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Comment One Solid Reason for Homework (Score 1) 178

I haven't been in the classroom since close to the year 2000, so I don't remember the study names. What I do remember is that there were studies, plural - studies, that showed that when you learn how to do a new task or learn new information, that using that information or practicing the task within 24 hours increases the chance of it being remembered by a large percentage. That's over 25 years ago for me, and I'm not going to claim it's at a certain percentage, but I know it was WELL over 50%. So if you learn a new process in Algebra, or a new move in ballroom dance, and you don't practice it within 24 hours, you have a lower chance of remembering it. But it was at least over a 50% increase in your chance of remembering it IF you reinforced it by going through it within 24 hours.

I preferred to use homework as practice - not as learning new material (although that might help if it includes reading for the next day's class). I also worked in psych treatment, which meant I taught more than one subject - I had the odd mix of science and math plus English (lit and grammar). So I'd assign reading overnight that gave us more chance for discussion (discussion, not lecture!), and the math I assigned was to use what we had learned in class. For science, I'd actually prefer to assign reading for what we had done that day, compared to what we would do the next day. That way students found the reading easier, it went faster, and they'd bring in a few questions the next day that we could review (before moving on to new material).

When I grew up, I was forced to go to a prep school where we had 3 or more hours of homework a night, plus we were required to stay for some form of athletics, so I rarely got home before 6 PM. With that in mind, I was selective about homework. For the time I was teaching in public schools (as opposed to my time teaching in treatment), the dept. heads and supervisors jumped on me for not giving enough homework or for assigning science material we had reviewed in class - pretty much everything about my homework system offended the dept heads or supervisors.

Comment Re:This case is not 'Does RoundUp Cause Cancer' (Score 1) 66

My $0.02 is it does cause cancer. But that's not what this case is about.

If it does cause cancer, it would have to be a very weak cause -- otherwise, the many studies done would clearly show it.

In any event, that kind of *is* what this case is about -- there's not really any significant evidence that RoundUp does cause cancer (at best, it's a *maybe*), and that sort of evidence is found in scientific studies, not in courtrooms.

But that lack of evidence won't stop the lawsuits -- sure, it makes the lawsuits weaker, but every person with cancer is a potential lawsuit against Monsanto, and juries don't necessarily *need* evidence that RoundUp causes cancer -- instead, an expert witness gets up there and tells them it's possible, and they think of the big faceless corporation and the person dying of cancer and their heartstrings make a decision rather than the evidence.

Monsanto may be a $15B/year company, but even that's not enough to pay all the people who accuse it of causing their cancers. And yet RoundUp is a vitally important tool for farmers worldwide, often used instead of nastier pesticides *known* to cause cancer -- even if it was found to cause cancer, it's so important to agriculture worldwide that we'd probably keep on using it.

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