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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 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?
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."
How about we wipe their tushies and tell them they won't have to work hard to make something of themselves?
Yes I agree, but remember, these are kids, they also have a childhood to live. Performance and the rage to be the first in everything should be something they gradually come to expect as they age, otherwise you get kids that are stressed out, mis-adjusted and nerdy.
What I mean is, there's a balance to find between too much homework, with parents on their kids' back all day long, and lazy kids who don't do jack squat. But at any rate, kids shouldn't be expected to work they butts off like adults do.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
Your comment has a strong tinge of "I had to do it so they should have to do it."
But you ignore a key statement of the article:
"A University of Missouri study found high school students benefit tremendously from homework. In middle school, the results were not as strong, but homework was still found to be beneficial. But on the elementary school level, the same study found homework had no effect on students."
What is your rebuttal? And are you comparing yourself in highschool to kids in elementary?
Personally, I do think life is getting awfully institutionalized. And remember, we're not just talking about what's ideal, but what the state should force upon our kids. School is mandatory.
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...
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
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 agree that some form of elitism is good, i.e. bright kids and kids who perform better deserve to get more rewards and get to better colleges than others. On the other hand, if elitism is the only thing driving the school system, then you end up with anxious parents who push their kids too hard and generally end up making their lives a misery.
You say your parents and teachers encouraged you to try your hardest, and it gave you a willingness to be better. That's great, and ideally that's what should happen. My parents on the other hand pushed me so hard I just didn't do anything outside schoolwork. If I didn't get the best grades, I was punished, "good" grades didn't exist for them, just "best" grades. I can remember those moments vividly, even today as an adult. How did that help me? it didn't, it just ruined most of my childhood.
The other thing is, when parents drive their kids into a success death march, they end up missing totally what the kids might or might not be good at. I for example did advanced studies in math, physics and CS. I hated every minute of it (apart CS) but I completed the studies because my parents would be "so disappointed considering my abilities" (so they said). In reality, I wanted to work with my hands, and I realized only very late in life that that's what I really wanted. Not "could do", but "wanted to do". The end result is, today I'm a metalworker because *I* chose to.
The challenge for parents is to make their kids understand that they have a duty to perform well at school, while at the same time cutting them enough slack to let them be happy during their childhood and find their own way, and realize that a good student and happy student in "lowly" studies like woodworking or metalworking is better than a bad or stressed out student in Harvard or MIT.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Oh yeah, let's get rid of homework because the poor kiddies are stressed out.
Hell yes. This article isn't talking about high school, or even junior high school, it's talking about freaking elementary school. When you're 8 years old you damn well shouldn't have to be stressed out every day, and only a sociopath would think otherwise. These are not the ages to start teaching kids about the "real world". They can stress out for the next 70 years of their life, why can't we let them be a kid for just a few years?
By assigning units to the number 15, you stifle the individuals self-determination and possible hurt the individuals self worth, which is not the goal of the San Francisco area schools. Students attending San Francisco area schools should not have standards in place that can make students feel that they are unsuccessful. To that end, requiring specific units such as sentences, words, minutes, letters, seconds, etc., can only hurt the self-esteem of those who cannot achieve the 15 unit minimum.
First, I am not a proponent of unneeded homework. However, in all seriousness, I lost all respect for the San Francisco Bay area schools in the mid-nineties. At one point, there were complaints that the schools had no standards for graduation. The schools came up with standards such as "Graduates shall be able to solve problems through compromise", without any hard, measurable standards, such as being able to read, write, add, or recite any history. I remember thinking "Wow, if one kid thinks 2+2=4 and one thinks that 2+2=6, do they compromise and select 5 as the solution?" Around the same time, the teachers across the Bay were trying to get Ebonics recognized as a language so that more teachers could collect an extra 10% salary for being bilingual. And a professor at Berkley was seen on the news protesting against a bill for removal of minority hiring preferences, saying that she would not have "gotten the job" if it wasn't for those preferences. I was happy that I was moving soon, so my newborn daughter wouldn't be raised in that educational environment.
Hopefully, those educated in the Bay Area can tell me that I just heard all of the bad press, and the schools are much better than I believe.
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!
This makes me think of Aristotle's philosophy of virtue. Vices are extremes; virtues are the middle way between them. Thus the opposite of cowardice isn't courage, it's rashness. Courage is the midpoint between cowardice and rashness.
This applies to the issue of drills. It is true that drills help, but only up to a point. Focus on more "big picture" kinds of work helps -- to a point.
I once heard this piece of advice from an experienced coach. If you want an athlete to reach his potential, you have to find the balance between repetition and stimulation. Ideally, working on basic skills and working on new skills reinforce each other. The basic skills provide the vocabulary in which new skills are described and acquired. The new skills inspire a sharper, more purposeful focus on basic drilling. This came back when I heard Nadia Comaneci interviewed for one of those "where are they now" articles. If you remember, she was the first Olympic gymast to get a perfect score in competition. The journalist asked, "How do you go about getting a perfect score?" Comaneci answer that you did it by working on a routine that is difficult and risky. Do a routine that is too easy, and your mind wanders and you make mistakes in little things.
That's what works for athletes, and a student is simply a mental athlete.
Watching my kids do school, I am struck by how much more project oriented work they do than I did in the 60s, which was very drill oriented. There is much more focus on projects and collaboration, which is a overall good thing. But this can be taken to an extreme, where it becomes a vice. Sometimes teachers make an attempt to replace drills with more "fun" projects, and fail. They end up assigning pointless work, which is actually more dull than doing a moderate list of drills and are flabbergasted when the students don't find them "fun".
The problem of homework should not separated from the issue of the quality of homework.
If a student was in the right zone, then a marginal increase of quality homework tends to produce a reasonably corresponding benefit. If the homework is bad, then doing more of it only wastes more time. The significance of this is what the time would have been used for. If the time would have been used for watching television, then there's not much loss. But kids education does not begin and end with school work. The other things they do have educational value, even its just hanging out with friends.
My fifth grade daughter is an avid reader during vacations. But her teachers are very bad at budgeting their homework time. She often has three or more hours of homework a night, which means she doesn't get to read much, or do her other hobby which is making jewelry. This year we cut out music lessons and sports to make room for homework. One night I caught her up at 10:30, working on homework. She was coloring an extremely elaborate drawing of a scene from a book which had been assigned by her reading teacher. I told her thta she probably didn't have to color it, and she assured be she had to. I suggested she didn't have to draw every single individual rock in the fireplace, and she told me that if she didn't show sufficient effort, her teacher would keep her in from recess until she had done it over again, and recess was the only time she got to do anything with her friends -- because they have so much homework.
Now this drawing wasn't assigned by the art teacher. It was assigned by the reading teacher. Why is the reading teacher assigning art? Because it's easy for her to grade (which seems to be a huge factor in a lot of homework). Allegedly this is supposed to be "fun" for students, although it takes two of my daughter's favorite things in the world -- reading and drawing -- and turns them into pointless drudgery.
So finally I put my foot down: I got a conference with the teacher and told her that I was capping homework at 90 minutes a night, and that if there were ever
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