7 classes to balance.
*Never assign homework that includes information not explained in class.
*Keep projects reasonable, and allow time in class for students to work on them (in case they have questions... which they will).
*By the same token, keep reading assignments reasonable.
IMHO, homework is a practical and beneficial tool when used properly.
An explanation of my choices for friends
Too often, teachers send masses of homework which students either flounder on (because they don't get it) or find tedious (because they do get it yet it is till time-consuming).
Assignments should exercise very well-defined ideas such that they can be done successfully in a short amount of time *if the student understands the concept being reinforced*. If the student does not understand, he or she might have to spend extra time -- at home or at school -- to get it.
The idea that it should be normal to do lots of rote work at home indicates to me bad course design. At least the sharp students should, except for projects as noted, be able to do the work in school.
Because, uh, these are kids we're talking about?
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Don't give us this Uphill Both Ways In the Snow crap. Just because kids in some other country work themselves miserable doesn't mean they derive an educational benefit from doing so. It also doesn't imply that our kids would derive an educational benefit from working as much.
Daily homework in elementary school has no real educational benefits. Once you reach middle school, it's time to start phasing homework into the kids' lives. Studies have shown that homework in high school has a signficant benefit.
As a high school student, I have to dispute this. Is the homework beneficial, or does it just raise students' grades because many teachers just check to see if its done, not actually correct?
"I was about to say this is a good thing because frankly the problem is that teachers don't freaking teach anything in class anymore."
-- I think you're making a generalisation. I call BS until you tell us what your point of reference and experience is. Are you working within the school system?
When I was in school, homework would only account for 25% or less of your grade. If you cheated on your homework, you'd be more likely to flunk the test, which was a much higher percentage of your grade. If you got 100% on your homework but failed the quiz and tests, the teacher knew what was really going on.
I had the opposite problem. In classes where I understood the subject, I wouldn't bother with the homework all the time. I'd get marked down for not turning in anything, but I'd get A's and B's on the tests, so my average was decent.
On the gripping hand, we'd have some teachers who'd assign reading assignments so that we'd have a basic understanding of what we'd be discussing the next day. That way we'd spend class time doing what other teachers would assign as homework.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I think the problem with homework is that it ignores the fact that the school system is incapable of teaching the kids what they need to know, at the school itself. I was home schooled for grades 1-12. Never had a problem getting a job, and scored at least a 50 in every area of my ACT test (in some areas it was more like 80). And that with never really having to do more than 8 hours of studying a day. I think if teachers were doing their job, or perhaps there was a higher teacher/student ratio in the schools, there would be no need for homework.
And no, I didn't take the time to read the article.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
First of all, I said nothing about memorization. I referred to routine. I'll reiterate and elaborate on what I said:
Students don't need homework; they just need to be allowed to exercise their creativity and abilities without being restricted to a institutionally mandated set of requirements.
Some students will get value out of homework, others will not. Don't apply a single standard to everyone.
A big part of the problem is that the curriculum that is mandated tends to be boring and irrelevant to most people. I didn't get anything out of 80% of the classes I took. I am a self-motivated learner and pick up the stuff I need to or want to learn on my own.
For example, I never became interested in our college's required humanities course. It was required to make us "well rounded" but yet, to me, it was just mindless reading about topics I could never make myself care about. Flash forward a couple of years later: I get to know a creative writer who publishes many different websites online on various topics. He gets me interested in philosophy and the humanities (mainly classical works). This is something that the school cannot reproduce within the bounds of the classroom or structured assignments.
... are first graders? In some parts of the world we measure kids' ages in years.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... when editors don't do their job and let through (or introduce) obvious typos to make the targets of their bigotry look silly ...
Assuming you're talking about Japan and Korea, the reality of not getting into a good university there is very different from not getting into a good university in North America or Europe. While in the west it's possible to work your way up the corporate ladder it's virturally impossible in Japan unless you go to Tokyo U, Waseada, or Keio universites. In South Korea it's the University of Seoul. If you can't graduate from one of these you'll be stuck in middle management hell all of your life.
These countries have very strong seniority based promotion systems which means the rung you start out on will determin how far up you can go. Parents are desperate to give their children any advantage so they send kids to these cram schools even though the kids never learn much of practical value. Try communicating with a Japanese or Korean in English. No problem if you're reading and writing, but try having a conversation and all you'll get is blank stares. Why? Because these cram schools only teach written English that will be on enterance exames.
Cram schools sound nice, but provide little in the way of actual education. I used to teach in one so I know.
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
When I was in second grade (in a public school in a relatively poor neighborhood), the teacher kept a series of six or seven extra assignments at the side of the room, mostly coloring, maybe some math or some spelling. If we finished the regular assignment, and all the extras, then we got to have free time, so there was an incentive to keep working. My view of the world was pretty egotistic at the time, so I don't know if the kids who couldn't finish regular assignments had to take them home to work on. After the introduction of NCLB, teachers in grade school are already teaching to a test. That's a shame. Screw homework, because it's a much more valuable life skill to fill in the little bubbles on an answer sheet. The implication NCLB gives is that if a kid isn't doing well, it's always the teacher's fault. Teachers aren't lazy, stupid, or heartless, so let's give them some credit and let them do their jobs without threat of capital punishment.
I went to second grade in the Menlo Park school district, the location of Oak Knoll School, which is described in the article. I went to Willow School. I don't know how much has changed since 1973, but back then, it was a low-income area, with really horrible schools. I remember learning to flake loose paint off of the buildings with a pin at recess. They had a government-subsidized breakfast program, and my parents offered to pay for it, but the school thought they were just being proud, and told them it was really OK. There was not much learning going on. The teacher would play records, read books to us, and give us toys and comic books as prizes for good behavior. There was no homework. One big reason we moved after that year was to get me out of that school. However, even though the next place we landed was much more affluent (I went to Forest Grove School in Pacific Grove, Ca.), there was still no homework.
Today, I have two kids in grade school, and I do think they get too much homework. (A lot of it is busywork, like word searches, or 50 arithmetic problems when 10 would have done it.) My impression is that the school assigns a lot of homework because the parents expect it. Real estate has tripled since we bought our house here, and I think large amounts of homework reassure affluent parents that their kids are getting a good education. Also, the area is majority Korean, so the culture leans that way too.
Find free books.
How much homework does the average student have to do in any given day? 1-2 hours? Maybe 3-4 if they're studying ridiculously hard for some upcoming examination. What's the problem with that? Students go to school (at least in my area) from 8am-2:30pm every day. My younger brother gets back from class by 3:00pm, the latest a student gets home is 4:00pm. So they spend the next 1-2 (or again 3-4 if studying) on doing their homework - they then get (assuming in bed by 11pm) at least 4 hours to do whatever they want (within reason). This is not the problem.
If they want to start understanding why students are getting stressed then they need to look at other factors like environment and possibly even the hours the class holds. In grade school, classes started at 9am and went to 4pm. In middle school is was 8:30-3:30. In highschool is was 7:30-2:00. Being at school by 7:30 was the biggest strain on me that ever occured because it required being up at 6, 6:30am just to be able to catch the stupid bus.
Homework is very useful - it reinforces the ideas and methods of accomplishing tasks. There is very little in life that you can become good at just by listening to some person (who probably doesn't even want to be there in the first place!) drone on about it.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
The parent is a troll & liar and links to a loonie Site claiming that 'Ubuntu Linux' stands for 'Jewbuntu' and that Linux is a stolen version of Windows. Quite hilarious actually, but please mod him down. Thanks.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Homework exists to reinforce the belief that your expected to take work home with you... As far as I'm concerned work stays at work, anything more requires proper compensation.
My solution? Assign homework but allow the students to get others to do it.
When I arrived in the US, I realized my fellow 5th graders had no idea about geometry, sets and a whole bunch of other mathermatical concepts that I thought were completely basic. In 9th grade geometry, they basically made me repeat the math I learned in 4th grade. And I'll admit it: I was totally baked in very many of my geometry classes and it was still an easy A.
But what I really wanted to say is this: I don't dispute the results of the study. I can easily imagine that homework doesn't help American students do better at the American grade school curriculum. That's because in America, the slowest kid in the class sets the pace for everyone else, and that kid dosn't do homework anyway. No wonder it takes no work to keep up! But we absolutely can aim higher standards. Kids are capable of learning a lot more than people expect. Many can learn Calculus before they enter high school. Homeschooled kids with competent mentors do this all the time. My dad was teaching calculus when he was 16 (his dad taught math and there was no other qualified sub in their little town).
If doing homework doesn't show any benefit in how kids do in school, that screams to me that whatever they're doing in school is messed up. I suspect they dumbed down everything so that doing homework doesn't teach you anything you didn't already learn in class. Now (surprise, surprise!) they release a study showing that doing homework doesn't help you perform in class, and they react to it by cancelling homework. How stupid! Why don't they instead set higher goals in school, so that you would learn something important when doing homework?
...and now we get to do it to THEM!
I don't recall much getting much homework until Jr High though. Now I see itty bitty kids trudging around with backpacks full of books. Maybe "childhood" tends to run together in our minds as we age, so anthing from 6 to 16 is the same.
I do recall running around doing as I pleased after school, as opposed to being herded into some group activity. When I think of being a child, I think of those times as the best.
It prepares kids for 10x the stress levels that they'll receive once they're on their own. Homework is also good - it keeps kids off the street and off the TV. Life's hard, little folks. Deal with it.
US public schools suck as it is. If they also abolish homework they'll be even more of a laughing stock for the rest of the world and in 10-15 years US of A will be paying dearly for this decision. I bet kids in China, India and Russia don't dare to open their mouths about getting too much homework.
I love you.
damaged by dogma
I love how NCLB measures success by use of "Standardized" tests. Who are they standardized for, the professors who write these test, the average students or the rocks in the class. When you start teaching to the average student, most of your students turn out average.
I am in agreement that kids get way too much homework these days. What really bothers me is that the homework is not useful, just monotonous drudgery that teachers require for busy work. It seems that the main reason kids get a lot of the homework is so teachers ensure that parents are parenting. I as a parent of three cannot stand the fact that my kindergartener comes home with any homework, let alone reading assignments and penmanship assignments. This is yet another reason why kids today lack the social skills they need to excel in the world, because teachers are teaching academics at a very young age and not the social skills they need when they are young. It burns me up to see that preschool programs are teaching academics, three year olds don't need to learn math and reading they need to learn how to play nice, share and manners.
McDonalds is not the only contributor of obesity in America, the massive amounts of homework our kids are given is also a major contributor. Sitting on your ass behind a desk is as bad as sitting on the couch watching the idiot box, and if kids are given two hours of homework a night, that is two hours less than they are outside in fresh air running around and burning calories.
Which brings me to another rant, schools are cutting down the amount of time younger kids get to play during gym or recess. Kids need this time to get rid of stress instead of giving them labels of ADHD and a handful of drugs, give them plunty of time to run around and burn some energy.
More time to get ripped!
Hey, if they paid me as much as they pay k-12 teachers and had to go through what they do every day dealing with stupid myspace-surfing kids, I probably wouldn't give a shit either.
I'm sure there is some other explanation...
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Because you could've just explained it as grade plus 5 or 6 equals approximate age. There are obviously some people who start earlier, or fail a grade, etc, but that covers most.
homework is't bad. Kids needs it to improve themselves, and to understand better what they did in the classroom. however this doesn't mean we should give them more.
:)
I agree with those who say that kids can't concentrate for log times, so maybe 6 50-minutes lessons with 5 minutes-pause between the 2nd-3rd, and between 4th-5th would be better that the 1 hour per lesson and 5 hours a day with 10/15 minutes-brake.
what we need is changing the ways teachers are selected/trained, not only find the right balance with homework.
I speak for Italy, here schools are a complete disaster, from elementary schools to high schools (can't speak for university, i'm not there yet), and the problem is in the way teachers are selected.
from what i have learned, you have to pass some written exams, and nothing else, just wait, you'll be first a teacher which has to move from school to school, and then, when you automatically enter in a list after some years, you can be a teacher which can remain in the same school 'till you ask to change.
the problems are:
1-no one knows if you can teach. they just know that you know what you teach. (actually, exams doesn't seem to be that difficult, if you think i had a teacher who said diamod is ductile and malleable...)
this leads to the point that you have people that know all the story of the world minute-by-minute, and teachers doesn't have a clue of what "teaching" means, instead they just "know" (if they know, actually). in Italy they cover... i'd say 60% (25% who knows how to teach and 10% useless)
2-no one can fire you. Gee, you can't even imagine how many teachers just come in the classroom "to keep the chair warm" here, or how many teachers a class can change because that teacher is always "sick"
would it too difficoult just to ask the teacher to show how he/she would explain this to the classroom when you have to hire a teacher?
i think teachers should be more trained to teach than to know, at least here.
why can't we fire useless teachers???
other problem for the kids is that teachers in a class don't know what other teachers give as homework, so there are days which you have nothing to do, others which you can't do anything else.
writing all homework in those 50cmX30cm books isn't enough, 'cause i dubt a math professor knows how log translating a latin text takes. obiviously writing down also the time that homework should take is too much... or even writing down when tests are, so people can organize...
the problem of the amount of homework is also given from the fact that the lesson-table is not compiled by hand, so you can have human days, but with a simple program, to which you give the professor-name, the hours/week, the class, and it decides the lessons starting with a random one, than doing some math.o, and schools even pay for this... 'cause there's noting given by the state, and doing it by and is difficoult (especially in big schools).
would it be too difficoult for the state to hire somesone/pay someone to write (and release gpl, so no licence-problems) a simple program in which you can also specify how much that lesson is hard for kids? of course it depends from the school, but it's kinda objective, since i dubt latin in a math-oriented school is not one of the hardest leassons...
this way the state can even pay one time for something that is actually paying lots and lots of times...
just like lots of other things they could do...
pay 5-10 people to mantain a gpl-project, so you don't have to pay it every year for every school the state has... that's lots of money saved...
anyway, sorry for my rant
Why does it seem kids get little/no homework or a TON of homework? Why not in the middle?
I would have preferred it if my teachers gave me a steady workload, not one extreme or the other.
And I like what some college professors do - give a syllabus in the beginning, sometimes with suggested problems. That would be great to teach kids how to allocate time to homework when they need to, instead of having to completely conform to the teacher's schedule every night.
From:
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life.
Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time
left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a
combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or
single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family
time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-
soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture
which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material
experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we
follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These
lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like
starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the
only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it."
Homework only makes the problem worse!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Its hard enought to get a good raid party going in World of Warcraft without eliminating a huge portion of the player base due to homework.
Global warming is a cube.
No 'Stairway to Heaven'!
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
Maybe that's a sign that you should not be teaching long division. It's useless crap that has no place in advanced mathematics, why teach it? It would be much more effective to drill in reciprocal multiplication, canceling, and reducing fractions because this, unlike long division, is actually needed for the mastery of algebra...
>Understanding how a math problem is solved is very important, but actually sitting down and solving 4 or 5 samples of increasing complexity nails it down for good.
4 or 5 samples, sure. But when I was in 4th grade learning multiplication, the standard was 20-30 samples. Per day. For the entire academic year.
4-5 math problems wouldn't be homework, it would be jot-it-down-in-a-few-minutes work. When I was in late elementary / early jr. high, my school district's standard was 1 hour of homework per subject every day. That meant 5 hours of work per night, minimum (there were 6 subjects, but P.E. didn't generate homework).
All through high school, one of my teachers kept saying, "If they did away with homework, and both shifted the start time and extended the day by an hour, we'd get so much more done." - And it's true. We could have finished the curriculum maybe a month or so earlier than expected, which would pave the way for either more advanced subjects or more time off between study periods, which equals rested and ready students.
Of course, this is the high school level I'm talking about, an age group that generally doesn't "wake up" until midday anyway. I know *I* was a zombie until about 10:30 AM. Actually, I still am...
But anyway, the only "homework" I can see as being necessary is studying, and learning to study, which is absolutely necessary when the college/university level hits. When I went through school, I don't think - or at least, I don't recall - that it was ever actually taught (or it was taught in a backwards way), and as a result, I never developed good study habits - I'm guessing my classmates, excepting those who developed their own, were in a similar boat.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
5th-graders should get all the repetition they need from the curriculum, not from homework. In the 5th grade, the purpose of homework should be to teach them to work independently from school (i.e. "homework practice").
In the Bay Area, 5th-graders and younger students are being given 3 hours of homework each night. Even a 5th-grader can tell you that 3-5 hours of home life before bedtime minus 3 hours of homework does not leave a lot of time for spending on childhood or with family.
Parents are not to blame for this obscene amount of homework. Parents demand a quality education from schools, not obscene amounts of homework. Schools fail to educate the few parents who believe more homework equates to a better education. Instead, they give into these demands, which perpetuates these ideas. Schools will, of course, claim their hands are tied and blame demanding parents - even to the face of a parent who is complaining about the amount of homework. However, school administrators and teachers are really to blame, because they are failing to do their jobs. Educate the children and - if necessary - the parents as well!
Everyone knows in elementary school (at least for the first couple years) your parents do your homework for you.
I don't think your reasons for homework are supportable.
You have a rather top down perspective on the issue. Rather than thinking of people as vessels to be filled through a process of "internalization", I think we each have to construct our own understanding of the world around us.
From my perspective, teachers who think their job is to teach the materials have missed the point. Teachers teach their pupils. That doesn't mean connecting all the dots for them, but helping them connect the dots for themselves. Giving them not the answers but the questions. And then helping them navigate by thinking their way to the answer. Different people come at understanding things from different angles. Which I suppose is why there's that saying about only really understanding something after you've taught it.
It is a cop out to simply lay the blame on the students for failing to internalize the materials due to lack of motivation or ability on their part. Either the teacher or the materials themselves have come up short if the students can't be convinced of value of learning them.
Homework itself isn't a bad thing. But requiring it is... especially as an end in and of itself. 7 hours of school each day with 2-4 hours of homework a night quickly becomes a 50+ hour per week job. Learning should be full of questions, excitement, ah ha moments and about exploring ideas. It shouldn't be a mind numblying crushing load of tedious rigermarole. If you want to provide optional take home assignments without added incentives then all is well and good. The kids who realize they need extra work or just want to reinforce the lesson will have the option of doing so.
With the exception of the last few years of high school, there is no research data which supports any positive relationship between homework and learning. Please don't argue pedagogical benefits unless you can back them up with good research. I would be very interested in these pedagogical benefits you mention, if they are supportable.
Falling back on homework for the purpose of teaching time managements skills and study habits is unsupportable. Not all kids go to college. And you aren't helping prepare kids for college if you don't let them develop their own study methods and time management skills. Because like learning itself, different people study best in different ways. People have enough interests in their life that there will never be enough time in the day. No one needs busywork to learn time management skills.
I think the current system fails most if not all of our kids, because it tries to force conformity with things any otherwise free thinking individual would have a hard time stomaching. I believe that that pressure towards conformity to doing what is expected and dealing with tedium, is in large part responsible for the apathy most of us have to school, jobs, and government.
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
For those who didn't notice, that teacher's homework page was last updated November 8, 2005. Presumably that was well before the no-homework policy was implemented. (You would expect she would have updated the page, but given the state of some of the other pages on her site, she doesn't appear to put much effort into maintaining it.)
Where are my mod points?
I'm with the "children need time for themselves" group. School shouldn't be life.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
With smiliar degree and years of experience, I would be making 60K a year as a treacher, and have summers off, and have great benefits.
There are people who work more hours, under mores stress for less money and they manage to care.
You want schoold to get better funding for children?
Exposes every penny spent on the unioun. I am not anti union, but that doesn't mean I am blinded to unions that have gone beyond there need.
Teachers need to stop buying thing with their own money. Either theer employeers pays for it, parents pay for it directly, it comes from taxes, or they go without.
Next time there is a tax for educational materials, it will pass
Which brings me to another topic.
When taxing for the educational system, break the tax down. Make it either techer compensation, materials, support staff, or adminstration.
Don't even get me started on people with 3,4,5,6 kids in a school and they can't find time in their 'busy' schedule to volunteer. Be considerate people.
Sorry, it seemed to turn into a rant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The website changed from 'contact us' to 'contact me' with a password attached.
I think someone is getting upset from having there poor grammer, spelling and punctuation pointed out to them.
how much irony is it that it is a slashdot crowd complaining about it?
Yeah, I know this post will have error no matter how many times I re-read it, but I am not an aducator and this is not a professional writing.
Keep up the good work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Less homework for the kids, thus reducing expectations of any sort of achievements in their lives. While at the same note, relieving all that horrible horrible stress teachers go through correcting homework. Heaven forbid our kids be forced to achieve something in their young lives, or for that matter be challenged to think. How frustrating, up here in Washington we face similar thinking. When I was in high school, I had homework every night. It kept me on my toes, learning and thinking. (I didn't put it to good use... ) However, watching my nephew go to school now, it seems that homework is some sort of once a month item. He's getting about a C+ or B- average GPA and doesn't have a SPOT of homework. All in class assignments in high school, and very little after school activities. Schools seem to be adopting a slackers attitude in education, only requiring seniors to get involved with the community to graduate. I'm an advocate of bringing back homework, and getting high school students involved with the community starting at freshmen age. Maybe they wont be out destroying the community if they HAVE to help the community. That and the side benefit of getting them up off their collective @$$'s and out from behind a video game. Make 'em work, and stop freeloading off a community :D
*cracks whip*
6 or 7 year olds in the USA
http://brandonbloom.name
Our (public) school didn't really have much in the way of walls. Most of the classrooms were similar to branching bronchioles around a central hub that consisted of the library or random office space depending on which floor you were on. Most of the walls for classrooms were made of metal temporary partitions with glass windows at the top. You could lean on these things and make them bend in, which meant that if you were in class when a large group of people went by, the work basically stopped for a few minutes.
We'd sometimes head into D.C. for "It's Academic" tournaments. We clashed at times with the actual, nominative "School Without Walls." I seem to remember them taunting us over the fact that they actually had permanent walls, but High School was a while ago and my memories of yesterday are already kinda fuzzy.
Now we teachers are supposed to raise test scores without homework. Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring me a set of lesson plans that will accomplish that. It reminds me of the following story that has been circulating among teachers: No Dentist Left Behind My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me, and I've got all my teeth. When I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if he'd heard about the new state program. I knew he'd think it was great. "Did you hear about the new state program to measure effectiveness of dentists with their young patients?" I said. "No," he said. He didn't seem too thrilled. "How will they do that?" "It's quite simple," I said. "They will just count the number of cavities each patient has at age 10, 14, and 18 and average that to determine a dentist's rating. Dentists will be rated as excellent, good, average, below average, and unsatisfactory. That way parents will know which are the best dentists. The plan will also encourage the less effective dentists to get better," I said. "Poor dentists who don't improve could lose their licenses to practice." "That's terrible," he said. "What? That's not a good attitude," I said. "Don't you think we should try to improve children's dental health in this state?" "Sure I do," he said, "but that's not a fair way to determine who is practicing good dentistry." "Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me." "Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that dentists don't all work with the same clientele, and that much depends on things we can't control? For example, I work in a rural area with a high percentage of patients from deprived homes, while some of my colleagues work in upper middle-class neighborhoods. Many of the parents I work with don't bring their children to see me until there is some kind of problem, and I don't get to do much preventive work. Also, many of the parents I serve let their kids eat way too much candy from an early age, unlike more educated parents who understand the relationship between sugar and decay. To top it all off, so many of my clients have well water which is untreated and has no fluoride in it. Do you have any idea how much difference early use of fluoride can make?" "It sounds like you're making excuses," I said. "I can't believe that you, my dentist, would be so defensive. After all, you do a great job, and you needn't fear a little accountability." "I am not being defensive!" he said. "My best patients are as good as anyone's, my work is as good as anyone's, but my average cavity count is going to be higher than a lot of other dentists because I chose to work where I am needed most." "Don't' get touchy," I said. "Touchy?" he said. His face had turned red, and from the way he was clenching and unclenching his jaws, I was afraid he was going to damage his teeth. "Try furious! In a system like this, I will end up being rated average, below average, or worse. The few educated patients I have who see these ratings may believe this so-called rating is an actual measure of my ability and proficiency as a dentist. They may leave me, and I'll be left with only the most needy patients. And my cavity average score will get even worse. On top of that, how will I attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to my practice if it is labeled below average?" "I think you are overreacting," I said. "'Complaining, excuse-making and stonewalling won't improve dental health'... I am quoting from a leading member of the DOC," I noted. "What's the DOC?" he asked. "It's the Dental Oversight Committee," I said, "a group made up of mostly lay persons to make sure dentistry in this state gets improved." "Spare me," he said, "I can't believe this. Reasonable people won't buy it," he said hopefully. The program sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, "How else would you measure good dentistry?" "Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes." "That's too complicated, expensive and tim
if I did math homework I would get grades in the 80s or 90s. If I didn't, I would barely pass a test or even fail.
....Don't get me started on the worthless "grading" in college these days.
Homework works for you, that's great. Homework was a waste of childhood for me. If I could do the last three math problems (always the hardest) why did I need to do the other 30? If I got an "A" on the test who cares how much or little of the homework I did? And if some child does every last bit of the homework but bombs the test, they are still not learning the material, and need a different way to learn it. We need to get rid of any attachment of social value to grades and get back to teaching the kids the skills need to get along in the world.
We are all just people.
Apparently, the school is just trying to avoid a time paradox.
Fish Pockets, here I come!
Stress is part of working in the real world. If they don't learn how to cope with stress when they are kids, what are they going to do when they try to make it in the workforce?
While I don't think that kids should be put through unnaturally highly stressful conditions with unrealistic expectations, the pressure of dealing with deadlines with serious consequences for failure is just how the real world works, and to not give children the opportunity to develop their own mechanisms for coping with the stress of being in such circumstances is setting them up for probable failure in the future.
If you don't try to get a person to stretch a person past their own comfort zone, they cannot reasonably be expected to grow. Homework accomplishes this.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It sounds like you have some good self-guidelines on assigning work. And the fact that you let the students work on it in class is a good think to IMHO. I wonder why you insist on labelling it homework?
What I don't understand is where schools, principals, teachers and what have you come off thinking they have the right to our childrens' time after school hours. There is no good research data that supports findings that correlate homework with academic benefit. In the absence of any proven academic benefits, please don't grasp at other unsubstantiated ones.
1) Practice
Fine as long as it is optional. Then you'll know the child will implicitly be agreeing that it isn't just busywork when they complete it.
2) Responsibility
Please refrain yourself from teaching our children responsibility outside school hours. "There are only 24 hours in the day" applies to kids as well as adults. 7 hours of school plus 2-4 hours of homework a night quickly becomes a 50+ hour per week job. And that takes away from the myriad of activities that our kids partake in or would be participating in if they weren't so busy with homework. I am certain that our children learn more about time management and responsibility from choosing and participating in the extracirricular activities that they are interested in, than they do from turning in homework assignments.
3) Communication
Communication is 2 way. How often do you think a parent signs homework without even looking or talking about it. More often than not I'd wager. Parent teacher conferences are a much better forum for communication. If you want to keep parents in the loop, try keeping a regular monthly schedule at a designated public venue and an open invitation for parents to drop in. Make the parents sign and return an open invitation notice if you will. But please don't assign homework for the purpose of keeping us parents in the loop.
4) Avoiding Procrastination
Please teach procrastination avoidance during school hours. You can just as easily allow small segments of in class time to complete large tasks. People study best in different ways. If what they're learning is engaging and interesting, they'll study it in their own way in their own time. My daughter by her own choice completes the majority of her weekly homework assignments on Monday night. And then works nightly on the few things she has decided need reinforcement. She has made the choice that she'd rather do as much as she can on Mondays so that Tuesday through Sunday will be relatively free.
I've read that teachers who swear off homework have credited it with helping them to become better teachers. They find that they have to work harder on their lesson plans, priorities and time management in order to get the message across.
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
Jebus! If this teacher's spelling, grammar and construction is the standard at Menlo Park, they've got some real problems. I wonder if anyone's actually checked to see if this woman's Harvard education degree is genuine....
The more important question is: will you understand if there's no drop in grades? Or will you try to explain it away?
ResidntGeek
her biggest problem is dealing with boredom at school.
That was a problem for me in school as well, however for me the boredom manifest as discipline problems because I didn't respect my teachers, because they were assigning me (in my perspective at the time) remedial work. It lead to huge amounts of anger, frustration, etc. for me, my parents, and my teachers. Life would have been much better for everyone involved if could have spent that time in class learning something. I don't mean to tell you how to raise you kids, but I know what a difference it would have made for me if I had been allowed (or even encouraged) independent study during the class times that I was "bored".
We are all just people.
I must say the fact that the PTA would even consider this is quite a surprise, and to be blunt, rather appalling. IIRC, the homework at Addison was composed primarily of 2 things:
- pages of arithmetic
- reading simple/easy books (I mean they were simple then..of course
;)
I suppose this was approx. 15 years ago...but has being in elementary school changed that much since then? Even in a forward-thinking place like Palo Alto, it is difficult for me to imagine people being confused about the importance of learning how to study.Bottom line: It's pretty sad that they're actually considering this...may God help us all. heh.
-My New Favorite Neologism: capiXtreme (aka 'extreme capitalism')
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
No, they'll claim it to be the lack of competition and push for vouchers.
Learn to love Alaska
Reservoir Penguin:
Learn how to convert to Islam and peacefully change America into an Islamic republic. http://convertingtoislam.com/
How on earth would a Muslim republic be the slightest bit different than the Christian republic we have now? (And don't argue that point; when the President says he listens to God and does what He says, it's a theocracy)
Oh right, instead of people throwing curses and insults at gays, promiscuous women, and abortion clinics, they'd be throwing stones. Good idea.
</feedingthetroll>
There are many things wrong with public elementary schools, and pushing extra homework on the students doesn't fix any of them. Here is a short list of some of the things wrong with public elementary schools:
1) Teachers are poorly educated - Here's in california all you need is an AA degree and a teaching licenses to teach gradeschool. Both can be waived if needed. Speaking as someone who went to community college, typically the people who want to become elementary school teachers are the bottom of the barrel students who are just doing it because it's easy. They always skim by easy classes with low Cs. Not all elementary school teachers are like that. Woz isn't like that. However, in all my years at community college, I have never met one who isn't.
2) Teachers are teaching subjects they don't know well. I remember my second, and fifth grade teachers complaining about how math was soo hard and doing a poor job teaching it since they don't know the subject that well. Likewise, my third and fourth grade teachers were terrible in english. elementary school past kindergarden should taught like highschool and college where teachers who are strong in one subject should exclusively teach that.
3) Teachers ARE giving up on kids who struggle. If a first grader is struggling to add two numbers, it is no ones fault other than the teachers that he doesn't understand. I've struggled with grammar my entire life. The only reason why i've had so much trouble is because my elementary school teachers taught grammar by saying "say it to your self a couple times if it sounds wrong then fix it." Clearly method only works if your parents speak perfect english, coming from a lower class farm family, my parents have speak terrible English. However, my teachers preferred to make an example of how stupid i was rather than actually teach me anything. I even had a teacher tell my parents they needed to realize that I was intended to pump gas my entire life.
Homework is a bandaid on these problems. If a teacher can't teach her students, the majority of the time she can pass the task to the parent by giving them homework. That's the only reason why assigning more homework has helped at all. However, using this method the poor uneducated people will have uneducated kids. This is a major failure in our education system.
Homework shouldn't be assigned in elementary school to begin with because students are given 9 grades to learn the basic foundation of what they're going to learn in highschool/college. Six hours a day 5 days a week is more than enough time to learn these things in class. Homework only hinders them from developing much needed social skills, there personality, and discovering what their passions in life are. However, post middle school things become a bit different because subjects are covered more indepth and homework should be introduced and approached differently.
The best approach i've seen to homework is at my community college. My math teachers typically assigned suggested homework. They got away with assigning 20-30 problems a night by suggesting you should only try a few problems and if you're having trouble with certain problems you should do more in those areas. It leaves the task on the student. Students who want to learn will obviously try and students who don't care aren't doing the homework anyways.
The approach my university uses is that they asign very few problems a week (typically 5 at most 15). I however don't ike this approach because it limits the students to doing just the problem set. A lot of students need more than just 5 problems to learn the topic indepth, and they deserve having the teachers giving them a sufficient amount of problems to learn.
I would like to give my gpas and the schools I went/going to, to further justify my view....
2.8-3.5 - fairfax elementary - an extremely poor school in east bakersfield
2.1-2.5 - fruitvale school district - one of the richest schools most distinguish elementary school district in bakersfield
1.96 - c
I understand the complaint. My son is sometimes given relatively complex homework that needs a lot of parental tutoring in order to perform. The schools are appearently trying to make parents into teachers/tutors so that test scores go up without the school having to work harder. Homework should be practice of ideas already learned in class, not where new concepts out-of-the-blue are presented. I can answer occasional questions, but teaching them novel concepts and spelling rules is not my strong point and should be the teacher's job because they should know how to relate to young brains.
Table-ized A.I.
Our students are need homeworkification skills so that they can perform their duties to America and society and help fight evil-doers. Skillifying them makes them understand things that.....things that need understading. We should move forward with more homework so that we don't move backward. - George W. Spoof
Table-ized A.I.
I can't ago along with that. Cell phones, crackberries, the Internet, etc., tend to have people putting in more work time in what used to down time. I don't them bookmarked, but I've read a couple of news articles about the amount of vacation time actually taken is seeing something of a decline.
So productivity is up, which is what allows pay raises--companies can pay more without having to raise their prices. But pay *isn't* going up (unless you are a CEO currently making 450 times the average worker's compensation) in relation to the cost of medical care (and corporations are shrinking their support for that), etc.
The squeeze on the middle class is real.
What you're advocating is simply exposing elementary children to higher pressures, in the hope that it will somehow prepare them instead of damaging them. I don't have the background to know if any damage would actually be done, but I'd advocate fixing the problems with a system that's rapidly getting out of control, and letting be children, rather then risk it.
One advantage of having an advanced society: a higher quality of life across all age brackets. To my mind, if we fail in that, we're rolling our society back. Where would that end? I'm sure there are many coporations that would happily roll things back to the working conditions of the early Industrial Revolution. Six day work week the standard, small children in dangerous textile mills, etc.
Again, it's past time to fix problems, not just attempt to prepare our elementary school children for The Sweatshop of the Future. Doing less is either admitting that our system is already irretrievably fscked up (in which case you probably need to be thinking in terms of a revolution) or that you simply don't care enough to try to fix things (which doesn't say anything good about how you discharge your responsibilities as a parent).
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Since you're the only one that disagreed with me that showed any ability to debate at all, I'll respond to you.
There's 2 types of homework: Busywork, and learning reinforcement. (Despite the other response that says learning can't be reinforced, this not true. If you do something over and over, you remember it easier.)
For young students, how much is there really to reinforce? It's pretty much all just memorization, and you either memorize it or you don't. I suspect the 'homework' for these students was busywork, and not good for them, hence the negative relationship.
For older students, there's more thought and less memorization involved. Essays, word-problems, calculations, etc. This is a behavior that is being learned, and not just memorization.
The final thing to realize is that not all homework is equal. Even if the teacher means well and wants to reinforce the day's lesson, they might assign the 'odd problems' (you know, the ones that have the answers in the back) so that the student can 'check their own work.' I think I was the only kid in the school that didn't cheat on that. (Mainly because it was even more boring than doing the problems.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
100% grade A bullshit.
I think the whole academic accreditation process is screwy. Instead of grades and final exams, there should be prerequisite exams at the beginning of each semester. They are pass/fail. If you pass you go on, fail and you repeat. There would be no homework (though teachers could suggest outside readings/projects that would enhance knowledge of the subject), but most students would likely have to do some work outside school hours if they hoped to understand the subject and pass the prereq exams.
I call this an 'assumed competence' model, since no one graduates without moving through, and there's no movement through without passing the prereqs. I've been thinking of it in relation to post secondary, but it could work in public school as well. If Johnny is still in grade 9 by age 17 he'll either drop out or get serious.
Another advantage of the prereq exam is that knowledge must be retained over semester break, no allowing it to simply evaporate off one's head over summer vacation. This would contribute, I think, to greater life long retention of knowledge. Perhaps I wasn't the best of students, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one for which end of semester was a pattern of cram, cram, cram, exam, party, forget.
Loose lips lose spit.
I went to San Rafael High ('87) and while it wasn't the worst education I could imagine, it certainly left a lot to be desired -- my councellor sucked, and in the end I got far less out of high school than I did the 3 years of private school I had before that.
Actually, I dropped-out in my final semester because my english teacher failed me and I didn't want to do summer-school....
twenty years later I decided to go to college and hit the 98th percentile on my english scores for the entrance exam.... Not that I'm holding a grudge or anything, but I think the evidence shows that Mrs. McLellan (I think that was her name) was a pompous horses-ass for failing me. (okay, so I'm not the best speller, but my comprehension, vocabulary, and grammer skills are well above average).
(I also got failed by my algebra teacher -- I just finished an "upgrading course" to refresh my high-school math, and got an A+ doing 2 years of high-school math in 6 weeks.)
The teachers were (in general) actually too stuck on homework -- I was able to absorb the material without doing the homework, but for some teachers... well, they didn't like me skipping the homework, so they failed me. C'est la vie -- I hated high school, but now I'm enjoying going back to "finish" my education.
Back then, the graduation requirements included eight semesters of physical education. I looked at their current requirements and the curriculum has only gotten worse since I attended.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
...the pressure of dealing with deadlines with serious consequences for failure is just how the real world works...
Only if they choose to put themselves in that situation. I managed to avoid it with some thought and planning and I don't live in a box. I guess I should thank school though for teaching me how much I hate stress.
"Stress is part of working in the real world."
Ever think the "real world" is wrong? i.e. the idealogy, how society is structured? Families no longer own land, their own food or generate their own electricity, the byproduct of this is living at the whims of capital markets which in many circumstances are worse conditions then societies that existed 100's and 1000's of years ago.
I'm glad to see the pendulum swinging back towards sanity. When I was in high school, it was going in the opposite direction. All of our classes started handing out "summer packets"-- a fairly large amount of homework the student was required to complete during the summer. If the student did not complete the homework to a satisfactory level, they'd be kicked out of the class. (In practice, loud enough parents could negate the whole thing.)
It's heartening to see that educational thinking is moving at least a little bit away from "idle hands are the devil's workshop" as a primary tenet.
He's pointing out what he sees as a flaw in the study. I disagree with his opinion, but he hasn't made the particular mistake you're accusing him of.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
*"Homework" includes lab reports and studying. Assigned problems dealt with concepts that students were expected to know for exams, but weren't handed in for marking after first year.
"Common knowledge" also says that you can "catch a chill" and become sick from it, and other amazing pieces of disinformation.
:)"
"And you just forgot to link to a valid scientific study showing this, right?
Sure can...read anything by Professor Seymour Papert, starting out with his book "Mindstorms". He shows how playful learning works much better than "practice", or rote learning.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
It doesn't matter if the real world is wrong or not. It's still how it is.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm not advocating subjecting children to pressures beyond what they can handle at the time, but as I said, if you don't keep getting pushed a bit outside of your comfort zone, you cannot ever really grow beyond where you already are. Homework does that. And it does it in a controlled environment where generally the only consequence to any single failure is a single failed assignment (which itself may have other consequences, but in an academic system the student is at least given ample opportunity to obtain assistance in understanding what they don't already know, which unfortunately doesn't always happen in the "real world"). Unexpected high levels of stress are unhealthy, of course, but moderate levels of stress do help us to mature. Practicing coping with moderate levels of stress while young will aid a person in being able to cope with larger amounts of stress that will inevitably come their way when they assume ever larger amounts of responsibility for themselves and others in their charge or care.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
*In 9th grade geometry, they basically made me repeat the math I learned in 4th grade.*
In America, most kids don't get to geometry until TENTH GRADE! It is absolutely learnable six years earlier. Most kids should be at calculus by 10th grade. The American math curriculum is a punch line, treading water from 3rd grade until high school when, for some, a modicum of teaching resumes. A lot of essential math is NEVER taught: logic? non-Euclidean geometry? probability and statistics? linear algebra? These are basic building blocks of rational thought.
But if you're qualified in math, why on Earth would you pursue a career as a math teacher? Making a quarter what you would in the private sector? Enduring unrelenting intellectual abuse from a school administration? And teaching a curriculum six years too late to students who have had every iota of motivation and curiosity programmed out of them?
No Child Left Behind = No Child Learns Anything
-- "The only thing that is ever new in the world is the history you do not know." -- Harry Truman
I coulda sworn I was the only one in the theater.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Having taught for a bit in Korea, I wouldn't wish their academic life on any child. The kids spend so much time studying that they really do nothing else. There is no way a fifth grader should be in extra tutoring academies until 9 at night, then have to go home and do homework. They are often stressed always tired, and most seem to have lost the ability to creatively apply anything they have learned. As far as North America goes it seems to be the exact opposite. When I went through school, partially in the US partially in Canada, I never really had to try. I rarely did homework and when I did I did an extremely half assed job, and I always did well enough on the tests to get a good grade in my classes. University was initially a bit of a shock because I really didn't have to learn any good student tactics to do well in high school. I did adjust eventually, but it involved actually doing some work. I won't even go into the extreme over coddling of kids that seems to be taking place these days. I do think however different people progress at different paces, and to think that geometry, which many students could learn easily in fourth grade, should be taught in grade four I think is a bit of an overstatement. Ideally, I think it should be somewhere between the two extremes, preferably with some emphasis on challenging the kids who need to be challenged and helping those who need it. Trouble is it's not just the school systems it's the entire society, being smart is not cool, children watching TV for hours a day is accepted and the norm. Parents often do not take their responsibilities seriously enough. If you have kids, and don't have time to spend with them on their homework, you are probably a very bad parent. I know economics does make this impractical for some, but for many the choice is between buying shit and making more money to buy shit, and spending time with kids.
What University of Missouri study? I'd like to read it. Got a url?
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
I will continue to disagree with your assertion that "learning" (in its most general sense, as it's being used) is a reinforce-able, behavioristic ability. Rote memorization is -- and I would argue it is a stretch to consider that "learning" at least in any deep-thinking sense of the term -- reinforce-able. Essay writing is not a behavior. 3 times 3 is a constant. Writing an essay is not. Analogically, free throw shooting is reinforce-able; it is constant. Running a motion offense (continual on and off the ball screening) is not constant or consistent; coaches have players practice the motion offense, not so they memorize the way the defense reacts, but to prepare them for a game situation. The free throw line never moves, just like the answer to 3 times 3 never changes. The motion offense is always reacting to a defense, the same way a student reacts to the subject matter when writing an essay. When practicing free throws, one is reinforcing muscle memory: a behavior. When practicing the motion offense, one is learning to react to an opposing force.
:)), it can't reinforce learning that hasn't taken place.
Now, to look at the idea of reinforcing behaviors -- in particular, math skills. If a student does not understand a math formula, and is assigned 20 problems using that formula for homework, I see no benefits coming from that homework. If a student doesn't understand how to do the problems, I can think of a few things that will happen that night. They may: a) teach themselves to get the correct answer without using the formula, thereby stunting their future learning, b) not do the problems, c) swear off math (or the particular teacher) all together. What if the student seeks guidance from a parent on math problems they don't understand? Well, do we want teachers teaching our students or parents? After all, aren't we trusting that the teachers know "how to teach" -- and aren't they the ones who are certified to do so? Parents are good at getting answers, they (most, obviously) are not trained to teach the steps and use the formulas involved (in this example.)
The problem I am pointing out is that "homework" can only reinforce "learning" (notice the quotes
I agree with you that there are two types of homework; I just don't agree on your two types. The way I see it, busy work is "learning reinforcement." The kind of homework I will be assigning is what I would consider "discovery homework." As in, "Today we discussed ______. Tonight, find an example of ______ in the newspaper, on the internet, or in a discussion with your parents." Meaning: think, apply.
Good teachers (as much as I hate make rules for good teachers) design lessons that set aside time for both "guided practice" and "independent practice." If a student shows a lack of understanding of a concept during either of these two, the worst course of action I can think of would be to send that student home to practice his or her misunderstanding. If a student shows understanding, who am I -- who are we -- to say, "Good job, you've got it! Now take an hour out of your afternoon to keep doing it."
This is the reason kids have more stress: "Who was kicked off American Idol last night?", "Why can't you program the VCR, learn programming, load up music on the ipod and youtube?", "Kids are natural experts at that computer thing why aren't you?", "Who is the lead singer in that new group?"
Children spend their time learning what they "think" they should be learning to fit in their peer group.
The expectations for what the children should be learning is being set by the American media, the peer group and not the parents.
Some teachers give homework to cover their ass. "I gave them homework they didn't do all of it and that is why they failed. It didn't have anything to do with me or my teaching style"
By busy-work, I mean work that was given JUST to have given homework, not given for a specific reason. Maybe you've never had a teacher like that. If so, you're very blessed. Your kinds would all fall under the good homework in my categories.
As for the writing essays not being learning re-inforcement... Have you written many essays? Were you good at it? I'm betting you don't like them because you never figured out the technique. (Most people don't.)
I become good at essays once I realized that there was a simple pattern. The teachers even tell you about it! 5-3-5. 5 paragraphs, 3 points, 5 sentences each. If you practice this pattern enough, you can write an essay about anything and get an A on the paper. It's amazingly stupid. By the time I got to college, it was nothing. So that writing class in college that everyone hates, I didn't care. I did most of my essays in-class. This was a trick that was usually reserved for those 'test' essays where the teacher sets aside the entire class just for that test. Most people don't finish on time. I have never failed to finish one of those. I usually have enough time to re-write the entire thing again and iron it out.
That's learned.
Links in case anyone wonders about it:
http://essayinfo.com/essays/5-paragraph_essay.php
http://www.englishdiscourse.org/5.paragraph.essay. format.html
I agree that all bets are off for bad teachers. That's a given. But a disagree about not sending a kid home to do it for another hour, after he/she understands it. Understand is the first step, not the last. Practice needs to be applied to have it fully sink in. Some kids can get that amount of practice in-class from the examples and be done. Most cannot, and have to go home and work at it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
While I agree that burying elementary school kids in homework is bad, they must be given some homework, maybe not every day, but assignments which are to be done in 3-4 days or a week. It prepares them for their higher classes.
Anyway most elementary school kids I've seen are glued to the computer or TV the whole time they're not in school. I hardly see any of these kids play these days. A little homework is better than being a couch potato.
Eliminate homework, and we're going to see a lot more dumb kids around.
homework is what I found most annoying in school days, even worse than tests. nobody should not bring work home.
hmmm... dumb...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Wow, so most of you think that six hours of homework a night is a good thing? Let me ask you something, how does that sound in addition to a few hours of sports and "Extracurriculars" (which, God willing, are things you might actually enjoy)? The simple fact of the matter is that in schools (or at least more competitive schools), there are simply too many things that are considered necessities nowadays. First of all, you have school from 8:00 to 2:00/3:00 so thats 6-7 hours right there. Now add two hours of sports an hour for other stuff (the college recommended clubs and other sh*t) and four - six hours of homework. That is (for those of you who can't do basic math ;-) 13 to 16 hours of scheduled activities a day. That leaves 8 to 11 hours to eat two meals, find a little recreational time, and sleep (and I might add that 9 hours or more of sleep is recommended for the average teen, notice thats not possible for some schedules). Now, I don't know how others feel about this, but to me, you cannot truly learn unless there is some creativity involved in what you are doing. Part of creativity involves a lack of structure and some spontaneity. Now as a senior in high school, let me assure you that life is anything but spontaneous and there is little if any creativity in the average high school class. High schools (along with most levels of schooling) are set up on an industrial model that lacks the necessary emphasis on original thoughts and creativity. Homework IMHO is completely superfluous. I haven't done much homework in years and I still get mostly As (although I do get yelled at a lot for not "doing my work". Why should I if I don't need to? And don't give me the discipline/because you were told to crap, how many of you would be happy if your boss made you go home and do something completely pointless during your time? And you would be getting paid for that, students don't have that luxury. Furthermore homework almost always involves memorizing and regurgitating someone else's thoughts, someone else's opinion, there is no room for thought, heck, some teachers even discourage original thinking (its too hard to grade, poor dears). Its the kind of environment where "straight A+" students study their books every single night so that when they get asked what the difference between two obscure and random things is, they know the answer even if they can't actually comprehend the difference and they couldn't apply it for their lives. The problem in short is that schools have adopted a quantity over quality approach. Homework for the most part is just busywork and a waste of time. This inefficiency coupled with insane amounts of competition over college has created (in competitive schools at least) a very unhealthy atmosphere. Its time that school becomes less of a sweatshop and more of a forum for learning (like it supposedly is, lmao... sure, whatever).
Why? Too many students come to college with calculus credits on their transcript, but almost no understanding of basic algebra, let alone calculus. I don't see the point in rushing through these subjects.
Non-Euclidean geometries are essential for rational thought? In what world? Hell, most professional mathematicians don't really need to know much about non-Euclidean geometries.
I agree that students should study probability and statistics, as well as basic logic.
I vividly remember, in the 4th and 5th grade, needing to carry a notepad with me, JUST TO RECORD MY HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS. Each teacher gave about 45 minutes of homework, which you multiply times 6.
It was absurd, and my father (an ex-Marine with a doctorate in law) told me "just don't do it" and then when my grades sucked (I aced the tests, but obviously, flubbed the homework) would intimidate the teachers and principals into passing me to the next grade.
I never was upset over doing project-like homework: writing essays, book reports, etc. What I hates was page after page of "excercises" which most any mindless idiot could do, and never really "taught" anything (because how often did the teacher explain your mistake instead of just handing you a graded sheet of paper?).
I believe that we are not doing children any favors by building in the idea that taking work home is a good thing.
If learning was machine code,then children were practicing a single algorithm.
So basically your approach makes children efficient computers."Indoctrination"
Real learning would make them efficient programmers."Active learning"
Children don't need stress to grow, and in fact stress at an early age only teaches them to be stressed, not how to handle it.
There are plenty of ways to grow that don't envolve stress. The arts spring to mind as do the sciences...hmm well that about covers it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
not having a structred life is.
This is why I want to see people strive to return to the single working parent days.
It's better for children.
It's better for communities.
It's better for the economy.
No, I don't think it matters which gender stays home.
People concern about money, but all that is happened is the price of everything goes up to meet income and people end up in the same financial situation, except it's now harder because no one has time to take care of the thing in their life
Learn to live unter your means is the key here.
As people shift back to single income, the demand for workers goes up, as will the income for the person working.
How does this relate to the article? Maby families don't seem to have the time to to well take time. People are so god damn busy many kids end up taking care of them selves after school and have NO opportunity to learn good habits.
Yes, I practice what I preach. We do without a lot of 'things' but there are very few people who do as much as we do with our kids. Actually, I don't feel we do, do much but it seems to amaze people that I have time to have a picnic in the park and the weekends, or sit down an review their homework. I'm proud to say my kids have time to paint before school.
The only TV we have is videos. Not sat, or cable. Which, quite frankly, is killing me not to have. The amount of free time we have by not watching TV is amazing.
sorry, anyways kids will learn habits, wether or not they are good habits depends on who they are learning them from, you or some jackass celeberty.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
She has a degree in reading.. from Harvard.
Funny.
(yes, I know it's an education degree, etc, etc but it's still funny)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Global warming is a cube.
There two types of cops,good cops and bad cops.If learning reinforcement is so effective,why don't build a machine who does it for you? Since you building a machine,it will save you alot of time.
"what are they going to do when they try to make it in the workforce?"
They end with clinical depression.
Some of us cannot handle stressful situations beyond our control. Some of us are talented in other areas.
Like the AC said "100% bullshit".
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I don't think homework is the issue at all.
It's the school day being far too short, why in the hell are we sending kids home at 3pm??? It would make a lot more sense to have them kept on for a full working day to get through the years of education faster and out into the real world. This would give them time to actually finish the school work at school where they can be properly supervised.
Other issues:
* uniforms are definately needed, wtf is with having kids with no sense of structure at all to school, do you really think a kid takes school seriously while dressed like a little g-thug??
* discipline, why do we have teachers getting stabbed / shot in places? Kids need to be taught respect for authority and this is coming from a trouble maker growing up!
You have to get kids to be able to focus on the material for them to learn and you need an environment thats safe for both student and teacher. If you reduce things down to everyone in uniforms and easy color coding of problematic / special students for easier identification you can make the problem a whole lot simpler. If this sounds a lot like prison to you, well then you're probably right and thats a good thing as a lot of these kids are going to end up there anyways if they can't curb half the f'd up shit that goes on these days.
I guess everything really IS known to the state of California to cause cancer...
Not everyone learns the same way.
Your kids learn through repetition, so they're in a great program. Good for them.
Some people get bored, though. And some people don't like doing busywork. When I was in 7th grade, I did Algebra I and II in one year. That would not have been possible if I did so many practice problems. In fact, at that age, I would not have done the homework at all if I didn't see the point.
Kumon sounds like it would have been a great program to make me both despise and never understand mathematics at all.
It's important to get kids into programs that teach how they learn most effectively.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Did I help you put two and two together?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Making a quarter what you would in the private sector?
I wouldn't really call it the private sector.
It's more like the black market.
Then there is the NSA.
6 or 7 year olds in the USA
Or sometimes 5. We use grade levels because age may vary and school years have specific start and end dates, so using age as a strict discriminator is impractical. And of course students may skip or fail grades (or at least that's the theory, these days we aren't allowed to leave kids behind, we just have to fudge the numbers and advance them regardless of performance, and the low performers know this).
The letter that the school translated in Spanish, must have been given to a second grader to translate. If this letter is what they gave the students to take home, it sure is confusing to figure out what Menlo Park Elementary is expecting from their students. The school needs to hire a good translator instead of inventing words that do not exist or showing just plain ignorance when writing.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Do you read your own postings?
First:
"My point was that they were required to [do drill as homework] but DID NOT."
Then:
"Adequate drill cannot be achieved in class, because all the time is spent trying to explain stuff to uninterested children. It can however be achieved by giving them homework."
You see the self-contradiction, I hope.
-- Cerebus
At the high school I attend, the actual stated homework standard is three hours per night, or half an hour per class (thus, three and a half hours if one takes an elective beyond six required solid courses). I spend seven hours in school, but if you factor in the transportation to and from, it comes to nine hours devoted to school and school activities.
Even with the more conservative number, that's 5/12, or almost half the day, spent on schoolwork.
On top of that, one still has to feed the soul as well as the brain. Factoring in a reasonable couple hours of downtime, plus all the other things associated with "not-school" (such as eating, bathing, etc.), I'm quickly reduced to about five hours of sleep a night. At the same time, within a few months of starting school I have to hold off the (inevitable) symptoms of burnout.
Clearly, the schedule set by my school isn't balanced at all. Although it may like to believe otherwise, there are some things better and more important than schoolwork, schoolwork, and more schoolwork. While I recite a series of concepts, I miss out on exploring interesting things on my own and learning how to APPLY knowledge.
Some may find academics truly interesting enough to pursue all the time. However, most of us have other hobbies, and too much of ANY thing, good or bad, is harmful.
After another 2-1/4 years at this school, the first independent action that comes to my mind is a week of solid sleep.
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
Are you aware that, contrary to popular brainwash^W belief, not everybody is equal? Some student DO their homework, some other DO NOT.
There, no self-contradiction.
Global warming is a cube.
As a junior in high school, I believe I can speak some on this matter. I used to do homework when I was in ninth grade, but when I got into my 10th year, I found myself doing less and less. Not doing homework affected my grades, not because I didn't know the material, but because homework is a large percentage of the grade I receive. Just to show you why homework should not be required for everyone, I received eighteen 'F' grades in my English class this semester, all from homework assignments. My grade for the semester was a 'C'. I clearly knew the material, seeing as 105 was my average for the assignments I actually did. My grade should not have to suffer because of homework.
The reason that I don't do my homework is not laziness, its something else. I found myself sleeping the entire day away as soon as I arrived home from school, with no time for work or even play. This came to be a serious problem, as I would not even leave the house most days because I would sleep for 16 hours a day. I found myself without the energy to stay awake, let alone complete some arbitrary work. After the doctors diagnosed me with mononucleosis, I realized why I couldn't do homework. If homework helps people to receive better grades, thats fine. It is not fine, however, that my grade should have to suffer because of an illness which does not allow me to complete my work. My teachers tell me, that I would receive an 'A' in most of my glasses if I only did the homework. Not because it helps me to understand the work, but because it's a significant part of my grade.
Homework should be optional, not a requirement.