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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]."
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....
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, 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?
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...
Given how some people are when they finish school it's probably more like 15 sentences.
Or 15 minutes, whichever comes first.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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
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?
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.