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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]."
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!
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
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?
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.
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
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
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?
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...
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.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
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."
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
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 believe the teacher was trying to spell "expectorations", as it is important to know how to spit properly.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I no did homework four school and me smart today
Will program for karma.
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?
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
Thems fightin' words! Now, if you had mentioned Digg, I'd have agreed. Digg is populated by the very kids who aren't doing homework, don't want to, and wouldn't recognize a brain cell if it bit them. At least on Slashdot, even the morons can tell a packet from a rectum. Er, I hope. Otherwise, there're going to be some interesting network connections.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.