Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Dana Goldstein writes in The Atlantic that while one of the central tenets of raising kids in America is that parents should be actively involved in their children's education — meeting with teachers, volunteering at school, and helping with homework — few parents stop to ask whether they're worth the effort. Case in point: In the largest-ever study of how parental involvement affects academic achievement researchers combed through nearly three decades' worth of longitudinal surveys of American parents and tracked 63 different measures of parental participation in kids' academic lives, from helping them with homework, to talking with them about college plans, to volunteering at their schools. What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire — regardless of a parent's race, class, or level of education. Once kids enter middle school, parental help with homework can actually bring test scores down, an effect Robinson says could be caused by the fact that many parents may have forgotten, or never truly understood, the material their children learn in school. 'As kids get older—we're talking about K-12 education — parents' abilities to help with homework are declining,' says Keith Robinson. 'Even though they may be active in helping, they may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learned it themselves, but they're still offering advice. And that means poor quality homework.'" (More, below.) Hugh Pickens continues: "The study did find a handful of parental behaviors that made a difference in their children's education such as reading aloud to young kids (PDF) (fewer than half of whom are read to daily) and talking with teenagers about college plans. 'The most consistent, positive parental involvement activity is talking to your kids about their post-high school plans, and this one stood out because it was, pretty much for every racial, ethnic and socio-economic group, positively related to a number of academic outcomes—such as attendance and marks,' concludes Robinson. 'What this might be hinting at is the psychological component that comes from kids internalizing your message: school is important. '"

Comments

Um, right.

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

'Even though they may be active in helping, they may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learned it themselves, but they're still offering advice. And that means poor quality homework.'" You mean like correcting the blatant errors in the grade school science texts?

Re:Um, right.

[Ardyvee]

To be honest my mom never understood some of the things she helped me with. What she did was read the textbook, see what I was having issue with, have me explain to her what I was trying to accomplish and how, and if she still didn't have an insight, she would tell me to ask somebody else. She knew her limitations (perhaps because her education is high school, and a bad one).

Re:Um, right.

[Ardyvee]

Double posting because can't edit: what I meant with that was that it all matters on whether or not your parent knows their shortcomings or not, and whether or not they realize they have forgotten high school already.

Re:Um, right.

[Tamran]

You mean like correcting the blatant errors in the grade school science texts?

This is exactly on point! Sure, having discussions and making students think deeper may affect their quiz/exam scores. However, there are countless examples of how these exams are no more than simulations of real life and how being able to respond to new situations creatively is the true measure of intelligence (sorry, I'm too lazy to bring any references but surely a Google search will reveal countless cases).

I now teach university undergraduate engineering classes after working in the industry for many years. What I now realize is that the people typically in this role have never worked as an Engineer and have NO CONTEXT to what they're actually teaching. With no context, how can these people be fair at assessment? In reality, either the product ships or it doesn't. But exams often become about solving some tricky problem that is from an 1800's analytical paper. Not to say these case studies aren't relevant, but the point is the objectives of education SHOULD BE some skill set as opposed to scoring high on some exam.

All that said, I believe the criteria used to make the conclusions in the summary are way off base and also lack context. Parents, don't stop debating with your children about what they're learning. People should balance questioning everything they are told with heuristics and best practices in order to "get things done." Test scores be damned if we can't even assemble lawn furniture at the end of the day.

Re:Um, right.

[houstonbofh]

Or the new "Common Core" crap that has the most ass backwards ways of doing simple things like math. http://static.infowars.com/bin... I have seen people with MS and PHd in math shake their heads over this stuff.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a current undergrad engineering student with a lot of prior work experience, thank you. I agree. It makes me sad that the honors students are often the last people I would choose to work with me on a real-world project.

Re:Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

You mean like correcting the blatant errors in the grade school science texts?

I sure would like to hear an example of what kind of "blatant error" you're talking about. For every parent that points out that centrifugal force is just as real as any other force, there will be ten who deny evolution or climate change.

Perhaps this is the main effect driving the study: the majority of parents in America are half-educated nitwits, and any involvement from them will only cause damage to their child's education.

Re:Um, right.

[modmans2ndcoming]

I don't know if that is Common Core's fault. Idiots implement the standards and think they make it easier for kids.The high standards are good, the poor implimentation in many districts is not.

Re:Um, right.

[Jarik C-Bol]

What the hell is that? did M.C. Esher write that textbook?

Re:Um, right.

[Bite The Pillow]

I would rather have kids understand the quick method you illustrated, instead of considering every problem a rote algorithm.

I would need to see some context to make sure they are not teaching the algorithmic method later in order to be outraged.

What you showed is how I do math. Sales tax is two multiplications. Tips are two, even at a flat 20%. This gets me a number quickly, but was never explicitly taught.

You need to understand the multi year curriculum to have context.

Re: Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I had one teacher tell my daughter that since Hitler killed Jews and his mom was Jewish he killed her.

Re:Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

Or the new "Common Core" crap that has the most ass backwards ways of doing simple things like math. http://static.infowars.com/bin... I have seen people with MS and PHd in math shake their heads over this stuff.

The answer is (c). Maybe the people shaking their heads over this stuff have finally succumbed to the brain rot caused by listening to Alex Jones all the time.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes down to "what is more important, grades or education?" because it's likely your children are being tested to the blatant errors in the grade school texts. I remember when I learned I had to hold my nose and give the wrong answer to get 100% on a test.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not just science texts. Even basic math has become insane. For example has anyone successfully managed to explain to a elementary school kid what is the point of learning three different ways to add two numbers?

Re:Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

=did M.C. Esher write that textbook?

Now that's the kind of textbook I would vigorously advocate for.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't look any better (or worse) than the stuff we have now. Just more garbage that requires zero true understanding of the material.

Re:Um, right.

[HornWumpus]

All of my Engineering profs had extensive industry experience. My understanding at the time was that Engineering schools had a long tradition of not employing professors without at least 5 years in industry. Granting that was decades ago. I have a hard time believing things have changed that quickly.

Re:Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

For example has anyone successfully managed to explain to a elementary school kid what is the point of learning three different ways to add two numbers?

Perhaps ... because learning three different ways to add two numbers aids comprehension of the mathematical concept of addition?

Nah. It must be a UN conspiracy or something.

Re:Um, right.

[MindStalker]

The answer is C, you can break 7 up into 5 and 2
So in your head you can subtract 5 from 15 quickly to get 10, then subtract another 2 to get 8.

Re:Um, right.

[sconeu]

But either you'd never be able to open the book, or you'd never be able to close it!

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's wrong.
15-5 is not equivalent to 15-7
Maybe if they had written it as
15 - 5 - 2 and then 10 - 2

What they wrote there contradicts with everything you learn when you start solving equations.
I can't wait for kids to start writing things like:
15x - 7x 15x - 5x 10x - 2x 8x
Sure the result is correct, but the steps are completely wrong.

Re:Um, right.

[houstonbofh]

I only picked the info-wars link because it was the first thing that came up in google images with a static path. Pick one you like more... https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:Um, right.

[houghi]

I agree. 6000 years old? That can't be right. They have been saying that for many years now. It should be 6025 or something like that.

Re:Um, right.

[Sarten-X]

My thoughts exactly. The picture itself has no context, and the article is the usual InfoWars style with lots of supposedly-self-evident cherry-picked anecdotes and no logic*. I'm going to assume that the problem in the picture is actually demonstrating an aspect of the transitive property. The intended solution is the realization that "15 - 5 - 2 = 15 - 7", or to state it as an abstract concept, "numbers represent quantities that may be separated and redistributed". Of course, parents whose education was all rote memorization don't understand the questions, so they're unable to help effectively, and in some cases can undermine the lesson entirely be asserting that the textbook is obviously wrong.

* I'm curious; is there an actual name for this style of presentation? I've seen it often in conspiracy theories, where a series of images, statements, and facts are presented without context to outrage the audience, then the author's theory is presented as the only context where everything makes sense, rather than allowing for each item's individual context to be understood first. It's common enough that I feel there must be some literary term for it, but I don't recall any.

Re:Um, right.

[houstonbofh]

The answer is C, you can break 7 up into 5 and 2 So in your head you can subtract 5 from 15 quickly to get 10, then subtract another 2 to get 8.

But if you just subtract 7 from 15 and get 8, you are wrong.

http://www.corestandards.org/M...
"Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13)."

This is some serious confusion right here.

Re:Um, right.

[Taxman415a]

The Common Core standards in themselves are a vast improvement from the patchwork of state standards that ranged from bad to very bad. The Common Core standards do a decent job focusing the standards on fewer topics allowing for deeper more rigorous learning of the important topics and a focus on understanding, not just procedure. Previous standards tended to focus on facts, recall, and mindless procedural learning, rather than moving higher up the hierarchy of learning to where students can be creative and actually use what they learn. The quality of implementation of the Common Core standards will of course vary as they move into texts and standardized tests and are used by teachers.

Now to your specific example, that's a decent problem that requires thinking to solve. If Math MS and PhD's are having a hard time with it, then they are either so focused on their limited area that they can't do anything else or they are so used to being spoon fed procedural thinking by a professor that they don't know how to think for themselves. The problem you linked to was also cherry picked out without any context or explanation of the task that likely would have been in a good classroom. Without any context or explanation though, the task does require a higher level of thinking to parse what is being asked. Higher level cognitive demand is another way to say it.

The Common Core does not only call for open ended problems like that, and does also call for procedural fluency. Think drilling. The trick is in the balancing of procedure with problem solving abilities and stretching problem solving abilities requires giving tasks with higher level cognitive demand.

There's always going to be people like you that try to drag out the negative in any improvement effort without understanding the background behind it.

I'll have to go read the linked study to see what it's all about.

Re: Um, right.

[Sarten-X]

The teacher in question could be in his early 70s. That's not unheard of, if he's in good health. That would mean he was an infant in the 1940's, and his mother could have left him in the care of sympathetic friends before the Nazis took her away. I'm told it was fairly common for Jews in Europe to make such arrangements as the Nazi threat moved closer.

Re:Um, right.

[SuricouRaven]

Base-10 shortcut problem subdivision. It's a trick to speed up mental arithmatic. Not a difficult one. It's questionable how useful mental arithmatic is now when everyone carries a calculator, but as the section is titled 'number sense' I imagine this is probably there to give the younger students something of an intuitive grasp of numbers.

Re:Um, right.

[Java Pimp]

I still can't believe they are teaching that Pluto is not a planet! WTF? And don't even get me started about brontosaurus...

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is (c). First of all, (c) is only one that arrives at the right result. And once you know what which result is correct, then it is pretty easy to figure out what the question was about. Kids are taught to calculate the difference by repeatedly removing the same number from both numbers in play. E.g., 15-7 = 14-6 = 13 - 5= etc. They are forced to use their brains and understand numbers to get result.

The way it is formalized is weird (subtraction sentence), but there is nothing difficult about it.

I have hard time to see what is wrong about it. It will serve them well once exercises move to big numbers which can not be memorized. This can lead to kids being able to subtract big numbers from head, without using calculator or pen and paper.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer uses two equations: 15-5=10 and 10-2=8. Both are correct.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is C, you can break 7 up into 5 and 2
So in your head you can subtract 5 from 15 quickly to get 10, then subtract another 2 to get 8.

But if you just subtract 7 from 15 and get 8, you are wrong.

http://www.corestandards.org/M...

"Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13)."

This is some serious confusion right here.

This stuff sounds like me when I try to explain things. The original problem took longer than it should for me to solve, as I didn't understand the format as I've never seen it before. Intuition won out, but it is too confusing for the level of material. It is good that they want students to think about problems in different manner, by breaking them down, but they will not understand it unless they discover it themselves. Material can be given that would support that, but none of this stuff seems to aim at getting to that, "Ah ha!" moment when the material becomes a simple task.

What I'm trying to complain about, is that the math shown still has an emphasis on the answers and not how to solve problems, so the focus is wrong. A student would look at the problem and see that there are more numbers, so the problem got more complicated. They would ask, "Why would you do this instead of using less numbers and operators if the answer is the same?" To fix that problem, they should give the answer of 8 in the description so the solution isn't the point of the problem and ask for an alternative solution using some arbitrary multiple of 2, 5, or 10 (easy to count numbers) in a fill in the blank manner instead of multiple choice.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should start with set theory. Then define the non-negative integers as the cardinals of sets for which there does not exist a bijection into one of its proper subset. Then, they'd understand the consept of addition!

Re:Um, right.

[ArsonSmith]

Interestingly I was never taught to do addition/subtraction like that but have always done it that way. It helps me to quickly get to something close when estimating and also get more precise by thinking a little more through the steps.

It's all about limiting the number of steps you have to memorize and being able to break a problem up into a few easier smaller problems.

Re:Um, right.

[mindwhip]

Mine didn't really understand the problems but always got me to explain what I was trying to do, why and how. The act of me explaining taught me to think through things and ultimately solve them myself, one big lesson that works for a lot more than maths.

Re:Um, right.

[AdamHaun]

It's teaching a shortcut for doing arithmetic -- one that's easy to do in your head, in fact. The idea is to do the subtraction in pieces by getting to round numbers. So in the example, 15 - 7, you start by getting to 10 (15 - 5 = 10), then you have 2 more left from 7 so you subtract that too (10 - 2 = 8).

The end result gives you 15 - 5 - 2, but to write it that way you have to already know how to break up the 7. Doing it one equation at a time lets you apply the method to larger numbers.

Re:Um, right.

[s.petry]

Mostly this, but a bit more since you are missing something I feel is a much larger issue. Common core is the latest example of people not learning concepts so that they can understand the world, but making students memorize and "come close" to answers that someone feeds them.

Case and point. My son in Elementary school was forced to memorize multiplication tables because it was required (in a bit more than a decade that may have changed, but it was required from the 1950s). The kids were not taught the fundamental concept of what multiplication is, or how it worked. I sat him down and showed him the concept and told him to not use "times" or "multiply" when doing his homework. Instead, I told him to use "groups of" which made perfect sense to a 7 year old. He never had to memorize the table and aced math, but not because government mandated materials and methods worked, but because I taught him what the concepts the school didn't.

Those types of lessons occurred constantly. Many teachers know the forced methods are broken and fight against it. Teachers often ignore the forced work and methods and their kids get smarter, though in certain areas of the required tests scores can drop.

It's not simply a matter of having people with real world knowledge teaching. There is very much an issue of the curriculum and required methods being wrong.

TFA makes me very concerned, because talking to friends I'm not the only one that has taught my kid concepts that schools do not. This seems to be very common, and sending a message out to people to stop teaching their kids is questionable at best. I have a feeling that the statistics were not so much related to parents helping with homework as much as parents doing the homework for the kid (which we know happens) and of course those types of questions would easily skew results.

Re:Um, right.

[pla]

Wow... That strikes me as a great math problem! It requires the student to recognize the fact that the customer has accidentally overpaid with an unnecessary $5 bill on their $8 tab. So naturally, the right answer consists of handing them back their $5, then making the correct change of $2 from a $10.

Imagine that! And here I had thought this new "common core" would leave our snowflakes even less prepared for the exciting world of retail sales and customer service than before... But, I clearly stand corrected!

Re:Um, right.

[Mr. Slippery]

This is some serious confusion right here.

No, not if you understand arithmetic. In fact making students comfortable with these sorts of manipulations seems to me to lay a good groundwork for algebra. I admit that "making ten" and "number sentences" are weird terminology, and I've seen some baffling examples of CC math, but the paragraph you've provided seems like a sensible strategy for teaching basic arithmetic to kids.

Re:Um, right.

[AK Marc]

That's an easy way of finding the answer. It's essentially a base-5 version of math. The problem is that it might help some of the lower-end of average students to learn, but won't help the lowest learn, and will be an impediment for the upper students (but they'll figure it out on their own). So something like this is the natural result of NCLB where the 15th to 50th percentiles get 80% of the focus, and the top 50% get no attention, unless they drop, and the bottom 15% are exempted from the rules (special needs).

Go NCLB. It's like help, without the help.

Re:Um, right.

[AK Marc]

The answer is 15 - 5 - 2. The "answer" on the paper shows 15 - 5 = 10 and 10 - 2 = 7, so it shows the intermediate step. 15 - 7 = (15 - 5) - 2 = 10 - 2 = 8 may be "more correct" but the answer given in the test is easier.

The steps are right, they just show a step that someone using that method would hold in their head, not write out as an independent mathematical equation. Though that's done in the test to illustrate the method.

Re:Um, right.

[asmkm22]

What I do is first ask my daughter if this is something the teacher covered in class. It usually is, and this will often get her explaining it enough to where she basically answers the problem on her own, much to her delight. At the same time, there's been a real shift in how math is being taught, and sometimes she'll have homework on stuff that hasn't been covered in class. The teacher (who seems to hate the system), says it's supposed to be an attempt at getting them to think about problems before formally being introduced to them, which I guess I can understand. But it still makes for very weird homework because she's always doubting herself over if it's something she should know or if it's just another mind game. Since I know pretty much anything her school can throw at me, especially with math, I can actually help her with it. But what about parents who wouldn't know? Or who read articles like this and are told to stay back?

Helping your children with homework doesn't have to mean solving the problems for them. It means communicating with them about what the problems mean, and get them thinking about it. Let them solve it, with your subtle encouragement. This article is giving some really shaky advice.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. That's a shortcut I use all the time, but no one taught shortcuts when I was a kid. So I was super and won lots of contests.

Re:Um, right.

[AuMatar]

It isn't questionable at all. You're not going to bring out your phone for every simple problem in life. Need to make change for a 10? Do you really want to have to take out your phone and type this in? The vast majority of math people need its an order of magnitude quicker to do it in ones head than to do it on a calculator.

A better argument is that paper and pen math is what's no longer needed, as the problems complicated enough to do that on actually are as fast to type into a computer. But those are far rarer, and paper/pen is pretty much a necessary step to learning how to do it mentally.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer on the paper shows 15 - 5 = 10 and 10 - 2 = 8. Go look for yourself.

I'm honestly trying to figure out if you're trolling Slashdot recently. Or maybe having a mental break down or something, because I keep seeing posts from you that are flat out wrong. Like this one. The correct answer is there. It ends in 8.

Re:Um, right.

[AuMatar]

I think having them thinking about how something might work before feeding it to them is the best way to teach. When you figure it out for yourself, you'll remember it better. Even when you don't, you'll understand it better when you are taught, because you've already started thinking in terms of principles. My absolute most effective courses in college all worked like that- homework would start testing what we learned in a lesson, then lead into the concepts for the next one. This is how you teach people to figure out new concepts, its thinking like a scientist.

100% agree that helping!=doing. If you're doing it for them, they aren't learning anything. The only time you should do it for them is if they completely don't understand as an example, and then they need to be told to do another one on their own.

Re:Um, right.

[dinfinity]

I'm pretty sure that the level of intelligence, grasp of the subject matter and didactic skill of the assisting parent make a lot of difference.

Considering the quality of those aspects in the average child-rearing adult, it is hardly surprising that their tutoring does little good. Being a good teacher is hard.

Re:Um, right.

[Jane Q. Public]

"Test scores be damned if we can't even assemble lawn furniture at the end of the day."

Even more: test scores be damned if the answers are wrong or the methods taught are nonsensical.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the correct answer is "don't teach word problems that have absolutely no value in any future science, math, or engineering degree."

Re:Um, right.

[Sir_Sri]

>What I now realize is that the people typically in this role have never worked as an Engineer and have NO CONTEXT to what they're actually teaching.

Literally everyone teaching university has experience in their discipline. You don't get to publish papers and get masters and PhD degrees without doing real work, albeit a somewhat contrived sort of work sometimes. And that's why you go on sabbaticals etc.

The thing is, Masters and PhD's are a particular kind of contrived work, rather than most work which is not the same sort of research + publications. And in the real world it's a question of how quickly you get a product working, rather than how well you can get something to work in a given blob of time. But education does not let itself to the first case, it can't really, you'd be stuck with 30 year olds in grade 3 who still don't know how to multiply.

Re: Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right and when the Bill of Rights is bring discussed we do not want to hear from the parent generation either.. because we are going to teach them that Free Speech is for free speech zones and the Second Amendment, that is our inalienable Right to Bear Arms, is just when you are in uniform.

I DO NOT send my daughter to a govt school that teaches her to grow up to be a lgbt whore without rights. SHE is going to a German school and at home she is learning to despise the government.

Re:Um, right.

[qpqp]

OMG, WHAT THE FUCK is THIS? I'm sincerely hoping that by the time my kids get to school, this bunkum will have vanished from the respective curricula.

Re:Um, right.

[whistlingtony]

I believe Common Core is an attempt to fix exactly what you're railing against. Have you looked into it? I'm not trying to Logical Fallacy you here. I'm actually curious. Are you railing against Common Core with some specific thing in mind? Or are you just railing against Common Core because Testing Bad.

From what I've read about Common Core, it's an attempt to teach actual understanding in math and reading instead of rote memorization for test taking.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pick one you like more... https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

Okay, let's go down the list (note that due to search history and change over time, your results may not match mine):

1) Similar to your original example. This is just getting kids to realize that 14-8 = 14 - (10 + 2 ) = (10-10) + 4 + 2. It only looks confusing because it's presented in a way that's unfamiliar to you.

2) No math issue with Common Core - simply a stupidly bad (racist) wording by a textbook writer - something that current textbooks have plenty of. (BTW. minus 2 points on reading comprehension for those posting the image. "slaves-picking-apples.jpg" versus "oranges" in the image.)

3) Sacrilege! There's more than one way to add two numbers together, and they're all equally valid! What's more, we're asking students to think about why that's the case, instead of just parroting back what the schoolmarm says in a sing-song voice!

4) I'm getting the distinct impression that "common core outrage" means "I do not understand the basic commutative and associative properties of addition". Again, we have different ways of adding and subtracting, this time shown by complexity level. Nothing here is surprising to anyone who remembers how they learned to add and subtract and has at least a passing familiarity with traditional tricks for mental math.

5) Not a math problem, but a question from a parent who's having trouble with helping their child. This I get. We went through the same issues with the "New Math" changes. It's not so much what you're teaching, but that the parents look at their child's homework and get intolerably confused. (Because it's being presented in a way that's unfamiliar to them). The 9+8 problem is obviously looking for 9 + 8 = 9 + ( 9 - 1 ) = 2 * 9 - 1 = 18 - 1 = 17. I'm not sure what's up with the "add doubles to 20; 5 + 5 = " but only because I'm not getting the whole problem. (e.g. was it a list of problems 1+1=; 2+2=;...5+5=... 19+19=...20+20=).

6) (Yes, infowars - I'm going systematically, and not picking and choosing.) Again, commutativity and associativity. 26 + 17 = 26 + (4 + 13 ) = 30 + 13 = 43

7) Finally! Something new. Here I agree the question is messed up, in the sense that the printer forgot to include the shaded portion. If they were shaded, the question should be simple to answer. But again, printing errors happened previously. (Though some arguments could be made that rushing to implement the new standard could result in more errors.)

(Three images which are only tangentially related, including a stock photo of a classroom)

11) "Gotcha" question were present in the previous scheme as well. They teach reading comprehension, and that you should think about things rather than blindly plugging-and-chugging.

(A rant and not a sample question.)

13) A multi-parter. 1. Bad question formatting, in that the parts and whole aren't represented consistently (what are those black circles supposed to be). Should be obvious that the problem is 6-5, though. 2. Does anyone have problems with 2? They provide a nice diagram and everything. 3. I presume "use cubes to solve" means manipulating physical blocks, as opposed to tak

Re:Um, right.

[Solandri]

To be honest my mom never understood some of the things she helped me with.

Maybe her parents didn't help her enough with her homework?

I joke, but I'm half-serious. This seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Parents don't help with with homework, kid never really understands the material, grows up to be another parent who doesn't help with homework. From a control systems standpoint, there are probably two stable points in this system - above a certain threshold helping with homework helps and reinforces that behavior in future generations, and below that threshold helping with homework hurts and reinforces that behavior in future generations. The trick is to figure out a way to get most people above that threshold, rather than giving up and consigning everyone to live below that threshold.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

centrifugal force is just as real as any other force

Well, it's not just as real. It only exists in certain non-inertial frames of reference. It's useful in certain contexts, but not to be confused with really real forces.

Re:Um, right.

[nbauman]

Interestingly I was never taught to do addition/subtraction like that but have always done it that way.

Me too.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

What exams teach is how to learn, the content (and context) of the class will not matter in 20 years, but the student will have to still be learning.

I help my son by asking what does the book say and making him look it up. Answer questions with questions and they find the answers for themselves. That is how you teach what really matters.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned mathematics from a book called "Moderne Wiskunde" which translates to modern mathematics.
It was printed around 1968. I used this book in school in 1998. My mom used the exact same book. In fact I actually used her books.
What is the advantage of throwing things around all the time with regards to how we teach? This book was fine for more than 30 years.

Granted I grew up in poor country and went to a school that copied the same text book over and over because we didn't have money for actual books.
I understand that we might find better ways to teach things, but I'm just not seeing the advantages of these new methods.

Re:Um, right.

[Hognoxious]

The answer is 15 - 5 - 2.

That isn't one of the options, sleepy boy.

Re:Um, right.

[Shadow of Eternity]

And decades ago you could pay for college with a minimum wage job, too. Now engineering departments are filled with foreign adjuncts with accents so thick they could insulate chernobyl and that gives departments an excuse to constantly flunk people and claim they're just "rigorous" instead of shit at teaching.

Re:Um, right.

[Xylantiel]

I agree. Go look at common core, don't assume you know what it is. A lot of the "criticism" of common core has nothing to do with what is actually in common core. I have looked at the teaching of multiplication and it does some things that seem "weird" but are clearly intended to teach students number concepts, not just rote memorization. Now whether the elementary teacher figures that out is a totally different ballgame - since they may not have a firm number concept themselves and therefare they may not even understand what is being taught or know how to explain it to parents.

Re:Um, right.

[tomhath]

Your snark aside, most likely it means doing the kids' homework rather then offering advice. Science Fair projects, term papers, college application essays.

Re:Um, right.

[stoploss]

All of my Engineering profs had extensive industry experience. My understanding at the time was that Engineering schools had a long tradition of not employing professors without at least 5 years in industry. Granting that was decades ago. I have a hard time believing things have changed that quickly.

All but ONE of my engineering profs were "broken eggs" that had PhD's but no industry experience. My "favorite" engineering instructor was a former tech (with only a master's degree) who literally hated engineers. He would go on and on during class about how the engineers he had worked with were cruel to him.

Then he gave us impossible homework so that he could gloat in class about how we were all stupid (in order to get his rocks off).

Granted, this was a decade ago, so the change must have been in progress before that time. We had ABET certification, of course.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the old style of teaching multiplication is best summed up with this exchange with my brother, which occurred when I was trying to teach his daughter the commutative property:

M: What is 6 times 8?

B: (almost instantly in a sing-song manner) 48

M: what is 8 times 6?

B: Uhhhh ummm (about 15 seconds of silence)

D: Dad, the order of the numbers don't matter!

B: Uhh. so multiplying 6 and 8? uhhh. OH! 6 times 8 is 48! (same sing song manner)

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

There... are... FOUR LIGHTS!!

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is 15 - 5 - 2.

That isn't one of the options, sleepy boy.

Yeah it is, dumbass. What's 15 - 5? 10! What's 10 - 2? 8!

15 - 5 - 2 = 8!

The answer is C!

Re:Um, right.

[colinrichardday]

But how extensible are the methods shown? Would they work with larger numbers? Would they work for adding seven numbers?

Also, I have issues with the claim that addition shouldn't be algorithmic.

"number sentences" versus "equation"

Are all number sentences equations? What about "7 is a prime number."?

Is making tens easier than carrying?

There may be large blind spots in parents' understanding of the commutative and associative properties of addition, but these examples aren't helping. For the commutative property, use an example. We are to pay $15 for an item using a $5 bill and a $10 bill. Does it matter whether we first hand over the $5 bill and then the $10 bill or first hand over the $10 bill and then the $5 bill? For the associative property, use three bills paperclipped together in the different ways..

Re:Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

centrifugal force is just as real as any other force

Well, it's not just as real. It only exists in certain non-inertial frames of reference.

Just like gravity, for example.

Re: Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

I DO NOT send my daughter to a govt school that teaches her to grow up to be a lgbt whore without rights. SHE is going to a German school and at home she is learning to despise the government.

Parent is the poster-child for compulsory public education. Some kids need to be rescued from their parents.

Re:Um, right.

[colinrichardday]

So something like this is the natural result of NCLB where the 15th to 50th percentiles get 80% of the focus, and the top 50% get no attention, unless they drop, and the bottom 15% are exempted from the rules (special needs).

Where did the other 20% of the focus go?

Re:Um, right.

[NoMaster]

6018 come October 23rd, give or take the 3 months or so lost due to the Chesterfield Act of the mid 18th century.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Case and point. My son in Elementary school was forced to memorize multiplication tables because it was required (in a bit more than a decade that may have changed, but it was required from the 1950s). The kids were not taught the fundamental concept of what multiplication is, or how it worked.

False dichotomy. The problem is the latter - you kid's school didn't taught the concept of multiplication, not the former.

What should be done is to do both - the concepts first, then memorize the table.

Re:Um, right.

[houstonbofh]

ow, if these are the worst examples opponents can come up with, I don't see what the fuss is about. Furthermore, if Common Core gets more people to understand commutativity and associativity of addition, it can only be a good thing - as there appears to be a definite lack of understanding on the part of adults here.

Actually I have seen many that are far worse. Unfortunately, a google search will not show the worst ones, only the most sensationalized. And anything truly sensationalized usually had a large grain of BS somewhere in the pudding. The big problem I have with it (Other than the random "How will we change up teaching math this year, a subject that has not changed at this level in hundreds of years...") is how it deals with errors. Before, errors could be fixed as they were found. Now it can take LITERALLY (And yes, I an using "literally" in it's literal sense) an act of congress to change them,

Re:Um, right.

[houstonbofh]

No, not if you understand arithmetic. In fact making students comfortable with these sorts of manipulations seems to me to lay a good groundwork for algebra. I admit that "making ten" and "number sentences" are weird terminology, and I've seen some baffling examples of CC math, but the paragraph you've provided seems like a sensible strategy for teaching basic arithmetic to kids.

At 8 before multiplication?

Re:Um, right.

[AK Marc]

Where did the other 20% of the focus go?

20% on the bottom 15%, just because they are exempt from the rules doesn't mean you don't have to hire piles of nurses to change their bedpans when they shit themselves in math class when they'll never be able to tie their own shoes.

Re:Um, right.

[AK Marc]

What was option C? Oh, that's right, 15-5-2 (with the difference of 15 and 5 shown as a work step).

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Groups of" makes perfect sense! Kudos for enlightening your kid from such mind-boggling ignorance.

Multiply and times never made sense, but groups of does. Thank you very much!!

If something "seems weird", and parents can't make sense of it: Why do people expect that their kids will make sense of it?
Stupidity. Just now coming from theorists who are clearly inept at educating.
The kids deserve much better.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

To get the answer right: 15-7 = 8

In real life and in tests, that's what really matters. With all the tests the kids now must endure, to survive and keep floating that's what they have to focus on.
Soon, we can look forward to kids who have completely broken down at age 8 and up.

"Number sentences" don't make any sense, even if theorists insists people will learn better. How will introducing pointless and unexplained detours and complications help the kids? If you really want to educate people, spend time with them and find out how they can associate with the concepts in order to learn more effectively. This requires more jobs for teaching and caring = WIN WIN $$$$$$

Do you have other words for: hypocrite?

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS - exactly. Common Core standards for math include demonstration of concepts besides just rote arithmetic facts.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, the centrifugal force is an effect, not a force in itself. That's what we were taught in physics at least.

Searching, I stand not corrected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force

The concepts of forces are mainly theoretical, but there are forces of nature that are very real forces, ie. like electromagnetism and gravity.

Re:Um, right.

[laird]

"This is some serious confusion right here."

What I've seen with Common Core is that what they're teaching the kids generally makes sense if you think it through, but that it confuses the heck out of the parents because it changes everything so they have no idea what their kids are doing. I was a math major in college, and I had to spend a fair amount of time proving to myself that the "weird" techniques that my kids were taught actually work. A lot of it is incorporating what works in other countries, which can often be very, very different from traditional US math (for example), even though the principles are the same. For example, the techniques that they use to multiply and divide in Asia (where schools are highly effective) is utterly different from the US. But it works, and kids are successful using those techniques, so the "confusion" is the transition.

I will say that I've been through this transition twice now, and both times the school system managed the transition horribly. In two states (NJ and Florida) they changed all grades at the same time, switching kids from the old system to the new system, so every kid in every grade, and every teacher, all had a huge disconnect in their education, because they'd been told the old way in one grade, and then the new way in the next grade but didn't have any of the knowledge that they should have had from the previous year in the new system. Among other things, you had test scores plummet because kids were being tested on stuff they hadn't been taught, and were being taught new skills that were based on previous skills that they hadn't been taught. And both times the teachers hadn't been given enough training in the new system and its principles so they were following a new system by "rote" for a year while they figured it out. And the parents had no idea what was going on, just that their kids were confused, and that they couldn't help their kids.

Instead, what they should do is introduce the new system in first grade, then move it up a grade every year, so each generation of students has a consistent education. Yes, it'd take 12 years to transition, but it would be a coherent transition.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

what a red herring you posted. how the fuck is someone supposed to learn how to multiply in reasonable time without memorizing the first 9 multiples of our numbering system???

you say groups, but thats bullshit. there is no way your kid aced math courses when taking the time to add groups of x when there was a much better shortcut available. tables are a good thing, and i dont understand why you said they werent used and dont matter.

    if your kid used your additional tutoring to understand concepts that the curricula taught, then kudos to you, thats how its supposed to go, and perhaps their particular teacher did a shitty job of teaching the material.

im not a big fan of our educational systems we have in place, but damn, how the fuck did you get modded insightful?

slashdot/internet/people's intelligence is getting really shitty apparently. =*-(

as an addendum, i agree that parents are the ones who should take the main role in teaching their kids. thank you for not pushing your responsibility off to the state =-)

Re:Um, right.

[laird]

Nobody's exempt from NCLB, which is it's biggest flaw. Schools are now "failing" because there's a percentage of the students who have issues that prevent them from being able to function at grade level (don't speak English, dysfunctional family, mental or physical handicaps, etc.). Yes, they can get some accommodations, but 100% of the students are tested and have to pass when NCLB reaches its "goal". That's impossible, of course. IMO, the real goal of NCLB was to create an impossible standard by which all public schools are "failing" so the funding can get directed to religious and other private schools, and destroy public education. And because Congress is dysfunctional, there's no possibility that NCLB can be refined to be more reasonable, and to fund the schools properly to provide the (unfunded) services called for by the NCLB.

Re:Um, right.

[PvtVoid]

Duh, the centrifugal force is an effect, not a force in itself. That's what we were taught in physics at least.

Searching, I stand not corrected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And Wikipedia is always right. But xkcd is always righter.

Re: Um, right.

[laird]

And with a very loose comprehension of German history.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an alternative method of solving a subtraction if you're not experienced enough to do it in one step. But why force it on kids who already know how to subtract? Why make them learn invented terms like "subtraction sentences"? You won't find that term in any academic math textbook. It's OK to teach students tricks, but it's enough to show them the trick so they can use it if they want to and move on.

Re:Um, right.

[pngai]

That example involves breaking the problem down into smaller steps.
Instead of subtracting 7 in one step, you do it in two steps, 5 and then 2.
You subtract 5 first, as 15-5=10 is easy to remember.
Then 10-2=8 is also easy to remember.

Re:Um, right.

[AuMatar]

I use that method of subtraction today, and have since grade school. I just typically do it in reverse- figure out what numbers I need to add to the smaller number to make the bigger number, and typically with larger numbers. Its a solid way of doing the math, there's no reason it shouldn't be taught to them.

I agree that the term shouldn't be taught to them. Its something educators should know so they can discuss techniques. Although you will find that term in a lot of math textbooks these days.

Re:Um, right.

[Java Pimp]

My daughter has not learned to read and re-read the chapters in her text. Even if they haven't been specifically assigned as a reading assignment they cover the material in class and she is assigned the problems at the end of the chapter. When she gets stuck and asks me for help the first thing I ask is if she tried to look it up in her chapter. Which is typically followed by a no. If I can find the answer to her question in the chapter, I'll have her read it first. Or at least the section that contains the answer. If she's still stuck then I'll try and explain the material a little better. Of course, how I learned things 25 years ago is completely different from what she is being taught so that really just confuses her even more.

Re:Um, right.

[AK Marc]

Nobody's exempt from NCLB, which is it's biggest flaw.

I was told by the lawyers for Anchorage School District that the rules are different for the lowest 15%. They were dropping my nephew into the bottom 15% before standardized tests to exempt him from being reported, but then raising him back up above 15% when evaluating him for extra help. He was both below and above the 15th percentile level at the same time, according to ASD. Whatever lowered their legal obligations. Of course, they just got sued for the student that the school agreed to send a nurse to his house to get him ready for school in the morning (in violation of federal and state guidelines), so they may have been sensitive to not wanting to spend money if it accidentally caused learning. Though it couldn't be the money, because they spent more on fighting to have him dual-placed than it would have cost to leave him on one and only one side of the magic line.

IMO, the real goal of NCLB was to create an impossible standard by which all public schools are "failing" so the funding can get directed to religious and other private schools, and destroy public education.

I thought it was obvious. Un-funded mandates as a precursor of national vouchers. We have one of the most expensive and worst (1st world) systems. And nobody wants to actually improve it. It's like McDonalds. It sucks, but you get consistent results.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

You master the the base concept BEFORE the shortcut.

Why teach the shortcut first before you even understand the core concept of the subject at hand?

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are blaming Common Core for an instance of bad instruction? I have no clue what "Common Core" is but I tutor many kids and all of them learned multiplication by skip counting, counting equal sized groups, *and* memorization of the times table up to 12 (why 12 is really beyond me). I can often find many things wrong with standardized tests, the practice of dedicating classroom time to teach to these tests, and teachers not teaching relevance -- did any middle school teacher ever tell you how important the Pythagorean Theorem was -- but I could never make a blanket statement that teachers do not try to teach the concept.

Re:Um, right.

[yakovlev]

I suspect the real problem has nothing to do with this statement (or your response.)

The real problem is that helping kids with homework is HARD, even more so if the parent thoroughly understands the material.

The key to helping with homework is helping your kid in a way where you promote learning the material better, rather than just giving answers to them. Ideally you can just say which questions they got wrong and they will find on their own what they got wrong and fix them. However, sometimes they need more help than that. Then it's taking them just far enough to see what's going on and making sure that on the next problem they can make the mental connections that you helped them make on the previous problem. This is doubly hard in situations where the homework only has one or two of the "tricky" problems. It's incredibly difficult when you realize your child hasn't fully internalized something they learned before, and you've got to re-teach (or at least reinforce) that older skill and THEN get them to apply it to the current situation. All of this has to be done WITHOUT making them dependent on you to find the answers.

Because helping with homework well is so difficult, I suspect a lot of parents wind up, often unintentionally, doing something a lot closer to just giving the kids the answer. Kids are also good at getting their parents to give them answers by not really trying or by just guessing wildly at answers without really considering if they are correct.

Re:Um, right.

[complete loony]

Make take on this survey; the kids who are really bright, don't need help at home.

Re:Um, right.

[complete loony]

I had to stand up and recite times tables in classes, and I could usually do so flawlessly. But I didn't memorise them. Since they were recited in order I had plenty of time to calculate the answers in my head [n * x = (previous value)+x].

Re:Um, right.

[berberine]

My mom had to work nights as a kid, so I had to stay with my grandma. My grandma didn't help with my homework, but she always checked it after I was finished. She would put little pencil marks next to the problems that were wrong. she only helped when I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong.

When it came to math, she was old enough that high school didn't really teach her more than basic Algebra, so she learned along with me. I always thought it was cool that she would sit with me and watch how I did problems and that I could explain Algebra and Geometry to her. I hated math so this made it more fun and I was a lot more willing to try to learn it even though math made me want to punch things.

I have recently seen some Common Core math problems and heard some parents talking about it. I have to admit, I don't understand the reasoning at all behind some of the basic math that they're changing. I'm not sure if a lot of parents will ever be able to help their kids anymore.

Re:Um, right.

[Hognoxious]

Mine didn't really understand the problems but always got me to explain what I was trying to do, why and how.

So did mine, and it really used to get on my nerves. "I can do it, or I can talk about it!" I used to snap.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Proper use of capital letters makes posts more readable. Is your Shift key broken? Both of them?

Re:Um, right.

[russotto]

I have no clue what "Common Core" is but I tutor many kids and all of them learned multiplication by skip counting, counting equal sized groups, *and* memorization of the times table up to 12 (why 12 is really beyond me).

Practical reasons -- many things in commerce are/were denoted in dozens.

Re:Um, right.

[Hognoxious]

C doesn't say 15 -5 - 2 as you (I know it's you, you red-light running twat) claimed.

The exact text is 15 - 5 = 10, 10 - 2 = 8. http://static.infowars.com/bin...

And you originally claimed it was wrong, so STFU.

Re:Um, right.

[Hognoxious]

But if you just subtract 7 from 15 and get 8, you are wrong.

It's a multiple choice question. You don't put your own answer. You choose from one of the alternatives given.

Re:Um, right.

[Hognoxious]

What I've seen with Common Core is that what they're teaching the kids generally makes sense if you think it through, but that it confuses the heck out of the parents because it changes everything so they have no idea what their kids are doing.

Hasn't it always been like that? When I was a kid "Fletcher maths" was the fad du jour. All I remember is that they had pictures of people who didn't have proper limbs and that parents didn't understand a word of them.

(Would have put a link, but I can't find anything on the web other than second hand book ads without illustrations)

Re:Um, right.

[s.petry]

What you are trying to claim is that there is no way a person can memorize 7x7=49 after coming up with that answer a few times on their own, which is bullshit! There are way better methods of learning and exercising concepts than memorizing a table, and they work well beyond 9x9.

How the fuck did you, as an AC, get modded when you are provably wrong on a nerd site where people could and should have read about how Albert Einstein learned math... or Aristotle, or countless other biographies and autobiographies that describe no such table memorization method of learning math.

Re:Um, right.

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit on the minimum wage job. That said it was cheaper. If you knew anything you were making more then minimum wage, same as today.

Learning to understand foreign accents will serve you well in tech. In my day, most of the heaviest accents were on the TAs.

Re:Um, right.

[lonOtter]

Go look at common core

I did. It's more of the same garbage that we have now, just phrased in different ways. This will not help students have a deep and intuitive understanding of why the math works, which, given the level of much of the material, is quite pathetic. I'd say it's neither better or worse than the status quo; it's just a waste of time.

Re:Um, right.

[lonOtter]

Nope. It just has people memorize procedures and patterns, just like what we have now. If you think that merely having people do something in a slightly different way is going to magically give them a deep and intuitive understanding of why the math even works (which is what's most important), then you're silly. I did look at Common Core, and I was thoroughly unimpressed, just like I am with the status quo.

Re:Um, right.

[lonOtter]

there is no way your kid aced math courses when taking the time to add groups of x when there was a much better shortcut available.

It seems you have no idea what it means to understand math, if you believe that not using certain shortcuts to calculate the result of some problem means that someone's kids didn't ace math courses (which is a very low bar to begin with, by the way).

Re:Um, right.

[romons]

I graduated in math from berkeley, and yet seem to have forgotten simple things like cramers rule. Not too surprising. However, I found that helping kids with math or science was most successful when we worked together to figure out the answer. If I just knew the answer, they wrote it down and forgot it. If I knew the answer, and tried to explain the reason behind the formula, the kids zoned out. The times I was able to help was when we BOTH didn't really know the answer, and had to go through the book, or think hard about what was really going on in the question.

I never helped with history, geography, or english, of course, since they were ahead of me in those topics by the time they were 9.

Re:Um, right.

[Belial6]

How can "times" not make sense? Sure the sentence is slightly out of order so that it matches the writing, but 6 times eight means that you do 6 eight time, just like you might do a jumping jack 8 times.

Re:Um, right.

[Belial6]

And in the real world it's a question of how quickly you get a product working, rather than how well you can get something to work in a given blob of time. But education does not let itself to the first case, it can't really, you'd be stuck with 30 year olds in grade 3 who still don't know how to multiply.

That right there is the single biggest problem with our public education system. The idea that you 'pass' the third grade at the end of the year because the time for third grade is done, even if you still can't do the third grade work.

Re:Um, right.

[Belial6]

Arg! On the one hand, the example is not a good way to teach math. On the other, it is sad that 8 is considered before multiplication. So I am left with liking neither the bad old way nor the bad new way.

Re:Um, right.

[Belial6]

I've got two different friends with kids who do not take any of the standardized tests becaue they are exempt. Perhaps they are not exempt from NCLB, but NCLB exempts them from having to take any tests or show proficency in any subject.

Re:Um, right.

[Belial6]

This is one of the reasons I am such a fan of Kahn Acadamy. If the kid is shaky on a subject, it will push them back to it an make them keep doing it until they understand it. THEN it will move them forward. No busy work drills on stuff that you have already mastered, and no moving on when you don't have the basics.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"My mom had to work nights as a kid" - I really doubt that you meant to say this. I believe you meant to say "My mom had to work nights, so as a kid, I had to stay...". Very common grammar mistake, leading to no end of hilarity and misunderstanding. Your particle "as a kid" is unattached, so it seems to refer to your mother instead of to you.
Cheers!

Re:Um, right.

[mindwhip]

And there we have the pointlessness of this article... every parent and every child is different. What works for one parent/child pair won't necessarily work for another parent/child pair.

Re:Um, right.

[Hognoxious]

I figured somebody would say that the second after I hit submit.

I totally agree, different strokes for different folks and all that.

Re:Um, right.

[tlhIngan]

'Even though they may be active in helping, they may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learned it themselves, but they're still offering advice. And that means poor quality homework.'" You mean like correcting the blatant errors in the grade school science texts?

You got modded funny, but you may be onto something here. Given the rather alarmingly large percentage of Americans who believe in creationism, seeing their textbook not make much mention of it, or even consider it as an option would count as a "basic error" and now the kid grows up thinking God did it all.

Textbooks are bad enough and parents probably see it the same way, hence needing to "correct" things like the lack of proper explanations, say, creationism.

Re:Um, right.

[Jack Griffin]

Different country so different example. My first year of tertiary education back in the late 80's was (almost) free (token fee of about $100/semester from memory). I left when fees went up (change of govt introduced user pays and fees went up to $thousands/semester, then went back when I found I couldn't get a decent job, and my last year cost me about $10k in the mid 90's. The same course these days is about double that. So yeah at some point in my country anyone could pay their way through Uni, now they can't.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief. The parent post(er) is stupid. There's no other way to put it.

You learn *how* to multiply first, in such a way that you can (later) easily multiply at *least* 3-digit numbers in your head.

Only *then* do you memorize the first bunch of them, up to 9 or 99 or whatever you prefer.

That's the point of the post you berated.

How you managed to get modded to +5 Insightful is a fucking mystery, since your post was anything but.

Re:Um, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I never helped with history, geography, or english, of course, since they were ahead of me in those topics by the time they were 9.

They were slow learners.

Re:Um, right.

[modmans2ndcoming]

you are right, however, it is also made in such a way as to provide nothing but trouble when you need to teach kids how to really subtract.

Re:Um, right.

[davewoods]

Heyyy! I did the exact same thing! I had my hands gripping the bottom of the chair I sat in, but I was even using my fingers to count it out. News! I still fail at math.

Re:Um, right.

[davewoods]

I tried so hard to understand those, but word problems are my kryptonite. Combine that, with directions written by someone having a stroke, and I cannot even comprehend what the question is, let alone the answer.

Or maybe..

[Anonymous Coward]

Parents help with homework, kids never learn how to solve problems by theirself.

Re:Or maybe..

[Hentes]

Yep, most of the time "help" means that the parents do the stuff instead of the kids.

Re:Or maybe..

[Zero__Kelvin]

I'm afraid you don't quite understand the definition of the word "help".

Re:Or maybe..

[thegarbz]

It depends how you define help. Those who can't do teach right? But the majority of people actually make piss-poor teachers.

"Help" in many cases I've seen involves solving the problem for the student and then not helping the student understand why your method is different from the method they know or how it even works.

Bullshit

[jennatalia]

I did fine growing up, but me working with my younger brother on concepts helped him more at school and was a top-off on education more than anything. I'm sure my parents would have helped, but they were working. Showing kids how to get from A to B is a lot better than showing them the answers or doing it for them.

Re: bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

provide Citations, Or Shut The Fuck up

Re:bullshit

[Max Threshold]

Maybe before we had three generations of stupid parents taught by stupid teachers...

Re:bullshit

[lonOtter]

Never?

Kids stop listening at 12.

[HornWumpus]

You had better get any information you want into your kids head before puberty.

After puberty, they lose the ability to listen to parents.

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[Anonymous Coward]

You had better get any information you want into your kids head before puberty.

After puberty, they lose the ability to listen to parents.

Awesome! So does that mean we can kick them out once they hit puberty too? I mean hell, according to them at that age, they know it all anyway...might as well make them responsible for all that wisdom they've acquired at the ripe age of 14 and make them prove it.

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[HornWumpus]

No. A parent's job becomes riding/supervising/micromanaging the little shits until they are legally allowed to kick them to the curb (18th birthday).

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. A parent's job becomes riding/supervising/micromanaging the little shits until they are legally allowed to kick them to the curb (18th birthday).

Historically, teenagers were journeyman....

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[qpqp]

No, 18 is when they get appropriated by the community, who they belong to.

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[Anonymous Coward]

You had better get any information you want into your kids head before puberty.

After puberty, they lose the ability to listen to parents.

Gee, that doesn't sound like a bullshit overgeneralization at all...

Don't speak for every pair of parents/kids, bucko.

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[HornWumpus]

Ether you are a kid who doesn't like to hear the truth or a self deluded parent.

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you're just spewing bullshit, dude. Yeah, I'll go with that.

Re:Kids stop listening at 12.

[Belial6]

At 40 with two kids, I'm going to have to agree with the AC.

The single biggest reason I have seen for teens to stop listening to their parents is because their parents have bought into the BS that their teens are not really adults who are only children under the legal system. The parents who see their teens as inexperienced adults instead of oversized children seem to do much better at having their kids listen to them.

Please inform the teachers of this development...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't help my kid with any of his homework other than checking that it is done correctly. If he doesn't get it done properly in time then his grades suffer. How are we going to teach kids how to work and learn if they don't actually have to use their brain?

And don't even get me started on busy work. What the hell does coloring a picture of a clock teach a second grader exactly?

capcha:suspends

bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Parental involvement is the single factor for kids doing well at school, and getting them into higher level education. Studies have been showing this decade after decade, all across the world.

Could it be....

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

That the kids who did well without help didn't *need* help because they were smart self-starters? Yeah, maybe that's it.

Re:Could it be....

[geek]

More likely they had smaller class sizes and teachers competent enough to explain it thoroughly before sending them home with it. Seriously, how does a kid even get to ask a question when classes sizes are 40+ students per room these days?

My biggest problem with math as a kid was I never had a math teacher that spoke fluent English. I couldn't understand them. And when I had questions, and was lucky enough to actually get called on to ask it, I rarely understood wtf they were saying.

Re:Could it be....

[DarwinSurvivor]

Let's just hope this article doesn't go viral like Andrew Wakefield's B.S. vaccine "study" and fuck up another generation of children.

Re:Could it be....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah that was the excuse bad students were giving for not getting good grades with my Polish born physics teacher when I was in junior school (that was in france).

Common Sense

[bill_mcgonigle]

If your kid is stuck on something, help him out.

If you don't know how to help him out, then admit that. In any subject where the results are objective you can look at the practice section if you have any doubts about your ability to be helpful. If you're both stuck help him formulate the question(s) to ask the teacher, if he's having trouble doing that on his own.

Don't do your kids' homework for them.

Next article.

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother and sister-in-law, showed my nephew how to use Google and Kahn Academy. They both have college degrees, but admit to not remembering most of the stuff they learned in middle/high school, that they have never used since.

Intensive study programs already know this

[Anonymous Coward]

My niece and nephew have in the past attended an expensive and highly effective study program offered by a private company. It has helped them immensely. One of the primary ironclad rules of the program is that parents are not allowed to help their children with the program's homework. They are so serious about this that after each session they send home an affidavit stating that the parents did in no way help with the homework, and the parents must sign it.

Re:Intensive study programs already know this

[Ken_g6]

If kids are in an intensive study program, then the intensive study program can afford to give the kids one-on-one attention and help them learn. If not, then in many cases parents are the only ones who can afford to give the kids one-on-one attention and help them learn.

Re:Always remember:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm a Jew. I implore you to do exactly the opposite of what I tell you to do, in the strongest terms possible!

(That should keep him occupied for a while...)

Exactly

[l2718]

Homework -- self practice -- is where you actually learn the material. When parents do their kids' homework, the kids lose the opportunity to learn the material for themselves.

This isn't to say that students don't need help. Rather, they need help thinking through the material instead of the "help" of being told the solution.

Re:Exactly

[lonOtter]

Homework -- self practice -- is where you actually learn the material.

I never bothered to do any homework, yet was far beyond any of the other students, who didn't understand why anything worked. That's because all the busywork assignments just had you doing the same thing over and over; they were just rote exercises, and didn't have anything to do with understanding.

That is not true learning.

Re:Exactly

[gnupun]

When parents do their kids' homework, the kids lose the opportunity to learn the material for themselves.

TFA isn't about parents doing children's homework, but rather about discouraging them to help their children complete it. There's a big difference. Suppose a kid who barely understands whole numbers and addition comes across a homework problem he has very little understanding:
-2 + 5 = ?
Who's going to help him?

Re:EXACTLY

[blackraven14250]

Probably a majority of the parents would do this. After being there for a couple months, I realized that when new students came in I should take the first 15 minutes to figure out if they're going to even try to learn. I couldn't refuse to tutor them if they made it seem like they wanted help, and students were very good making it look like they were getting help instead of answers, so it was easier to just figure out what they wanted and give it to them under the guise of "learning". It was very rare that they took up the opportunity, but I became good friends with the ones that did.

Re:Exactly

[crackspackle]

One of the ways I always did homework and still use today is by pretending I am teaching someone else. This method works great for logical subjects like math or science where there are proofs, facts and well defined theories, less so for more disorganized and subjective material where rote memorization is required but it can work there too if I can get into the "story". It never fails to bring up, those "wait a minute" and "what now" and "why do it like that" questions I hated having on test day. At least in school, when I got to the point I could "teach" myself, I always made an A+.

Re:Exactly

[lonOtter]

That wouldn't really help me, because I'd just stop after the first problem or so, since doing 20 problems that are pretty much the same is unnecessary and detrimental. It also wouldn't help me shake the feeling that I could be using my time to understand why everything works (In my case, I was already far beyond what the class was working on.).

Re:Exactly

[Belial6]

He is just supposed to sit in front of the paper until he passes out due to the late hour. He is then supposed to hand in a half completed assignment or just not hand it in at all. (depending on how close to the beginning of the homework the problem was) He will then recieve a piece of paper back with red marks on problems he could not do two days ago, which he will never look at again.

Re:Exactly

[Quirkz]

That's because all the busywork assignments just had you doing the same thing over and over; they were just rote exercises, and didn't have anything to do with understanding.

That is not true learning.

I know I held this opinion during elementary and high school, summed up by the mantra, "You showed me, I got it, why should I keep doing it?" By college I can distinctly remember feeling the opposite. I had a very clear moment of realization in one of my calculus classes where I was doing a series of complicated steps, and while the newest material felt hard, the first several steps seemed trivial, except I could remember them being "hard" just a few weeks before at the beginning of the semester. The only difference was how much time I'd had to practice the methods.

Maybe the elementary stuff was simple enough I didn't need to practice. Maybe I just resented the exercises but they were actually helping me solidify the skill. I didn't have enough perspective to know which was right as a kid, and now I'm too far removed to be sure, but I'm slightly more inclined to believe I was a snotty kid who thought a little too highly of himself, and despite loathing the repetition it may have actually been (slightly) useful

Re:Exactly

[lonOtter]

And not everyone is the same. Doing a few problems and then thinking about why it all worked was more than enough for me; making me do repetitive exercises just ending up giving me bad grades (because I never did them) and wasted my time. One-size-fits-all is garbage.

Re:Exactly

[lonOtter]

I can't see why doing the same things over and over would help someone understand the "why," either. In order to get a deep, intuitive understanding of the material, I always needed to mull over it, not do repetitive exercises. The repetitive exercises certainly don't bring anything new to the table.

What the teacher said

[fyoder]

There is also a subjective element to a lot of courses. A parent might think they know the answer to a question, but if you weren't in that teacher's class, know their take, their biases, even how they like things formatted, you could do more harm than good. The correct answer on a test is what the marker thinks the correct answer is, not what you think, not some absolute (except in hard sciences and math perhaps, but even there tread carefully).

Re:What the teacher said

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh yes, prepreation for your working life indeed.

Correlations != Causation.

[wisnoskij]

Is it possible that the one swho needed help were more likely to seek their parents help, then ones already aceing the tests?

Couldn't help my kid with Geometry

[rsilvergun]

not because the material's hard, but because it builds and builds and builds. If you're not taking the course along with your kid you're not gonna pull it off.

What I hate seeing is these schools giving 4+ hours of homework a night. It's damn near impossible to do all that. The US economy is crashing due to outsourcing and blind faith in Free Trade, and everyone's trying to figure out what to do that doesn't involve stuff that's politically impossible (like Tariffs and an end to Work Visas for people w/o a PHD and a large body of work). So far the solution seems to be to overwhelm children with tests and homework...

Re:Couldn't help my kid with Geometry

[Anonymous Coward]

Geometry is easy. You just have to remember the theorems.
Symmetry, parallel lines, perpendicular lines - all intuitive.

Finding the centroid of a triangle - also really easy, just draw 3 lines from the corners to the opposing midpoint.
Their intersection point happens to also be the center of mass.
To demonstrate, draw a dot at that location on an arbitrary triangle and try to hold it up with a pencil.

Bisecting an angle is a little more complex. I'd have to look that up.

Also, you have SSS, ASA, SAS (S=side, A=angle, applying to adjacent spots on the triangle) for determining whether or not you can find all of the lengths and angles of a triangle. (maybe that's trig - it all blends together)

I had geometry almost two decades ago and still remember.
Geometry is ok to learn about, but topology is where it shines.

Linear algebra, statistics, differential equations, and physics are also awesome when combined.

Alternative Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once kids enter middle school, parental help with homework can actually bring test scores down, an effect Robinson says could be caused by the fact that many parents may have forgotten, or never truly understood, the material their children learn in school."

It may also be that all that help robs kids of opportunity to solve problems by themselves. If the parent helps too much, kid is passive recipient and not the one who actually solved exercises or had done needed thinking. In short term, homework done without parent has lower quality and takes more time to complete. The kid can even intentionally botch it. Maybe there is payoff in long term, where the kid becomes more capable of independent work. After all, neither mom nor dad nor teacher are available during tests.

its not the grade that matters particularly

[blackest_k]

I guess it depends on the parent but homework seems to something that involves parents with their kids lives you know where they talk to them.

I think that beats sitting in front of the TV and just providing meals and a change of clothes. It also involves the parents with the kids progression through school. Teachers don't really have enough time in a lesson to make sure the kids are actually learning what they are supposed to be learning.

It seems to get worse as the kids get older, teachers tend to become baby sitters rather than educators. Its great when you find a teacher who manages to raise an interest in their subject for a kid but we all pretty much know which teachers educated us and which were in the same room for a year or two.

I really don't get on with these studies that try to say homework is worthless it isn't and just gives parents an excuse not to spend time with their kids.

Confused Parents

[wisnoskij]

It is probably more likely, that while the parents can help the kid understand the material, they have a slightly different method and syntax to doing so than the teacher. And in my experience teachers ask for students to use their exact method and syntax or fail them. Tests are most often used to test method, not actual results. I have had teachers who would give you 80-100% just for using the method they wanted you to use, even if you get the wrong result; And similarly maybe give you 20% if you got the right result but not in the exact same steps and methods and formulas that they used in class.

Re:Confused Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are the same teachers that teach completely retarded shit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOIL_method

Re: Confused Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah -- foil is a pretty fundamental theorem in math. You must not need algebra much in your day to day life.

Re: Confused Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Or long multiplication. (51)(35)=(50+1)(30+5)=1500+250+30+5

Re: Confused Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The distributive rule is fundamental. FOIL is a shitty mnemonic that only works on a very narrow range of special cases.

The reason why parents use a different method than the kids is because when you graduate high school they teach you how to do math properly.

Re:Confused Parents

[Mathinker]

OK, being pedantic about syntax I can understand, a necessary tool for acquiring knowledge is an ability to learn and use a shared language of concepts for the purpose of communication.

But being pedantic about methods? This just seems to be a symptom reflecting the failings of the education system. I can see only two justifications for this: either the teacher has such a limited grasp of the material that they cannot understand any deviation from the "method" (or the same thing in a different "dimension", possibly they feel they have a lack of authority and cannot allow students any freedom for fear of losing the minimum amount of control necessary to do their job), or it is to give the message (either implicitly or explicitly) to the student that the purpose of the education system is indoctrination, rather than the inculcation of knowledge and the tools necessary for self-education.

I am just thankful that I didn't have your math teachers, while growing up... although I do remember having to explain, to one of my teachers, my personal method of long multiplication which minimized and postponed the necessity for remembering carries until the final summation step, by doubling the number of rows before that step.

Re: Confused Parents

[Mathinker]

I think he meant it with regards to wisnoskij's post --- as in it would be completely retarded to mark as wrong a student who prefered, for example, the OLIF method, even though said student always got the correct answer using his method.

Personally, I had never heard of "foil" as being any kind of theorem whatsoever in math, BTW. Did I miss something? I can see that other kinds of theorems apply to prove that it gives the correct answer, though...

Re: Confused Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Two-term binomial multiplication is a very narrow special case? It seems to me like it's probably the most common case.

Re: Confused Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Foil is not fundamental. Distributivity is. And so is the commutativity of addition. FOIL OLIF FILO should all get the same grade. Marking as as wrong 23 out of 24 correct answers is utterly idiotic.

another option

[kqc7011]

When your child gets stuck on a problem, you should call the teacher. If no contact with the teacher, call the principal. If no contact with the principal, call the superintendent. If no contact with the superintendent, call the school board members.

Re:Always remember:

[dgatwood]

Way to take the high road. You could just as easily have said, "Keep on living," or "Breathe."

I'm gonna go and call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is my personal experience:
My mother helped me with all my homework and I think that's a big reason why I did well in school.
She explained math problems to me, she helped me with memorizing that history and geology BS.
She helped me with dictation and grammar and all that stuff. There is a difference between helping with homework and doing it for you.
There is also a difference between helping your kid with homework and trying to teach what you think the kid should be learning.
Also, I have to ask, how does volunteering at school help? Volunteer to do what?
At my school we had teachers. The only parents who were ever there were in the library, and there were only 2 or 3 of them.
My parents had jobs, and honestly I can't think of how having one of them around all day at school would improve anything.
At primary school we didn't even have a library, so there were 0 parents involved at all times.

I should probably note that math (more accurately calculus) was one of my mothers favorite subjects when she was in school, so maybe that helped.

Re:I'm gonna go and call BS

[Mathinker]

> At primary school we didn't even have a library

Holy shit. That has to be the only room in my primary school which I still remember --- and I can't begin to think about how much I learned from books I found there (including one on introductory electronics with explanations of resistors, capacitors and inductors!). I'm not sure, however, if the copy of Asimov's "Realm of Algebra" which really kickstarted my math knowledge came from that library or the public library, though...

Re:Please inform the teachers of this development.

[Sarten-X]

What the hell does coloring a picture of a clock teach a second grader exactly?

The layout and parts of a clock face, and familiarity with the object. It's the first phase in learning any technology: understanding that it is not magic. The clock isn't a magical disk that telepathically communicates time to adults' heads, or just a moving wall decoration that's been there since before the kid was born. It is a mechanism for a purpose, and a thing of importance to be studied.

Consider similar exercises for other subjects. The first exercise in many programming languages is "Hello, World!", for the purpose of showing a minimal program that doesn't use any special features of the language.

Once exposed to a concept, the additional time spent coloring or reviewing strengthens the connections to related concepts. When coloring the minute hand, the student remembers that each number the minute hand passes represents five minutes. The Hollywood idea of rapid learning doesn't work too well in reality. Repetition and reinforcement are the keys to learning something and retaining it beyond the end of the school year.

Do you know how to teach your chidren ?

[LacompaCida]

When you help your children (I know, you just couldn't resist.), please think about whether you want them to finish the homework, or learn how to do the homework. If you just want to help them finish the homework, stop right there, and let them struggle. May be they can learn something from their struggling. If you want them to learn how to do it, learn how to teach first. Facts of Life: Those who wrote math text and teach math are not math experts. They are teaching experts. Their math may not be right.

Re:Do you know how to teach your chidren ?

[Mathinker]

> Those who wrote math text and teach math are not math experts. They are teaching experts. Their math may not be right.

This makes no sense to me. Please explain. Do you actually believe it's better to more skillfully teach wrong facts compared to less skillfully teach correct facts? Or were you talking about things like, we would only confuse second graders with negative numbers, so when teaching them, we'll just implicitly assume that negative numbers don't exist.

Wrong answer

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

They send kids home with homework in first grade nowadays. A lot of the instructions for the homework is hard for an adult to read. There's no way kids can even know what they're doing unless an adult instructs them.

Re:Wrong answer

[AK Marc]

Not for my first grader. His homework was writing the letters and numbers, and not much else. He didn't need any help to know that he should copy "c" on the page marked "c". He couldn't read instructions yet, but didn't need to. It was repetition practice of what was already covered that day.

Re:Wrong answer

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Well the stuff they send home my nephew has word problems. How is a dude supposed to do word problems when he hasn't learned to read yet? And some of the words they use confuses even his family trying to help him.

Re:Wrong answer

[AK Marc]

They did the same with my nephews. The homework would be done by the parents. I moved school zones (outside the US) to get to a place with higher rated schools. The work is much more age appropriate and without an obvious eye on some upcoming standardized test.

Re:Wrong answer

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

For the most part homework isn't done by the parents. He needs to know what he's instructed to do. We encourage him in the thinking skills encouraged. You know how it is with math, there's a zillion ways to do a problem, but you teach the kid the most basic version first, then give him new tools in the arsenal.

I just remember when I was in first grade kids didn't get homework. I actually had to ask my teacher for homework because I was stoked for school, but maybe it's not best for every kid coming out of kindergarten.

Re:Wrong answer

[AK Marc]

I had homework in kindergarten, but not first grade. I remember building a pinhole camera in kindergarten to watch an eclipse (probably Oct 12, 1977). I had homework, but I think it was voluntary (I asked for it, they didn't want to let me have it, but I demanded it). No homework in 1st grade. Or second. I liked school until second. I was beat for finishing before others, and locked in a closet over lunch. After that, I was pulled from public school and sent to private, did better and ended up in one of the top ranked public schools in the nation. Lots of homework in private schools, all grades.

Re:Wrong answer

[Bengie]

All of my homework starting in 1st grade had to be turned in written in cursive. How does a 1st grader not know how to read now days? We learned reading prior to writing and we learned non-cursive prior to cursive. If you "graduate" from kindergarten and can't read and write, you were done a disservice.

seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a parent, if I don't know something I research. If my kid comes with question I don't have we research and figure it out. Not everything is rocket science, but even if it was there's so much information out there (internet, library) that it's impossible not to find an answer.

Clarify Helping vs Doing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the survey needs to clarify between parents helping, i.e explaining things when the child has a question or offer suggestions where the children can look when they are stuck on a problem and parents who actually do the homework, the ones that see their children struggle a bit and come over and supply them the answers. I wouldn't be surprised to see that what the study defines as helping is more on the end of parents doing the homework. This kind of help would naturally lead to children not comprehending the material and of course lower test scores.

STFU if you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even though they may be active in helping, they may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learned it themselves, but they're still offering advice. And that means poor quality homework."

Applies to more than just helping kids with homework. Just read the comments to any Yahoo news article and you'll see many people who haven't the vaguest clue about the subject at hand offering their "wisdom".

Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

My parents way of helping me with my homework was to yell and make me sit at the kitchen table all night even after I finished with it. My dad can do complex algebra in his head but never managed to teach me anything except that I'm 'slow gaited'. I could go on but it gets repetitive. I help my kids by showing them where to find the information. I don't do their homework but neither do I ignore them.

Probably not

[J Story]

And yet, homeschooled kids tend to outperform their bricks-and-mortar peers. According to the study, homeschoolers do slightly worse when their parents are teachers. My own suspicion is that when parents do their kids' homework, the kids don't bother learning what they don't need to.

Re:Probably not

[Ksevio]

That's a hard comparison to make because there aren't standard evaluations to compare them against each other. There are the parents that are very involved and help their kids succeed - those kids might go on to take the SAT where they can be easily compared to others.

Then there are the ultra-religious or parents that don't care as much who's children might not be getting a full education and just end up working at home or in the family business. They won't show up on the radar because they don't get evaluated.

Re:Probably not

[Mr. Slippery]

And yet, homeschooled kids tend to outperform their bricks-and-mortar peers.

Homeschooled kids who volunteer to take tests administered by their own parents tend to outperform public school students...bit of the ol' selection bias there.

The vast majority of homeschooled kids in the U.S. are being taught by religious fundamentalists, ignorant of the most basic facts about science.

Re:Probably not

[laird]

Everywhere I've lived, or had friends who homeschooled, the homeschooled kids have to follow the same state curriculum and pass the same state assessments (FCAT, NJASK, etc.) as the kids in public or private schools. So if they don't take it seriously enough to at least pass those (fairly easy) tests, the parents can get into serious trouble.

Re:Probably not

[bluegutang]

And yet, homeschooled kids tend to outperform their bricks-and-mortar peers.

Seems to me there's a lot of selection bias there.

Re:Probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen research showing that parental involvement with their child has an overwhelming more positive affect on their future metal abilities than even going to school. On average, children who grow up with little access to education but have parents who spend more time with them have more mental potential that children sent to the best of the best schools but get little positive attention from their parents.

Humans are social and the brain thrives best on positive social interactions and will better develop than getting crammed with "education". Parents are very important during the mental development of their children. More so than every else combined.

What I've learned so far in life is that most parents are horrible at being parents and want someone else to raise their children. Welcome to our current educational system.

Obviously I am biased, as everyone else is, but I used to be that student that didn't do well in school, so my mom pulled me out. After several years of not going to school and just helping my mom at home and playing video games for hours... omg, so much Quake Team Fortress and Anime, I eventually went back to school just to graduate. 3.6gpa. Pretty good coming from a 1.5-2.0 gpa before I dropped out for several years.

What made such a difference from my perspective? Confidence. So many years of being in school and constantly reminded of how bad I was at school, I never learned what my strength were. During those many years of not being in school, I learned on the Internet, what kind of subjects interested me. I became obsessed with learning subjects what I found "fun".

I now know what I am not good at certain things, but I am very good at other things. Knowing that I am good at something greatly increased my confidence and I can accept that I won't do well with everything. Staying home with my mom helped restore my confidence and I eventually self taught because of natural curiosity to learn.

For me, school was a negative influence in my early life, always doing horrible on tests and homework, but I knew I understood everything. I went on to college, where I learned to love school. In college, everything is taught differently. Less focus on knowledge and more focus on critical thinking. I thrive on critical thinking, not rote memorization. I spent many hours after class talking to my teachers about interesting news that I read on /. or Arstechnica. I had many teachers at the University that wanted me to change to their major, but I found my calling, Systems Design, I love computers.

If we had a kid(s)

[kilodelta]

If we chose to have kids I'd certainly help them. Why? Because during my education I received what I consider a quality education. More in the math and sciences though I do enough editing of manuscripts and such that I could probably get them used to the right way of doing it and have many aruments with teachers.

But on the math side, I'm all over the common standards movement. To the point where I read the standards for math and agree with most of it and also added that we should start in 2nd or 3rd grade teaching kid alternative numbering systems like binary, octal, and hexadecimal. Once you learn the symbols for them it's easy.

Causation vs correlation

[itwasgreektome]

It is easy to confuse causation with correlation. Without an experiment, causation cannot be shown. Data suggests correlation only. To a person whose never taken a statistics course (a statistics course should be mandated for all students, would decrease people's gullibility), said data might look as though the parents that help with homework CAUSE poorer test scores. To someone who's used to seeing this causation fallacy, I see a possibility that kids who are doing poorly in school are more likely to be helped with their homework by their parents, and therefore it's the poor cognitive ability which CAUSES the parent to help, and the poor cognitive ability CAUSES the poor test scores.

Re:Causation vs correlation

[Anonymous Coward]

That is completely retarded and you don't have a clue as to what the concepts of correlation and causation really are. You do not get to just assign that as a meme to everything you see.

giving answers vs insight

[blackraven14250]

I used to work in a tutoring center at my college, and something that came up more frequently than not was the students would show up with their homework, and tutors would end up giving them answers rather than teaching them how to find the answers themselves. I imagine that this kind of data might be highly related, since it's exactly what you'd expect if a parent is "helping" with homework by providing answers instead of real insight into the topics.

A jewish advice is always long-term bad advice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't help your kids learn? Preposterous!

Establish good behaviors / patterns

[dave562]

Helping with homework is such a broad subject that stretches from answering the occasional question, to doing the assignment for the kid. Based on my limited experience, the important thing to keep in mind is helping the child develop good behaviors. Show the child that doing homework is important by setting time aside every day for homework. Be engaged with the kid and communicate with them about what is going on at school. Give them some flexibility. "What order do you want to tackle your homework in?" "Do you want to go 30 or 45 minutes between breaks?" "How much of this semester long project do you want to get done this week?"

Homework is less about mastering subject matter and more about developing good habits. Kids go to school "all day". Parents definitely work all day. Those are jobs. The people who excel in their professions are the people who put in the extra effort. Professionals who put in the extra effort usually do it because they are fortunate enough to enjoy their profession. Kids do not get that perk. They are stuck with the subjects they have to learn. A parent who comes home from work and "tunes out", implicitly communicates to the kid that doing so is acceptable behavior. The parent who comes home and helps the kid with homework sets the example that just because they've "put in their 8 hours", it does not mean that they are done with their responsibilities.

Those of us who work in IT inherently set examples of strong work ethics, by being on call all the time. The challenge is to balance the work responsibility with finding time for the family. In most cases, having the discipline to not check emails for 2 hours while helping the kid with homework helps to establish healthy boundaries with employers as well.

One last perk... it helps you get laid. Oddly enough, mothers are turned on by men who help their children succeed. Go figure.

Re:Establish good behaviors / patterns

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Show the child that doing homework is important by setting time aside every day for homework.

What about teaching them that living a life outside of school/work is important? Won't the first lesson tend to conflict with the second.

Re:Establish good behaviors / patterns

[dave562]

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Well there's another important thing they can do

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Make sure they don't have a fucking crazy teacher who terrorizes them all day.(I had one that actually hated, I'm not making this up, smart kids. I only realized this years afterwards when I noticed my friends, who were the smart kids in that class, would individual say that she hated them. She hated me too and she hates every single one of the smart kids. Wait a minute, she didn't hate me, she just hates smart kids. She's a fucking kook.) If I ever have kids I'm definitely keeping my eye on them so that does not happen. (Guess I should be glad I didn't have the teacher who would regularly attack the 4th graders in her class. She only got fired because she attacked one of the good kids and didn't realize the superintendent was watching her through the window on the door. Kind of hard to explain that one when you do it right in front of him.)

I think the MAIN reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the MAIN reason why it is better not to help children with their homework is NOT that parents may teach the wrong concepts because they don't know them themselves, but that children do not learn how to self motivate themselves: because they are told what to do at every step they don't learn how to deal with life's issues.

Right way and wrong way

[bbulkow]

What we've learned about "inside out" teaching (work-sessions at school, lectures over video at home) shows the result that while _doing_, one comes up against problems and wants to ask questions. If you have someone to ask real questions, and get real insights, they will progress much faster and much better. Delivering lectures to students is best done with different tech than we have now. Students that are behind don't ask questions - they don't want to look dumb - but they will review a lecture over and over until they get a key point.

And for the exact opposite effect... Homeschool.

[pubwvj]

If you want the exact opposite effect, homeschool your kids. This makes you far more involved in their education and lives plus they do far better than public school kids. One of the big benefits of homeschooling is that we don't have to have any arguments about what we're going to teach, no creationism vs evolution. We teach real science. We do real research. Homeschooling has been great, for us.

YMMV so do what you please.

correlation and causation?

[buybuydandavis]

Did they take into account that they were engaged in an *observational* study?

The treatments students received weren't likely independent of how well the students were doing in the first place - i.e. when your kid does poorly, this prompts you to help him, so that this would increase positive correlation for receiving help from your parent and doing poorly.

Re:Always remember:

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL Well played.

"As kids get older—we're talking about K-12 education — parents' abilities to help with homework are declining"

This just seems like a nice way of calling old people stupid and if that's the case, well no arguments here. I might not be as sharp, but by god I make up for it with life lessons which take hours to explain while I pack my pipe kicking it in my rocker.

EXACTLY

[bussdriver]

There has to be a rather large group of the population where they had this happen to them a lot; probably starting with their parents and continuing on up. They end up thinking this is how it is done. I've had some play stupid simply because they had learned it was easier to filibuster the process instead of actually thinking it out for themselves. It wastes so much time while they try to wear you down so you give them the answer. It's like a child pulling some trick they learned; but it is an adult playing the same game (so they can be more clever, making it harder for them to learn the error of their ways.)

Re:STFU if you don't know what you are talking abo

[AK Marc]

The problem is that it takes wisdom to know what one doesn't know. And most people don't have that wisdom. They over-estimate their skills in everything (driving being a big one).

cross checking / avoiding mistakes / inspiring

[volvox_voxel]

..It's possible to teach your kids how to check your answers once they're made, like plugging the answers back into the equations, graphing results, etc. You can minimize errors this way and teach intuition.. You can teach a rigorous methodology that may otherwise not be stressed in school for checking your results, significant figures, etc. There is also always more than one way to solve a math or physics problem..

It's also highly useful to reach context, and relevance. Concrete real-world examples make the subject come alive.. Involving them in experiments at home is also a fun way to teach kids. What kids often need is an emotional connection to the material to motivate them to learn subjects they may be otherwise uninterested. I hated math until I found out that you could measure the heights of mountains, and how important it was to understand electronics. A demonstration involving modulating a lectures voice over a laser beam, and seeing the resulting waveforms on an oscilloscope got me hooked.

Most of my teachers seemed to have a deep suspicion of science, and did a very poor and uninspiring job to trying to teach it. I'm glad there were a few people around out of school that got me excited about it. I got my first cheap/old/used oscilloscope in the 6th grade. It was a trans formative moment about gaining insight about how the world works..

Re:cross checking / avoiding mistakes / inspiring

[volvox_voxel]

..It's also highly useful to [teach] context, and relevance...

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[qpqp]

Intelligence is what you know and also behavior - critical thinking, and how you deal with information.

You're wrong. That is just 1 or two manifestations of intelligence. There are lots of different intelligence types. How about you open a psychology 101 book and find out about what else there is?

And for the stupid people out there - I hate you all so much.

While we're at it, how about you take some acid and find out how petty you are yourself for believing what you wrote in that paragraph.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[minstrelmike]

It isn't _some_ people who are below average--it is the fact that HALF of the people you meet are below average.
Any scale--weight, height, intelligence ...
If I have to explain why, you're in the bottom half of the intelligence and understanding scale.

properties of addition

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. It's teaching about the associative propertiy of addition ultimately. The answer there is C and ultimately it's because 15-7=8 and 7= 5+2 which means that 15-(5+2)=8 or 15-5-2=8 which is the same result as 15-7 written in a different way.

It's kind of an odd way of looking at it for most people, but if this is what they're doing with common core math, I may have to rethink my position on that, because it's definitely on the right track.

How often do you pull out a calculator though?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, mental math is something that's always going to be useful as it's a way of developing math sense. Chances are that when you're checking out at the supermarket that you don't tally things up yourselves, but with mental math, you can estimate whether the bill is reasonable.

What's more, if you're doing mental math regularly, it's both more accurate and faster than whipping out a calculator. And what's more, you always have that option, you can even write down the intermediary steps if you need to.

As for the base-10 shortcut, it's not about that, it's about preparing the students for algebra. Being able to point back to this when teaching the associative and commutative properties is quite useful. ,

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in the half that don't know the difference between median and average.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have to explain why, you're in the bottom half of the intelligence and understanding scale.

Except you are flat out wrong. Half the people are below the median. It is entirely possible for a large portion of the people to be below average in a certain category. Think of the average income of a group of people that includes someone like Bill Gates.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

Average isn't a synonym for mean, fucktard.

Homework are part of the learning process

[enriquevagu]

Homework is part of the learning process; helping with homework prevents the kid from doing them and, in the process, learning. Solving math problems for homework, as an example, is not because the teacher wants to know the final answer; it's because the teacher wants the student to confront a new type problem and, in the process of confronting it and guessing how to obtain the solution, learn. I give detailed solutions to the class problems to my undergraduate students (they would obtain them anyway, and in many cases with errors), but I always insist that looking at the solution should be the last resort if they don't know how to face the problem (solutions are intended for checking their own's).

The problem with external help (from the parents, typically) is that, in many cases, the parents get involved in excess and actually do the homework for their sons, so the teacher cannot find any error in the child's results. I know a case of a mother who was doing exactly this, because his kid didn't get very good grades (I was even asked for help in some work the child had to do for school with the computer!). The grades started getting worse and, three years later, the kid was in special education. I know this is not the only reason, but I'm confident it affects a lot.

Responsibility

[rjstegbauer]

I've been saying this forever.

In the early grades, a student's success is more dependent on parents and teachers.

As the student progresses, the student takes more and more of the responsibility of their success, until High School when the student has *ALL* of the responsibility.

Randy -- ishouldbepaidformyresearch

"they wouldn’t even consider us plausible at

[Arancaytar]

NO REALLY?

Re:"they wouldn’t even consider us plausible

[Arancaytar]

Disregard, wrong story.

Define "help"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Help" as in "feed them all the answers" -- NO

"Help" as in "guide their problem solving, teach them to think for themselves" -- YES

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[colinrichardday]

Average isn't a synonym for mean

Microsoft Excel begs to differ.

Re:Always remember:

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't. You're an idiot.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[kellymcdonald78]

Unless you mean Arithmetic Mean, then they are exactly the same thing

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[CrimsonAvenger]

And for the stupid people out there - I hate you all so much. You are the cause of most of the worlds problems. You are petty and greedy, because that is all your simple minds can comprehend. You are the fuckers tailgating me, speeding along the freeway at 80 during rush hour, weaving through traffic in your shitty 500 car. You are the people speeding through the neighborhoods, just waiting to run over our children. You are the dumb fuckers that sign up for stupid shit and get ripped off and cause market collapses. And you are the majority.

Quite a litany of hate there. Though I notice you didn't mention illiterate people in your little screed.

You know, the kind of people who can't make subject and verb agree in a sentence. Sort of like:

If those swiggly math symbols makes the parents confused and angry

Note that the plural "symbols" requires a plural "make" instead of a singular "makes".

In other words, it's frequently a bad idea to be the first to start talking about how stupid other people are....

Opposite of "breathe" is .... ?

[Taco Cowboy]

.... fart ?

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to correct that one:
What you really mean is that about half of the people (give or take 1), will be less than or equal to the median intelligence in the population, statistically speaking of course.

Average (arthimetric average) will not provide you the middle of the set, but will be distorted by extreme values up and/or down.

If I have to explain why, you're in the bottom half of the intelligence and understanding scale.
Ditto, asshole.

Now, knowing average from median will not help you much in practical life, ie. work or otherwise. However, the 1-2 times you can really use it during your lifetime, is really really worth it!

So it is with most of our education. Which makes it prizeless, and not just some skillset to be "aquired" (as someone else suggested in another post).

Now, who thinks that parents are good educators? Of course, since good educators are very very rare, so it is with parents. A truly good educator instills a passion to know more and investigate for yourself, something very very few people have a passion for in the first place! It doesn't give you the best grades, but what kind of people only care about that?

Captcha: reaper

State owns your kids

[Anonymous Coward]

academic achievement researchers combed through nearly three decades' worth of longitudinal surveys of American parents and tracked 63 different measures of parental participation in kids' academic lives, from helping them with homework, to talking with them about college plans, to volunteering at their schools. What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire

This is exactly the kind of crap we expect if they are actually digging for evidence to take kids away from incompetent parents meddling with State's education, particularly after signing their kids over to them with that little marriage license, the State wants exclusive rights to your kids. They will find more reasons than this to take them.. mark these words.

Except ... The Case Against Homework

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.thecaseagainsthomew...
"Bavo to Bennett and Kalish for having the courage to say what many of us know to be true! By connecting the dots in new ways, they make a strong case against the value of homework. This book serves as an indispensable tool for parents who want to get serious about changing homework practices in their schools."

Grades are bad too:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teach...

As is compulsory schooling in general (which could be replaced by a basic income from birth so parents can hire tutors, pay for private school, go on trips, and/or homeschool/unschool):
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...

Challenge!

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the common core math standards: http://www.corestandards.org/Math/

Now tell me which of those things are crap. Which ones?

More than that.

[fiziko]

As a professional educator working in the private industry, I can tell you that a lot of parents also cannot distinguish between "helping student understand principles better so student can do the homework independently" and "do homework for student." This can happen with poor tutors as well. If the "help" means the student doesn't understand the work enough to do it alone, it's not help. The student will then often end up in worse shape in the long run, as they won't understand future skills that the current skill is prerequisite to.

Re:More than that.

[werepants]

This is spot on. I taught for a short while, and I would say that the most involved parents often had the most dependent students. Helping with homework kind of defeats the purpose unless it is done very carefully - the point is for students to learn to do work independently, and if parents are always providing help (and even motivation!) then students will flounder whenever that crutch is removed.

My mom helped me and I needed it

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother helped me with my homework. She was a dance teacher and some nights got home very late because she stayed at the studio to help the girls with theirs. She is a card carrying member of Mensa for whatever that is worth. She did not teach me misinformation. I didn't pay much attention in school because I knew I could get my lessons from her at night and it would be much faster. School was just a babysitting service. It probably slowed me down in college, but I think the high school itself set me up to fail. I earned a BS in chemistry and an MBA. I think I turned out effectively educated.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't _some_ people who are below average--it is the fact that HALF of the people you meet are below average.

You meet 10 people. One of them weighs 200 pounds. The other nine weigh 100 pounds. What fraction of them are below the average weight? (I'll give you a hint: it's not one-half.)

Population size, sampling, and distribution are all very important in determining what "average" is.

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Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the people are below the mean if intelligence has a Gaussian distribution. Which it does, at least according to IQ tests.

Or maybe there is too much homework?

[eclectro]

Why do the books need to be piled on in the first place? Does it make students somehow better? Does it help them get a job after highschool - in a world where a college degree doesn't get a job anymore?

Instead of calling B.S. on whether parents should not help with homework, let's call B.S. on the whole notion of homework in the first place.

Finland has no homework.

Flawed logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe children who are bad at school are more likely to need help with their homework? And maybe that help made them catch up with the others? That they found no correlation means exactly nothing.

why homework

[slothman32]

Why do we need homework anyways?
Is it because the teachers are lazy?
Because the school day is not long enough?

What, other than school, needs some sort of homework?
Most jobs don't.

Like most /.ers I am smarter than more.
I often, even in elementary, did it the following morning.
Once I even waited 'til studyhall a few hours before class to do it; how did that particular HW help me?
I liked that I overheard someone else saying they didn't even collect it.

Don't agree

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife and I helped our kids with their homework all the time,me Math and Physics, my wife Biology,Chemistry and Languages. Now we have two kids in Med School.

So I don't think much of this conclusion.

Re:And for the exact opposite effect... Homeschool

[Strange Ranger]

The Stigma and Social Effects scare me. Yes ideally I'd like to dismiss all that as trivial or superficial; shallow, or beside the point. But parents are weighing real effects, of real life, on our very real children. You can't teach a 6 year old to Be Yourself and Fuckitall.

How does one vet home schooling?

Homework "quallty" vs learning ability

[zarlino]

I was expecting that parents helping with homework was bad simply because it interferes with and blocks thought and learning abilities of their kids and causes them to be insecure and less independent. Instead the problem seems to be parents are just not good enough helping their kids cheating with homework. Oh well.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

No they're not. Average is a generic term for a measure of central tendency, fucktard squared.

One size fits nobody

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a terrible generalisation of a complex issue. I clearly remember an occasion when my son was struggling with math I helped him out and made matters worse. Whatever mathematical technique that was being taught I had learned a different method which was arguably easier to apply. I told my son "I've no idea what you are trying to do but this is the simplest way to solve the problem". He got the correct answer to all of the questions but failed the assignment because it's aim was to learn the technique. On the other hand, as a professional physicist, I am often asked for help with physics and, so I' told, the help is always useful.

I think the rule here is, if you are struggling with your kid's homework as much as your kid is leave it alone but if you are proficient go ahead.

True,

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree wholeheartedly with this study. As a middle school and high school teacher it was my contention that parents who were actively involved in their child's school work were not allowing the child to experience failure in small measures that would otherwise enable them to become independent when they reached higher levels of education. Reading to your children along with spending time in recreational activities, visiting museums, libraries, and conservation areas broaden the family experience, help parents to get to know their children better and strengthen family relations.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you open a psychology 101 book and find out about what else there is?

Not even psychologists understand intelligence. The truth is, we just don't quite know how to pinpoint it (IQ is pseudoscience.). Plus, psychology produces so much bullshit that it's mostly pseudoscience itself, so I'd say someone should look elsewhere for information about intelligence.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[lonOtter]

Intelligence has little to do with the ability to never make mistakes when writing. It looks more like you're just grasping at straws and trying to find reasons to think that the AC is 'unintelligent'. Your idea of intelligence is absurd.

I don't agree with some of the things he said, but I still don't agree with the idea that intelligence is about never making mistakes and being able to correctly spew forth memorized facts.

There's a Big Difference

[rhalstead]

There is a big difference between helping and doing their homework. Many parents do not know how to help with homework. Helping should be fine if it's done as a teacher, teaching how to do the work, not doing it for them. Reading aloud certainly helps for young children, but having them follow along is even better. . By the time I was 3, I could read quite well. Both of our children could also read well at an early age and at 7th or 8th grade level by the time they started school. Whether this led to them earning a number of scholarships and grants, I don't know, but it certainly didn't hurt. Many things appear to help. Probably the most helpful is the attitude toward learning and achievement in the home coupled with reading to them in a manner that aids learning to read. But home attitude, encouragement and instilling the ethic that nothing is impossible if they are willing to work for it should be a good start.. People are in general, far less success oriented than they were a couple generations ago. Many do not know the difference in the success of reaching a goal and success oriented. Most think, getting an education, a good job, going home, propping their feet up and having a beer while watching the big game is success oriented, but it's not. It's being a success at reaching a goal, where success oriented people are continually setting new goals, generally more lofty and rewarding goals, but they may be just learning new things. Today, most professionals can expect to change professions at least 2 or three times, while those of my generation expected to learn a profession for life, or possibly change once. So today's professional should seriously consider adding another degree, or trade, as a backup, just-in-case. The more fields you can excel at, the more your hire-ability. Much of the employee, employer relationship has deteriorated from dedication/loyalty to just employer, employee for 8 hours a day and you see very few people who are truly success oriented. Some corporations subscribe to a 10% turnover per year. I know one corporation that hired an upper level manager from a company like this. When he applied that philosophy to this particular business, it wrecked the employer, employee relationship and caused them to lose a good deal of specialized people. One comment I heard, after they got rid of him was they would never again hire anyone from that company again. It may, most likely take years to recover from the damage he did, particularly in this economy. "To me" this all ties together. Lack of dedication to the worker, lack of success oriented people leads to a less learning oriented home environment, which leads to less success in schools and so on around the circle.

Garbage article

[ezratay]

I played an intimate role in my first daughter's education. I made sure that she understood what was being asked of her and encourage her to ask questions. I also instilled in my oldest daughter to research problems she's experiencing in school. Also, we studied math and science subjects that was not a part of the schools curriculum. So we were always ahead of what was being asked of us. I kinda failed at this task with my other daughters. I didn't get to spend as much time with my younger daughters as I did with my eldest. My failure in not spending time with my younger daughters is partly do to my career going in positive directions and wanting to achieve more. With that said, I still pushed the same values of don't wait for someone to tell you learn something. If you have a problem, ask for help. Stay up late and study a subject you are having problems with. Lastly, don't hesitate to ask me for help. I let them know, if I don't know it. I will learn it to help them succeed. Lastly, my eldest daughter is now in her first year at Columbia University. I'm going to rededicate my self to help my other kids. This article is utter bullshit. I hope no one follows the advice given in this shit article.

Re:STFU if you don't know what you are talking abo

[Bengie]

The problem is that it takes wisdom to know what one doesn't know. And most people don't have that wisdom. They over-estimate their skills in everything (driving being a big one).

So much truth. The single hardest thing to learning is knowing that you don't know something. I fall victim to this, but I've been getting a lot better with time, but many people I meet don't even recognize this concept at all. Most people I've met seem to think that they can solve anything the best way using what they already know, instead of realizing that what they know doesn't quite fit the issue correctly, then properly identifying what they don't know and how to research that knowledge.

Kind of like a person who grows up only seeing house cats, then sees a tiger and assumes they must be just as tame because a tiger is a "cat". They have a hole in their knowledge and they don't realize it. Working with SQL a lot, I like to say that people don't handle "null" properly and you get undefined behavior.

Problem Solving

[mingsy]

It's not about helping them with their homework, it's about teaching them how to solve problems for themselves. Helping them to find their own solutions!

Or to look at it another way...

[DrStoooopid]

..the public education system doesn't what the parents to know what kind of garbage they're indoctrinating (errr I mean teaching), their children with...

Re:And for the exact opposite effect... Homeschool

[KC117MX]

I have homeschooled my two boys since middle school. It took about 3 weeks to see a change in their personality. After 6 months, I could see a fundamental change in their scholastic abilities. After 5 years, the oldest is preparing for college and the younger is a very bright student. The best thing is that they have learned how to learn, so the time that I spend with them on each subject becomes less as time goes by, but I can see that they are still learning through their writing, and during conversation. And just like the article suggests, I never help them with their homework. Well, not unless they ask. My only regret is not having the time or the resources to branch out with science. Our science is nearly all academic with very few projects. They will have to get a more significant scientific education through higher education. Regardless, they still will receive more instruction in the sciences than they would have had from attending a public or charter school. As far as the nonsense about homeshooled kids not having social skills...I do not agree. I am fortunate to have intelligent children. I am complimented regularly on their intelligence and behavior. I do not worry about their emotional well-being nor do I find the need to keep tabs on them due to the company that they keep.

Great parenting guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I wonder why your teenagers don't listen to you guys. You sound so reasonable and approachable.

Re:Always remember:

[Hognoxious]

I believe that in countries that use terms like "K-12" kids don't specialize in school, but in others they do.

If the kids choose a different specialisation to their parents -- moreso of course if both parents have the same specialisation -- they're not going to be able to help much outside their field.

This is one of the drawbacks with homeschooling - one or two people are unlikely to have the breadth of knowledge.

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure quoted a top authority on matters mathematical there.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com...

Re:Right, and it also depends on the person

[colinrichardday]

I have issues with how Excel deals with percentiles, so I'm not entirely in Microsoft's camp here. Nevertheless, I'm not taking someone who responds to his/her oppponents as "fucktard" as an authority.

Also, what does "average" mean?

Easy

[Vincie]

But of course! How did I never understand that it was the teachers all along that specifically became educated in a particular field to be able to teach children things? I was raised to believe that parents are the main educators of their children, and that teachers are facilitators who guide the parent and child along their own way to knowledge. This light is just all so blinding, it is almost as if there might be a better or worse curriculum....