After getting laid off from a dot bomb in 2002, I taught math at the local community colleges for over three years. Although I taught many of the classes multiple times we NEVER used the same text book for more than a year. The usual trick was to go with a new edition, the sections and problems were subtly rearranged so it made it difficult to use an older edition. The students got shafted two ways, in the Fall it was hard to find used books and in the Spring the bookstore wouldn't buy them back because they wouldn't be using them again.
You remind me of my son who is going through something similar. He'll spend 15 minutes fighting me on doing a homework assignment that only takes him 5 minutes to do.
If you're so good at math, shouldn't you be able to do the homework quickly? Is the time and energy spent resisting the teacher and/or parents well spent?
For what it's worth, I have taught Mathematics at the Community College level for several years and my observation is that there is a good correlation between doing homework and exam results. My grading policy was such that a student could skip the homework and still pass the class assuming they did reasonably well on the quizzes and exams. I had a few who did pass, but the majority who skipped the homework didn't do too well.
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After getting laid off from a dot bomb in 2002, I taught math at the local community colleges for over three years. Although I taught many of the classes multiple times we NEVER used the same text book for more than a year. The usual trick was to go with a new edition, the sections and problems were subtly rearranged so it made it difficult to use an older edition. The students got shafted two ways, in the Fall it was hard to find used books and in the Spring the bookstore wouldn't buy them back because they wouldn't be using them again.
You remind me of my son who is going through something similar. He'll spend 15 minutes fighting me on doing a homework assignment that only takes him 5 minutes to do. If you're so good at math, shouldn't you be able to do the homework quickly? Is the time and energy spent resisting the teacher and/or parents well spent? For what it's worth, I have taught Mathematics at the Community College level for several years and my observation is that there is a good correlation between doing homework and exam results. My grading policy was such that a student could skip the homework and still pass the class assuming they did reasonably well on the quizzes and exams. I had a few who did pass, but the majority who skipped the homework didn't do too well.
While I agree that there are many problems with the school system here in the US I have yet to meet any of these "incompetent, lazy" teachers.
So, the probability of a slashdot reader getting genital herpes next weekend is 1 - (1 - 0.25)^0 = 0 What's there not to be optimistic about?