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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]."
I don't know about India, but I do know about Japan. Kids study their nuts off to learn exactly what they need to pass university entrance exams, which are really tough. The university courses that follow are, with a VERY few exceptions, exercises in mediocrity with degrees that are trivially easy to do well in. No wonder there are two generations of extremely frustrated people, birth rate dropping, marriage age rocketing, the part time labor sector expanding rapidly. Most people below 30 know they've had a bad deal. Those above were already employed when job-for-life-in-exchange-for-industrial-servitude was ripped away from them. So Japan's not a good comparison, it's in its own little education and workforce hell right now.
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? Because homework is not educational. The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn is a great read on this subject. Be prepared to have your assumptions challenged.
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.
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?
take their kids and shove them up their ass.
1. Children don't come out of the ass.
2. Life has a strict "no returns" policy.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
12th grade = 17-18 years old 11th = 16-17 10th = 15-16 9th = 14-15 8th = 13-14 7th = 12-13 6th = 11-12 5th = 10-11 4th = 9-10 3rd = 8-9 2nd = 7-8 1st = 6-7
with formatting...
12th grade = 17-18 years old
11th = 16-17
10th = 15-16
9th = 14-15
8th = 13-14
7th = 12-13
6th = 11-12
5th = 10-11
4th = 9-10
3rd = 8-9
2nd = 7-8
1st = 6-7
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'
Spoken like a true leftist high-school idiot who has never learned from their homework.
When you go to college, if you study (for example) Computer Science, and if your school is any good at all, you will have assignments requiring you to write programs which use particular data structures and which perform certain algorithms to work with them. You will probably learn the theory in class, but until you actually write the code, you will not truly understand the complexity involved. Therein lies the value of homework in CS.
The same is true of all other subjects: you won't grok history very well without reading quite a few books, which, during such reading, it is a waste of the professor's time to sit in class with you. You are unlikely to understand many mathematical concepts well until you practice them - outside the classroom, having beaten your head against a wall until you either understand them, or have asked the teacher after exhausting all other solutions you've developed. You will not understand music well without practicing it; you will not be an expert martial artist unless you practice your techniques, repeatedly; you cannot be an expert at dating without meeting many, many people who interest you; you are unlikely to be an excellent author without writing many pages of text, probably on several subjects (hence all the essays - more homework - which teachers have us write); and so on.
All things, if one is to be *good* at them, require practice -- and homework is often just that: practice.
A brief perusal of the description of the book and comments about it on Amazon suggests to me that the author has never worked in the real world, for the real world contains much tedious, uninteresting busywork. If children are not taught to accept that hard reality as children, when shall they learn it?
The author no doubt argues that homework hurts childrens' self-esteem. So what? Those who are successful and happy are those who manage to deal with the fact that life often sucks -- they accept this fact, and make the best of it, by getting a job they like, meeting friends and (boy|girl)friends they are interested in, by making enough money to satisfy the bulk of their wants, and by pursuing their dreams within the reality of limited possibilities with which we all must cope. They are the winners in life. Losers go home and whine about how much their life sucks, ask other people to bail them out of their own problems, and in general do nothing to further their own lot in life.
At some age, children must learn that the world is not, in fact, a happy, fun, intelligent, or fulfilling place by default -- *THEY* individually, are responsible for making their lives happy, fun, intelligent, and fulfilling. It can be done, if they are willing to invest the time, intelligence, and discipline into making it so. When shall they learn this lesson: when facing it head-on upon graduating high school? Or prior?
I've had hours per night of homework since I was in third grade. It is partly responsible for making me ultimately a happy (life often sucks, yes, but again, it is possible to ignore the undesirable aspects to a large degree, if one has the discipline, and it is possible to do something about them, given sufficient education, time-management skill, and ability to interact socially), well-educated, disciplined man.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Its not so much that the schools need the 8 hours to socialize the kids, it's where the kids would go if they weren't in school. Many families depend on school to keep the kids for this long, if not longer with early-care and after-care.
We can't have packs of seven year olds rampaging through the hillsides, after all.
Was this public school?
Nope.
Have you read my journal today?