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.

[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.

[sconeu]

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

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.

[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]

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 =-)

Or maybe..

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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: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.

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...